Increase In ICE Detainees In OC Raises Concerns For Immigrant Communities

After a steep lull, Orange County appears to be ramping up its efforts to turn detainees over to federal immigration authorities.

Last year, 221 detainees were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after the O.C. Sheriff’s Department informed the agency of their release. That was up from just 17 in 2022. While the 2023 number is still far below from the 717 ICE custody transfers in 2018, it marks a sharp upswing after a years-long decline.

Immigration advocates say the practice disproportionately targets Orange County’s Mexican and Vietnamese communities.

Mai Nguyen Do, research and policy manager at the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, said the uptick shows that targeting these communities were not exclusive to the Trump administration and that the Southeast Asian deportation crisis is far from over.

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“Local law enforcement’s continued collaboration with federal immigration enforcement can really have a dampening effect on immigrants and refugee communities' trust in government,” Do said. “Oftentimes (it) will deter people from getting the help that they need in a lot of different situations, whether it's health care or going to the police to try and report something that might have happened to them.”

Local law enforcement agencies in California can choose whether to notify ICE when an undocumented person with a federal misdemeanor conviction is about to be released from custody, allowing agents to pick them up for possible deportation. So even if ICE requests that an inmate be transferred, known as a detainer, local agencies don’t have to comply.

Under the California Values Act (SB 54), signed into law in October 2017, local law enforcement can choose to notify ICE of when a person with an ICE detainer completes time in custody, if the person has a federal conviction on a higher level misdemeanor.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department does not comply with ICE detainers, nor does the LAPD. But Orange County has been notifying ICE every year since SB 54 went into effect in 2018. The O.C. sheriff’s officials told LAist in a statement they do this because “it is important in keeping our community safe.”

In 2020, O.C. Sheriff Don Barnes criticized SB 54.

“The law has resulted in new crimes because my deputies were unable to communicate with their federal partners about individuals who committed serious offenses and present a threat to our community if released,” he said. “The two-year social science experiment with sanctuary laws must end. Rather than protect our immigrant community, the law has enabled offenders to be released, often times back into the immigrant communities they prey upon, and create new victims.”

In 2020, a UC Irvine study found that the passing of SB 54 did not lead to an increase in crime — it had a “null effect,” researchers said.

Law enforcement agencies that do comply with ICE detainers are required by the state to divulge how many notifications are sent and allow for public comment. According to the latest numbers for 2023 that were discussed at Tuesday’s O.C. Board of Supervisors meeting, ICE placed detainers on 547 people in Orange County Jail. The sheriff’s department notified ICE of the pending release of 302 of those people. Roughly 70%, or 221 people, were ultimately taken into ICE custody.

Since 2018, the number of people taken into ICE custody after notification from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had been steadily declining, dropping from 717 in 2018 to 225 in 2020 to 17 in 2022.

“This fluctuation is wholly dependent on external factors, including whether or not ICE chooses to pick up an eligible inmate,” Barnes told supervisors on Tuesday.

In the case of the remaining 81 people, ICE chose to take no action, according to the sheriff’s department. There were 245 people released from the jail system last year who had ICE detainers, but the sheriff’s department did not notify ICE.

In a statement to LAist, ICE spokesperson Richard Beam said several factors play into law enforcement notification, including “how ‘sanctuary’ policies might influence that cooperation.” Beam added that “there can also be trends in criminality non-citizens engage in, agency priorities, or resources that could impact the number of interactions from year to year.”

That could include how crowded ICE detention facilities are and how many new detainees they can accommodate.

Who is affected?

Immigrant advocates in Orange County say communities of color are being disproportionately affected by the ICE transfers.

According to an analysis by the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, 43% of people transferred to ICE custody in 2023 were born in Mexico, while 40% were born in Vietnam.

With local law enforcement and federal law enforcement organizations' collaboration, Nguyen Do said, “our concerns about the safety and security of immigrants and refugee communities and about our ability to trust in government continue to be sort of at risk.”