A Nov. 9 letter from the county’s lawyer invokes its 2026 ICE-free zone ordinance; federal officials have said local refusals to honor detainers are what push immigration arrests into jail lobbies and parking lots.
Santa Rita Jail sits on the eastern edge of Dublin, a sprawling complex that holds about 2,000 people on a typical day. In recent weeks, according to Alameda County, its parking lot and lobby have also become a place where federal immigration agents wait for them.
On Monday, Nov. 9, the county’s interim county counsel, Andrea Weddle, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Julio Hernandez, acting director of the San Francisco field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, demanding that agents stop using county property as a staging ground for civil immigration enforcement. “ICE shall not pursue, confront, or detain individuals on County property or engage in other conduct that creates unnecessary safety risks to ACSO personnel, other County employees, ICE agents, or members of the public,” she wrote, The Oaklandside reported.
The letter cites two incidents. On Nov. 1, the county says, agents chased a person from the jail parking lot into the lobby and detained the person there. On Nov. 8, two agents got into a physical confrontation with members of the public in the lobby, creating what county officials called “potentially dangerous and unpredictable circumstances carrying an unacceptable risk of confusion and physical harm.” The letter also says Sheriff’s Office staff told agents on several occasions to leave and that “ICE personnel have repeatedly ignored those instructions,” KQED reported.
The federal government’s position
The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly answered the letter. ICE and DHS did not immediately respond to questions from The Oaklandside or KQED, and Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas’s office said ICE had not responded to the county.
The department has, however, laid out its view of arrests at California jails. In a Feb. 10 statement, DHS said ICE had 33,179 active detainers, requests that local jails hold people or notify the agency before release, for people in California custody, and that 4,561 people with detainers had been released since Jan. 20, 2025. Describing an arrest in the lobby of the Ventura County Jail that month, it said state and local officials’ refusal to honor a detainer had forced “our officers to make the arrest in the lobby of the jail following his release.”
“We are calling on Governor Newsom and his administration to commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 33,000 criminal illegal aliens in California’s custody. It is common sense and vital for public safety,” Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS assistant secretary, said then. Asked in October about reports of a statewide enforcement surge, a DHS spokesperson told KQED that “for operational security and the safety of our officers, ICE will not disclose or discuss law enforcement operations,” adding, “Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country including in California.”
Federal immigration enforcement is a national power, and the administration has argued in its legal challenges to sanctuary policies that states and localities may not obstruct it. California’s 2017 Values Act limits when local law enforcement may hold people for, or hand them over to, immigration authorities, and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office bars its staff from contact with ICE except in cases of a criminal warrant, KQED reported. How far a county may go in controlling federal agents’ presence on its own property, as opposed to its own employees’ cooperation, is the question the letter now poses.
What the county says it will do
Alameda County’s ordinance, adopted in January, bars county-owned or county-controlled land and buildings from being used as staging areas, processing sites or operations bases for civil immigration enforcement. Ms. Weddle wrote that the county “will take appropriate action,” including legal action, if agents keep using the jail.
“Alameda County will not stand by while our residents are targeted and our public resources are misused,” Ms. Bas, who represents District 5, said in a statement. She told KQED that the board “will have to meet and make some decisions about what the next step will be, and it would likely be legal action.” Advocates said the Sheriff’s Office had locked the jail lobby as of Friday night, Nov. 6; the Sheriff’s Office did not respond to KQED.
Members of the county-backed rapid-response network, the Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership, told KQED they believed rotating groups of up to six agents began using the lot around Oct. 25. Advocates counted at least 19 immigration arrests across the Bay Area as of Tuesday, according to KQED; those figures come from advocates, not from ICE.
The county’s public defender, Brendon Woods, wrote to supervisors on Nov. 5 that the activity “could indicate an unannounced expansion of ICE’s presence in Alameda County.” He told The Oaklandside: “I know some people will say, ‘Well, they’re arresting criminals.’ But they’re not. We’ve seen cases where someone was arrested but not charged, and when they were released from the jail, they were immediately stopped by immigration agents.” The Inquirer could not independently verify those cases.
Around the region
The letter follows other flashpoints in the East Bay. Last month, agents took custody of a patient at Wilma Chan Highland Hospital in Oakland without presenting a warrant, according to KQED and The Oaklandside. On Tuesday, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and Oakland Unified Superintendent Dennise Saddler issued a joint statement saying, “Our schools are sanctuaries where our children belong.” The county’s Alameda County Together for All committee plans a Dec. 7 hearing on its immigration-enforcement response plan.
The jail is in Dublin, in the district of Supervisor David Haubert. His office, Ms. Bas’s office, the Sheriff’s Office’s public information officer and the ACLU of Northern California did not respond to questions from The Inquirer sent Wednesday.
Desmond Akers covers the cities and counties of the greater Bay Area, from Oakland and San Jose to the Peninsula, the North Bay and the East Bay suburbs, for Around the Region. More from Desmond Akers
