In the midst of intense fears about President Donald Trump’s expanded immigration enforcement policies, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office finds itself accused of “potentially endangering Americans” for refusing to cooperate with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) holds.
“We were taken a little off guard by this report,” Sheriff Bill Brown said in an interview Tuesday evening. In the document released by ICE this week, Santa Barbara County was listed among dozens of jurisdictions in the country where sheriff’s officials declined to honor requests to detain immigrants beyond their local sentence.
The report focused on only a one-week period in late January. In that time, the ICE report stated, the Sheriff’s Office declined to detain an inmate convicted of forgery. But Brown said his department could not identify anyone who fit that description. An ICE agent clarified the forgery charge is the individual’s most serious crime, not necessarily the most recent. The reporting period represents the time frame in which ICE became aware the detainer was declined, which could happen in several ways such as the individual was rearrested by another law enforcement agency. The report will be updated weekly, ICE said.