According to the agenda, one task force recommendation is setting aside one hundred thousand dollars to support children from immigrant families.
Other recommendations include exploring policies to limit how federal immigration agents use county property.
Bill Hing, a law and migration studies professor at the University of San Francisco, says that only the federal government can regulate immigration, but local governments can create “policies of non-cooperation.”
“The counties can only push back to a limited extent,” Hing told KCBX.
The immigration taskforce report outlines several policy options for the county.
One possibility is limiting access to public buildings, like only allowing visitors with business at the county jail to enter the lobby. The policy would need to be applied neutrally so that all others, including federal agents and protestors, would have to wait outside.
Another would prohibit ICE agents from setting up temporary operations in public spaces.
“ As long as it's a public area that the city or the county regulates, they can prohibit certain activity,” Hing said. “They can tell the ICE agents, ‘You don't have permission to do this. This is a public park, this is intended for picnics and parties and that kind of thing.’”
It’s still unclear how policies like these would be enforced or whether they would substantively change how ICE operates in SLO County.
A January forum on immigration
The immigration task force was created in January after a contentious public meeting on the Sheriff’s Office cooperation with ICE.
Many attendees like Mariam Shah, the Director of Public Affairs with Planned Parenthood Central Coast, asked the board to restrict ICE agent’s access to county property.
“Please protect the health and safety of this community by cutting off all collaboration and declaring county property an ICE-free zone,” Shah told the board.
Sheriff Ian Parkinson said his office releases county jail inmates who’ve been convicted of certain crimes into ICE custody, according to restrictions included in SB 54.
At that meeting, Supervisor Bruce Gibson referred to ICE agents as “ masked secret police” and said anger at the agency was justified.
“Now we need to channel that anger into appropriate action to start taking back our democracy,” Gibson said.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office has agreed to release quarterly reports on the agency’s access to inmates at the county jail.
The SLO County Board of Supervisors will decide what actions they want to take in response to recommendations from the immigration task force at their upcoming meeting on April 7.
