Sacramento County settles lawsuit that alleged illegal jail inmate transfers to ICE
A lawsuit filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union alleging that former Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones’ office violated state law with a secretive policy used to transfer immigrants from county jails to the custody of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers has been settled out of court, with county leaders also voting earlier this month to curtail the practice.
SB 54, also called the California Values Act, prohibits local law enforcement from holding inmates past their release dates until ICE agents can arrive to take them into custody.
The ACLU’s Northern California chapter in a news release said it obtained documents via public record requests showing evidence of the practice.
“For example, ACLU NorCal discovered an ‘ICE Log Book,’ which demonstrated that sheriff’s deputies were illegally notifying ICE of a person’s release date and time, as well as internal communications showing that deputies would illegally transfer people to ICE agents waiting just outside jail gates.”
Under the terms of the settlement, the Sheriff’s Office agreed to change its policies to comply with SB 54. The changes include introducing stricter verification processes, as well as requiring written notifications of ICE interview requests that notify inmates and detainees of their rights.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors during a Dec. 6 meeting passed a resolution “supporting changes that further reduced cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and prohibiting county funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law.”
The ACLU filed the lawsuit last year on behalf of local nonprofits United Latinos and NorCal Resist, as well as Sacramento resident Misael Echeveste.
Echeveste, 26 at the time, was transferred from the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove to ICE custody in 2018, after serving six weeks in jail for a misdemeanor. According to the ACLU, deputies told Echeveste he was being released early, congratulating him before they “handed him a green ICE detainee uniform and announced, laughing, that they were transferring him to ICE custody.”
Jones signed the settlement agreement Nov. 21, less than three weeks before he left office Dec. 9 and was succeeded by Sheriff Jim Cooper. Jones’ office declined to comment on the lawsuit when it was filed, citing “long-standing Sacramento County protocol” on litigation.
“While we are pleased that this lawsuit has compelled the sheriff’s office to change its policies to comply with the state’s sanctuary law, there is still so much work left to do to protect California immigrants from being handed over to ICE for detention and deportation,” Sean Riordan, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, said in a prepared statement.
Sacramento County in January 2022 retained a law firm to conduct an investigation into the ACLU’s allegations. The final investigative report was released confidentially to the county before a redacted version was publicly released at the Dec. 6 meeting.
The public copy of the report states, in part, that a review of RCCC’s ICE log book found “multiple instances” of Sheriff’s Office personnel “proactively contacting ICE” to advise of release dates for non-SB 54 qualified inmates, which the report called a “clear violation of SB 54.”
The report also said there were “instances of this occurring in every calendar year between 2018-2021.”
