Just days after federal immigration officials issued a report accusing the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office of failing to cooperate, David Marin, an immigration enforcement director, called Sheriff Bill Brown to apologize. “It was an error on ICE’s part,” Brown said. “Somehow it got transposed or something and showed up as being our inmate, but it was not.”
On March 20, officials with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) announced they would issue weekly reports essentially shaming counties that refused to hold requested foreign-born inmates after their sentences had been served. The first report covered a one-week time period in late January, but Sheriff’s officials said they could not find any records for the case cited, which involved a convicted forger. (The second report was not released as of press time.)
The reports charged these jurisdictions posed a potential threat to American safety by their failure to cooperate. These accusations surprised many as Brown has come under fire from activists for regularly allowing ICE agents into the jail and notifying them when wanted inmates would be released. Brown, however, won’t hold inmates longer than their local sentence, as that violates California law.