Federal immigration agents are now limited in how and where they access property owned by San Luis Obispo County.
A resolution on the issue was approved by the SLO County Board of Supervisors during their Tuesday meeting.
Board Chair Jimmy Paulding supported the policy, and said it could help people feel they’re not in immediate danger of arrest while accessing county services.
“It also sends a clear message to our staff that we are going to protect our non-public spaces, which is what we do have authority over,” Paulding said.
From a legal perspective, counties and cities are severely limited in their ability to restrict immigration enforcement, which is the jurisdiction of the federal government.
By adopting the resolution, the county seems to be walking a thin line, trying to maintain control over its own property while avoiding the legal issues caused by attempting to regulate federal agents.
The new policy means that ICE agents will need to present a warrant before entering county property that’s closed to the public, like a government office building, for example.
It also states that federal agents are not allowed to use county property as a “staging area, processing location, or operations base…”
The policy is unlikely to change ICE’s access to the county’s jail
In most cases, the resolution would not apply to the Sheriff’s Office’s current practice of transferring some inmates into ICE custody.
According to public documents, the Sheriff’s Office complied with at least 13 requests from federal agencies last month.
Sheriff Ian Parkinson has said they only comply with requests when the person due for release qualifies, under specific exceptions in the California Values Act.
SLO County's new law includes the caveat that it “shall not apply to any action … expressly allowed by the California Values Act…”
Activist Susan Mackey told the board the resolution risked being “a symbolic gesture that is weakened by selective application.”
“Too often, our law enforcement agencies exploit these exceptions to maintain entanglement with federal immigration authorities, while ignoring the spirit and the core protective provisions of the law,” Mackey said.
A question around symbolism
Other counties in California, like San Mateo and Alameda, have adopted policies that similarly limit how federal immigration agents can act on county-owned property.
Both counties restrict ICE’s ability to use spaces like parking lots as operational bases.
However, in April, an immigration ad hoc committee told the SLO County Board of Supervisors that existing policy implicitly barred federal agents from taking over public property for immigration enforcement.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Supervisor Heather Moreno called the new law “symbolic.”
“I understand some people like the symbolic nature,” Moreno said. “For me, this was time that staff did not have, to put into something to simply affirm what we're already doing.”
Paulding disagreed, saying it was “more than symbolic,” and argued that it reflected the board’s disapproval of “how ICE has been conducting its activities.”
The new policy was approved by the board on a 3-2 vote, with Supervisors Moreno and John Peschong both voting against the resolution.
