Can ICE wait in jail lobby to detain inmates under new SLO County policy?
On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents gathered in the San Luis Obispo County Jail lobby, waiting to take inmates into custody when they completed their sentence — just two days after the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors passed a policy to limit ICE access to county property.
During the past year, the lobby has become a flashpoint for activists, who turn out to heckle agents and alert inmates that they could be deported upon release from the jail.
In the latest incident, an ICE agent forcibly removed an observer from her spot, video showed, again putting a spotlight on the issue of ICE operating at the jail.
The local group Indivisible SLO Coalition has said the new resolution should prohibit ICE from operating out of the jail lobby. But the county asserts the policy wasn’t designed to prevent such activity.
The Tribune looked into the policy as part of its Reality Check series.
Does new ICE policy apply to jail lobby?
The board passed a resolution on Tuesday that limited ICE access to county property after ICE escalated its operations in San Luis Obispo County.
In December, ICE agents shoved two activists and rushed a secure portion of the jail to grab an inmate — requiring jail staff to intervene. Last year, the Sheriff’s Office transferred 69 inmates to ICE in the sally port, the agency reported at the county’s Truth Act forum. Meanwhile, ICE agents detained people in the jail lobby — and they continue to do so to this day, Indivisible reported.
The Sheriff’s Office has said multiple times that ICE takes inmates from the lobby without permission from the department.
For the past year, activists have urged the Board of Supervisors to limit ICE access to the jail lobby.
The county passed a policy last week to limit ICE access to county property — but it does not impact current ICE operations at the jail, county counsel Jon Ansolabehere said.
“No county owned or controlled property shall be used for any purpose not expressly authorized by the county, including, for example, as a staging area, processing location or operations base for federal immigration enforcement activities,” the new policy said.
The county did not create a definition of what constitutes as a staging area, a processing location or an operations base, Ansolabehere said.
Without definitions, the county will enforce the policy on a case-by-case basis according to case law and constitutional requirements, he said.
“As demonstrated by the numerous lawsuits and court decisions addressing these issues, the intersection between federal immigration enforcement authority and local government authority is complex and fact dependent,” he said in a statement to The Tribune.
For example, the policy would prevent federal agents from setting up tables and equipment in a public space on county property or “cordoning off a portion of a public parking lot,” Ansolabehere said.
The resolution went into effect last week, when the board voted 3-2 to support it.
The next day, on Wednesday, ICE agents waited in the jail lobby and took two inmates into custody when they were released, according to witnesses with the Indivisible SLO Coalition.
On Thursday, ICE agents took another inmate into custody from the jail lobby, the Indivisible SLO Coalition said. An ICE agent also dragged a citizen by her arms along the lobby floor, video footage showed.
Video of the incident was provided to The Tribune to review, but the owner of the footage requested to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
ICE did not respond to a request to confirm whether its agents took the inmates into custody from the lobby.
ICE can wait in the jail lobby
So far, ICE agents are generally using the lobby as intended: As a waiting area, Ansolabehere said.
Because the jail lobby is open to the public, any rules the county creates for the lobby would apply to everyone — whether they are a citizen or an ICE agent.
If the county wanted to prevent ICE agents from accessing the lobby, it would need to pass a policy that applies to all members of the public, which would prevent activists, journalists and the family members of inmates from waiting in the lobby, too. The county hadn’t passed such a policy as of Wednesday.
Once ICE agents are using the lobby as a waiting area, the county can’t prevent the agents from detaining people there, because the federal government empowered the agents to make those arrests.
“Under the Supremacy Clause, the county may not directly regulate federal immigration enforcement activities in areas to which they have lawful access. At the same time, federal authorities may not require county officials to participate in or assist with federal immigration enforcement activities,” Ansolabehere said.
As a result, ICE agents can wait in the lobby like everyone else, he said.
Indivisible North SLO County co-leader Dr. Cindy Lewis said the county should create definitions for an ICE staging area, operations base and processing location — and current arrests carried out by ICE in the lobby should be prohibited by those definitions, she said.
She called the current policy “performative” because the county hasn’t outlined a way to enforce it.
“ICE actions are un-American and undemocratic,” Lewis wrote in an email to three county supervisors on Saturday. “Supervisors should be ashamed of their inaction.”
“Only when our supervisors decide to implement and enforce their words will there be justice in the rule of law,” she added “Taunting and assaulting witnesses is neither the spirit nor the letter of the law. So I say to the supervisors, your words ring hollow at this moment.”
Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, however, said the policy was not intended to prevent ICE access to the jail lobby. It is designed to allow the county to intervene if ICE stages a massive enforcement operation in a public space or if federal agents try to access private county areas, she said.
“They don’t have the right to just come in and take over,” she said.
Supervisor Jimmy Paulding agreed. The real teeth of the ordinance lies in the provision that requires federal agents to secure a judicial warrant to access nonpublic areas of county property, like private offices, he said.
“The real intent there is to protect the people that come to the county for services and to protect our staff,” he said.
ICE agent drags citizen along jail lobby floor, video shows
On Thursday at 7:26 a.m., the tensions again escalated when an ICE agent forcibly dragged a citizen along the lobby floor to move her out of his way, video footage showed.
The video shows five ICE agents waiting outside the release door behind a red line painted on the lobby floor. A citizen can be seen leaning against the wall, also behind the red line, more than a foot away from the nearest ICE agent.
She yells, “La migra está aquí” — “ICE is here” — then crouches next to the wall, the video shows.
An ICE agent then leans down to grab her arm, saying what sounds like, “Excuse me, I need to stand here.”
She swats his hand away and says, “no, no, no, no,” as he picks her up by the arm and drags her along the floor of the jail lobby on her backside.
He says, “lady,” followed by a sentence that is difficult to hear because he spoke quietly.
“Don’t you touch me,” she says.
He then grabs her other arm and presses her onto her back, saying, “Call the cops, call the cops. She’s in our way.”
Meanwhile, she holds her head up and yells, “Knock it off! Knock it off! Leave me alone!”
At that point, he releases her arms, points at the door and says, “Get out of here.”
“I can stand on the red line,” she retorts.
“No, I’m standing right there,” he says, then picks her up by her arms and continues dragging her along the floor on her back toward the door.
“I can stand on the red line!” she yells.
He then releases her and walks out the door to the parking lot.
As she stands up, he returns to the lobby and says, “That’s our area right there,” followed by a statement that was difficult to hear because he spoke quietly.
“No, that isn’t your area. This is public space,” the woman says.
The ICE agents then stand along the red line. The citizen approaches them, while filming with her phone, and says, “We knew you were going to show up and just be a cruel, terrible man pushing people around. I was on the red line like you’re allowed to be on the red line.”
Another ICE agent then lifts his cell phone to his ear and asks for a watch commander.
San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s deputies took statements from witnesses on Thursday, and the office is investigating the incident, sheriff’s spokesperson Tony Cipolla said.
Lewis said the incident reminded her of when FBI agents pushed Sen. Alex Padilla to the ground and handcuffed him at a Department of Homeland Security press conference last year.
“It’s wrong,” she told The Tribune.
“That could be any of us who care about folks that live here,” Lewis said. “I saw myself there. I’m a 77-and-a-half-year-old white woman. If I had the guts to go there, that would have been me.”
