Sacramento man in ICE custody after serving sentence for DUI. Activists allege sheriff broke state law.

Protesting the alleged unlawful immigration detention of a Sacramento man, activists held a news conference Wednesday outside the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Sacramento, accusing the agency of breaking state law.

Enrique Nambo, a 15-year resident of the Sacramento area, was about to be released from a four-day sentence for DUI when he was transferred to ICE custody, said Emi MacLean, Nambo’s public defender from San Francisco.

Nambo has since been held in the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield for three months.

MacLean and local activists said Nambo never should have been given to the feds, citing Senate Bill 54, known as the California Values Act and adopted in 2017, which prohibits law enforcement officers from sharing data with federal immigration authorities unless under certain circumstances.

“He never should have been arrested by ICE,” MacLean said at the news conference. “He never should have been ripped from his community, prevented from being at his daughter’s side. California passed the California Values Act to prohibit sheriff’s deputies from doing exactly what the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department did to Enrique Nambo in August.”

Nambo’s case is still pending in a San Francisco immigration court, where he is trying to win release and the opportunity to stay in the U.S. with his 5-year-old daughter, MacLean said. And MacLean plans to file a complaint with Sacramento County this week.

Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sgt. Tess Deterding said the agency became aware of Nambo’s case only after the news conference was announced and could not speak to specifics of the matter.

Deterding said the sheriff’s office’s policy created after SB 54 was adopted took language “directly” from the law. The policy states that if ICE contacts the sheriff’s office to take custody of an inmate, deputies then review the file of the inmate to see if they meet the criteria to be transferred outlined under the law. If the inmate does meet the specifications, then deputies can facilitate a transfer to federal authorities, Deterding said.

The policy allows ICE to enter sheriff’s office facilities only in certain circumstances as contained in the law, she said.

This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 4:02 PM.