Federal agents blocked observers from Sheriff’s detention facility lobby before detaining a person
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KEYT) – Federal agents were recorded blocking the entrance to the Santa Barbara County Main Jail's inmate reception area Wednesday morning before taking a person into custody.
According to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, federal agents were notified that blocking the publicly-accessible lobby was not a lawful act and they eventually left the County-operated property.
Local immigrant rights organization, SBResiste, shared with Your News Channel that they livestreamed Wednesday's incident, noted that it was their observers being barred from entering the facility, and confirmed that at least one person was taken into federal custody.
"SBResiste observers were at the jail as part of our routine patrol when we observed confirmed ICE vehicles on site," detailed a statement from the activist group to Your News Channel Wednesday. "We proceeded to park and attempted to enter the public jail lobby to conduct our usual observation. At the entrance, we were met by three ICE agents standing across the doorway, equipped with bear spray, mace, and guns; the agents blocked entry and threatened to assault anyone who tried to enter, citing a 'federal investigation' and claiming to have 'commandeered' the lobby."
The group went on to explain that a Sheriff's Office Lieutenant informed federal agents that they were not legally allowed to block the public's access to the local detention facility's lobby, but federal agents waited until a person was released from Sheriff's custody before taking them into federal custody and departing the scene.
"While we are glad that one member of the sheriff's department was willing to state our legal rights to ICE agents, our repeated experience and observations reveal that, in general, the sheriff's department has not acted in the best interest of public safety," argued the group. "Concerns remain regarding mismanagement under [Sheriff] Bill Brown, whose political affiliations and leadership have not aligned with the community's expectations for transparent and accountable law enforcement."
Your News Channel has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security with multiple questions about Wednesday's incident and the agency's response will be added to this article once it is received.
During a special hearing just yesterday, the County Board of Supervisors passed a multi-section measure changing how the County works with federal immigration agents.
Two of the sections passed on a 4-1 vote with Fourth District Supervisor Nelson casting the lone opposing vote.
"With this, I'm concerned that this creates another layer where people in our community might believe they can tell ICE they can't be on county property — and that the Sheriff's Office isn't going to enforce it," argued Supervisor Nelson during the special session. "Does that give someone the feeling they have the right to interfere with law enforcement?"
Those sections directed the Planning and Development Department to prepare tools that the Supervisors might use in the future to halt the construction or use of "immigration enforcement facilities and detention centers" in the County and the other prohibited the use of County-owned property for immigration enforcement activities.
Questions of enforcement regarding such measures haven't just plagued County officials locally.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a third section of measures Tuesday that established protections for upcoming elections that included the following actions:
- Tasked County departments to distribute "Know Your Rights" voting information flyers before elections in June and November of this year
- Requested that the Elections Division provide details to voters about protecting ballots from outside interference including from federal, state, county, and local entities by May 5, 2026
- Report on the County Employee Election Officer Program's training program and payment procedures by May 5, 2026
- Asked that the County's Clerk Recorder Assessor Registrar of Voters coordinate with the District Attorney's Office, the Sheriff's Office, and the County Counsel to develop protocols and training to prevent voter intimidation and the potential use of polling locations or County property for any activities that might interfere with voter access by May 5, 2026
The County of Santa Barbara's attempts to protect voters has come as multiple unprecedented attempts to gain access to voter information have been made by state and federal officials.
Earlier this year, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized over half-a-million ballots cast in the November 2025 special election.
"California law provides a robust post-election civil process to resolve any challenges to election results or concerns about election procedures. But the Riverside County Sheriff instead bypassed those procedures and used his position to abuse the criminal system by seizing ballots based on claims that were already proven to be baseless," argued the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan legal group that filed an amicus brief on behalf of groups challenging the ballot seizures by Sheriff Bianco. "Sheriff Bianco's actions violate California law requiring public officials to maintain clear chain of custody over sensitive election materials, including ballots, and ensuring that only trained election officials conduct recounts, audits and other important post-election procedures."
The evidence used to authorize the action was kept under seal by Judge Jay Kiel until earlier this month and the state's Supreme Court halted the unprecedented elections probe.
On the federal level, the Department of Justice has actively sought private voter information from almost every state starting last year, a demand which a federal judge in California characterized as, "unprecedented and illegal" when dismissing the suit in January of this year.
"The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks an unprecedented amount of personal information related to California voters from California’s unredacted voting rolls," explained Federal district Judge David O. Carter in his dismissal. "The requested information includes the names, social security numbers, home addresses, voting history and other sensitive information of nearly 23 million Californians."
The U.S. Constitution states in Article I, Section 4 that decisions regarding, "the times, places, and manner of holding Elections" are delegated to Congress and managed by each state.
The Section does not mention any executive branch position, office, or department.
In January, Senate members authored a letter after the now-former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, explicitly linked complying with the demand for voter information to a potential reduction in a large-scale operation by federal immigration law enforcement personnel in Minnesota, the same month that two U.S. Citizens had been shot and killed by federal agents.
"Her [former-Attorney General Bondi] letter is an outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota into giving the federal government private data on millions of U.S. Citizens in violation of state and federal law. This comes after repeated and failed attempts by the DOJ to pressure my office into providing the same data," wrote Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon in a statement the following day. "Our position on the federal government's request to access Minnesota voting records starts and ends with the law. The law does not give the federal government the authority to obtain this private data. Minnesota is not alone in declining to disclose sensitive personal data on voters."
"It is deeply disturbing that the U.S. Attorney General would make this unlawful request a part of an apparent ransom to pay for our state's peace and security," added Secretary of State Simon.
Since May of last year, the Department of Justice has requested voter information from over 40 states and Washington D.C. according to the Brennan Center for Justice and at least ten states have provided full statewide voter registration lists, including the nation's second-most-populous state.
"We encourage states with questions to work with their state election offices for basic implementation requirements," shared the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages most election security grant program. "If any state is not found to be compliant, we reserve the right to withhold funding or terminate the grants."
One notable change made last year to the conditions for states to access federal election security funding included the removal of language that prohibited the use of the federal funds, "to suppress voter registration or turnout" stated members of the U.S. Senate in their letter to former-Attorney General Bondi.
Federal immigration enforcement has grown to include other parts of the federal government since last year.
In December of last year, California's Senators signed onto a letter demanding more information after a Senate report showed that more than $2 billion had been diverted from the Department of Defense's budget to conduct federal immigration enforcement.
Federal law prohibits the use of military personnel or resources to conduct domestic law enforcement and the use of military personnel and facilities in the detention of U.S. Citizen George Retes in July of last year is the subject of unfulfilled Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by Your News Channel.
"There's no American citizens have been arrested or detained," stated now-former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Noem in October of last year, months after the detention of George Retes in Ventura County. "We focus on those that are here illegally. And anything that you would hear or report that would be different than that is simply not true and false reporting."
In fact, nonprofit investigative outlet, Propublica, verified that more than 170 U.S. citizens had been held by the Department of Homeland Security for perceived violations of federal immigration law last year alone.
The immigration status of voters is the stated purpose of the unprecedented demands for voter information by the federal government over the last year, but the distinction between illegal and legal immigration is something the federal government has stated could be considered "meaningless".
"The distinction between legal and illegal immigration becomes meaningless when both can destroy a country at its foundation," argued Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office of Public Affairs. "Unchecked mass migration floods the American labor market, depressing wages and taking jobs away from hardworking Americans, while straining healthcare, education, and housing systems."
On Wednesday, California's Senators signed a letter asking for a federal watchdog to investigate the Trump Administration's sweeping changes to the legal immigration process including the suspension of the asylum process for 1.4 million pending applicants, an indefinite hold on processing applications from 75 countries, and threatening to "re-review" already approved applications from the Biden Administration including for some of the newest American citizens.
"If we're going to use the budget reconciliation process for anything right now, we ought to be using it to help working families afford the basics. Let's use it to help bring down health care costs. Let's help bring down gas prices. Let's bring down the cost of food, housing, and utilities," argued Senator Padilla during a floor debate Wednesday regarding a funding request for federal immigration law enforcement agencies. "But let's not pretend that out-of-control immigration agencies actually need $140 billion more dollars when they still have over $100 billion just sitting there from last year's Big Ugly Bill. Democrats refuse to give a single dollar more to an out of control, unaccountable agency. We are demanding oversight and commonsense reforms not just to protect people's rights, but to protect people's lives."
All three sections approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors were authored by Supervisors Lee and Capps.
"Forty percent of our County population relies on County services in one way or another," explained Supervisor Capps earlier this week. "They need to feel safe. They need to feel as though they can trust those services."
Despite the sustained efforts to seize voter information and cast doubt on the authenticity of election results, courts have limited the exposure of individual voters' information so far, but the impact on County-based services and even on the act of voting itself may be the far larger issue.
"The DOJ's request for the sensitive information of Californians stands to have a chilling effect on American citizens like political minority groups and working-class immigrants who may consider not registering to vote or skip casting a ballot because they are worried about how their information will be used," noted Judge Carter in his dismissal of the Justice Department's demands for voter information. "The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left. The case before the Court is one of these cuts that imperils all Americans."
