Under pressure from activists, the Marin County Board of Supervisors plans to take up a request to declare the county an immigrant “sanctuary” jurisdiction.
Supervisor Katie Rice, the president of the board, announced it would discuss the matter at either its Sept. 15 or Sept. 22 meeting after the activists monopolized the supervisors’ meeting earlier this week with their public comments.
The commenters, who were often strident and sometimes hurled profanities at the supervisors, made it difficult for the supervisors to get to the other items on their agenda. When Rice cautioned one caller regarding her language, subsequent commenters chastised Rise for doing so, asserting she was abusing her “privilege” and “silencing” the woman.
“We are really demanding that our board implement a sanctuary county ordinance to protect the rights and lives of immigrants,” Yavar Amidi, an advocacy director for ICE Out of Marin, said on Wednesday.
Amidi said ICE Out of California, his organization’s parent, has a model sanctuary ordinance that the county could base its ordinance on. The template prohibits use of local resources and personnel in immigration enforcement and seeks to ensure equal access to services.
It prohibits local law enforcement agencies from notifying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when an undocumented individual is booked into jail, providing ICE with inmate release dates or access to interview inmates when they’re in jail.
Amidi said a sanctuary ordinance would encourage cooperation between the immigrant community, county officials and hospitals. Marin’s Latino community, which is about 16% of the population, accounts for 75% of its positive coronavirus tests.
Amidi said the adoption of a sanctuary ordinance alone wouldn’t satisfy ICE Out of Marin.
“We are also demanding that the Board of Supervisors establish an independent community oversight commission to oversee the Marin County Sheriff’s Office,” Amidi said.
Amidi said supervisors should immediately instruct Sheriff Robert Doyle to suspend interactions with ICE and other federal immigration agencies.
Lucia Martel-Dow, director of immigration legal services at the Canal Alliance, said Canal Alliance would like to see the supervisors declare Marin a sanctuary county.
“It’s a symbolic gesture that could translate into further more progressive policies,” Martel-Dow said.
She added, however, that Doyle recently has made a series of incremental changes that reduced the number of Marin residents being picked up by ICE.
“We absolutely recognize the progress that the sheriff has made,” Martel-Dow said. “That is not something we can just sweep under the rug.”
In December 2018, at the request of Canal Alliance, Doyle stopped supplying ICE with inmate release date information unless the inmate had been charged with or convicted of a serious or violent crime. As a result, the number of release dates supplied to ICE dropped to 27 in 2019, down from 75 in 2018.
Doyle said Thursday that so far this year he has supplied ICE with just five release dates.
“They try to paint it that we’re working hand in hand with ICE, that we’re on the phone with them all the time, when in fact it’s very limited,” Doyle said.
Beginning Saturday, Doyle will also no longer allow ICE into the jail booking area to pick up prisoners when they are released.
Martel-Dow said the problem is that the sheriff’s department sometimes shares release dates with ICE before it knows whether the inmate being released has been charged or convicted.
“It is possible the person pleads to a different crime or the district attorney decides not to press charges,” Martel-Dow said. “That happens a lot.”
She said a former client of hers was released on bail after being charged with a felony. The prosecution dropped the charges two days later, but he was picked up by ICE regardless.
“By handing people over to ICE, you’re not letting the criminal justice system run its course,” she said.
Doyle said, “You also have to look at the numbers.”
He said of the 27 Marin inmates ICE picked up in 2019, 12 of them had previously been convicted of a serious or violent crime and nine of them had been charged. Doyle said those 27 inmates had a combined total of 102 arrests in Marin alone. He said one of the nine charged was accused of rape, sodomy and drugging and restraining a cohabitant.
“How responsible would I be, releasing that person back to the same community they came from?” Doyle said.
The sheriff, who is an elected official, said that while the supervisors approve his department’s budget, they cannot dictate how he operates the department.
He said, “The board can’t enact any ordinance or resolution that prohibits me from cooperating with a federal law enforcement agency.”