The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has resumed transferring jail inmates to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the first time in years, despite local sanctuary policies that aim to shield people from deportation.
Eight inmates were released to ICE in May and a dozen more in June, according to sheriff’s department records reviewed by The Times. Eleven are Mexican, six are Guatemalan, and one each is from Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras. Their ages ranged from 19 to 63 years old.
The transfers to ICE are the first by the sheriff’s department since early 2020, when records show 43 people were sent to federal immigration custody from sheriff’s stations, jails and courts. That marked a steep decline from the 457 handed over in 2019, during President Trump’s first term.
The sheriff’s department and legal experts say the recent transfers were lawful and conducted in accordance with sanctuary policies and ordinances approved in recent years by the state, L.A. County and cities including Los Angeles, Long Beach and West Hollywood.
The Trump administration obtained federal judicial warrants for all but one of the inmates who were released in May and June, the sheriff’s department records said.
The lone exception was transferred to ICE because he was a “[p]erson extradited to United States to face criminal charges based on agreement between Department of Homeland Security (ICE) and LA County (District Attorney and Sheriff) to honor his immigration detainer,” according to the records.
“We have been monitoring sheriff messaging on ICE cooperation and it is our understanding that the recent transfers of prisoners to ICE are all in response to judicially issued warrants as required by federal and state law,” L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman said in a statement. “Despite ‘sanctuary’ rhetoric, we are unaware of any conflict between California and federal law on this requirement.”
But the transfers represent a new tactical approach that the Trump administration has quietly rolled out as masked federal agents have struck fear into L.A. County’s immigrant communities by sweeping people away during hundreds of raids on businesses, homes and gathering spaces.
In a statement, the sheriff’s department said that “state and county law/policy allow for cooperation in response to a judicial warrant,” which is a legal document signed by a judge that orders the department to hand individuals over to ICE.
Sanctuary laws generally forbid local authorities from enforcing civil immigration laws, but there are exceptions for cases that involve criminal offenses. The recent transfers, the sheriff’s department said, involved warrants for illegally reentering the country after having been previously deported, a federal crime that can carry a multiyear prison sentence.
The sheriff’s department said in a statement that it “cannot say for a certainty that we had never received one before; however, we hadn’t received any of these warrants in the past several years.”
The sheriff’s department provided The Times with the names of the eight inmates it transferred to ICE in May. One had been sentenced to six years in prison for felony voluntary manslaughter, according to L.A. County court records. Another pleaded not guilty to a domestic violence-related crime on May 21. A third was sentenced to 99 days in county jail for violating post-release supervision.
It was not immediately clear what offenses the other five inmates had been accused of committing to land them in local lockups.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said last week that it had arrested more than 2,700 people “in the L.A. area” since launching an aggressive crackdown in June. Those detainees are typically held in federal immigration detention facilities, not county jails.