SAN DIEGO—The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 10 approved a new local policy to prohibit the use of county resources to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, including deporting illegal immigrants.
Board Chair Nora Vargas proposed the “board policy on immigration to enhance community safety,” saying she wants to protect immigrant families from mass deportation.
“The proposed policy does not limit or prohibit giving assistance with the investigative activities of any local, state, or federal law enforcement agency relating to suspected violations of criminal laws,” a proposal describing the policy reads.
After the vote, Sheriff Kelly Martinez said the board does not set policy for the sheriff, who, like the supervisors, is an elected official. She said she wouldn’t honor the new policy.
“Current state law strikes the right balance between limiting local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration authorities, ensuring public safety, and building community trust,” said Martinez, who has identified as a Democrat though her office is nonpartisan.
Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar” who served as acting ICE director in the first Trump administration and was a U.S. Border Patrol agent for more than two decades, told The Epoch Times via text message that if ICE has to search communities for criminal illegal immigrants—instead of apprehending them at county jails because local authorities won’t cooperate—the sanctuary policies will backfire and result in more arrests.
“Less agents in the jails and less cooperation with law enforcement means we have to go into communities to find the public safety threat that they released. When we find him, it’s likely he will be with others, maybe non criminals, and they will be arrested, too,” Homan said. “Many more non-priority arrests will occur. Their actions will result in what they don’t want: more community arrests.”
Immigration lawyers, local pastors, a Catholic priest, and other residents also supported the sanctuary policy.
Meanwhile, Vargas said the policy “in no way interferes with federal criminal investigations.”
“We’re not talking about releasing criminals on the streets,” she said. “It’s important to emphasize we have witnessed the heart-wrenching consequences of current immigration enforcement policies, including families torn apart and communities destabilized.”
Dozens of proponents said they support the sanctuary policy to protect illegal immigrants and prevent the erosion of trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement.
Erin Tsurumoto Grassi, associate director of Alliance San Diego, told the board that advocates have asked the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for years to stop aiding in the deportation of community members “to no avail.”
“It’s really time,” she said. “The best way we can protect our community members from mass deportations is to make certain that we are not using our own county resources to assist the federal government in doing so.”
Tammy Alvarado, a lifelong California resident, said local law enforcement assisting ICE could have unintended consequences such as distrust of police and crime going unreported in immigrant communities.
“Without trust, crimes go unreported out of fear of what might happen to them. People could take matters into their own hands and that would jeopardize the safety of officers as well as community members,” she said.
The Rev. Kristen Kuriga of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego told the board she believes the sanctuary policy would keep families together, and communities safer, and honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
One county resident, Matt Baker, criticized the board out of turn for the new policy, accusing them of neglecting the public safety of American families. He was asked to leave the meeting.
Baker told The Epoch Times outside the board chambers that the county is now “a sanctuary within a sanctuary,” because the state already has sanctuary laws.
He also criticized the county for spending millions of dollars on detention facilities for illegal immigrants as well as hotel rooms, phones, and medical care.
“They’re reading off of a script,” he said. “I had had enough of it. I was done, and I decided to let them know how I felt.”
Amy Reichert, founder of Restore San Diego, an organization opposed to government overreach, defended Baker, describing him as “a fed-up American citizen,” who had grown tired of the board’s responses.
“We just saw a completely and totally predictable result from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors ... who voted to protect criminal illegal aliens instead of protecting American citizens,” she said.
Reichert said non-government organizations, or NGOs, are profiting off illegal immigration and were well-represented at the meeting.
“They were here in force, and they all kept saying the same scripted, repeated lines over and over,” Reichert said.
Audra Morgan, another local activist, told The Epoch Times after the vote, that she fears the county’s efforts to protect illegal immigrants will create more division in the county.
“I think it is absolutely dangerous what they’re doing,” she said. “It’s actually, again, putting the community at risk.”
Morgan expected pushback from the county against the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportation, and said the sanctuary policy will cost residents and “create chaos that’s not needed.”
“A lot of these people aren’t going to want to leave, and the county and the NGOs are going to be using our money to fight this deportation plan,” she said.
Supervisor Joel Anderson was absent from the meeting and did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) lists the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles as two of the top 10 largest sanctuary cities in the United States.
In the 2024 fiscal year ending Sept. 30, there were more than 2.1 million encounters in the Southwest border sector with nearly 30,000 in the San Diego sector, which also takes in the county, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Nationwide encounters over the last four fiscal years were more than 10.8 million, not including “gotaways” nor those who entered the United States using the CBP One app to claim asylum.
