How Many Santa Barbara Jail Inmates Picked Up by ICE?
Sheriff Brown Reported to Supes, but Advocates Questioned His Numbers
In the past year, federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — better known as ICE — picked up 12 inmates from Santa Barbara County Jail for purposes of deportation. That’s out of a total of 132 inmates deemed by custody officers in the County Jail of having committed crimes serious enough to meet the threshold established by the State Legislature to justify pickups. In 2019, the number of ICE pickups was 38 out of 448 requests. The year before that, it was 98 pickups out of 414 requests.
These numbers were delivered by Sheriff Bill Brown as part of annual reporting required by the State of California since 2014. Three measures — the Trust Act, the TRUTH (Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds) Act, and the Vision Act — were designed to publicly disclose any collaboration between local law enforcement officials and ICE.
Advocates argued that since ICE generated intense fear in immigrant communities, it also engendered distrust of local law enforcement agencies, which hindered public safety. Families have been torn asunder, they argued, by deporting individuals for minor offenses. And in the wake of COVID, they’ve added, fear of ICE has discouraged many immigrants from getting vaccinated or obtaining the medical treatment they need, thus placing themselves and the broader community at greater risk.
