The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office reported Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors on how many county inmates were transferred into ICE custody last year.
This is the first such meeting since the county approved an “ICE-free zone” policy in April.
Forty-five inmates were handed over to federal immigration enforcement agents in 2025, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Of that number, 33 people had a judicial warrant out for their arrest. The remaining 12 had a charge in their criminal history that qualified them for a transfer under an exception in state law, which would otherwise bar such a move.
“If there's an opportunity for people who have committed serious crimes in the past to be transferred to ICE custody, I think it's the appropriate thing to do,” Sheriff Bill Brown told the Board of Supervisors.
‘At’ the jail, not ‘in’ the jail
In contrast to the 45 transfers, a Santa Barbara News-Press investigation from April showed almost a hundred people were arrested at Santa Barbara County jails in 2025.
In a combative moment, Brown called the article “slanted and misleading,” and argued it implied he was holding back the true number of arrests from the public.
Brown explained that federal immigration agents often wait for inmates to be released, in order to arrest them in jail lobbies and parking lots.
ICE has access to databases that enables them to see who is in Santa Barbara County’s custody.
On top of that, if a federal agent requests a particular intimate’s release date and time, the Sheriff’s Office will provide it, typically as a two-hour window.
Brown said that data is provided only because it’s available to any member of the public who requests it.
“There's reasons for that,” Brown told the board. “Obviously, people come in to arrange rides and pick people up.”
The arrest number cited by the Santa Barbara News-Press likely includes people whose criminal history wouldn’t have qualified them for an official transfer under state law.
Brown said those arrests are made without any coordination or assistance from Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s personnel.
“ [ICE’s] arrests are their business, they're really not our business,” Brown said.
Could the sheriff track all arrests at county jails?
Supervisor Laura Capps pushed back on Brown, asking why his office isn’t tracking how many arrests are being made on jail property.
“It's not as though it's Grand Central Station,” she said, referencing the Northern Jail branch.
“It's literally like, as if there were an arrest right there,” Capps said, gesturing to her right. “We would all be very much aware and very much cognizant if that was happening.”
Custody Chief Deputy Ryan Sullivan told Capps that in his decades working in jails, his focus was on the people inside.
“We're not concerned about what's happening in the parking lot or in the community typically,” Sullivan said.
Brown also argued his office couldn’t verify federal arrest numbers, and it would be inappropriate to report on the actions of another law enforcement agency.
“If ICE is not arresting people at the jail or in the jail, they are going to be arresting people in the community,” Brown told Capps. “Frankly, I would much rather they arrest people in our jail, if we can legally provide them access to them.”
Brown argued he believes that arrests — both official transfer and ones not facilitated by the Sheriff’s Office — are safer when performed at county jails, rather than out in the community.
“There's the potential for violence, for peripheral arrests, for all kinds of problems and issues,” Brown said.
Reactions from community members
The members of the public who chose to comment at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting were overwhelmingly opposed to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office’s policies.
Mary Ellen Reesey said that once, while visiting the Northern Branch Jail, she witnessed ICE agents grab two young men as soon as they were released. The men were quickly put in cars and driven away.
“If that's not a transfer, I don't know what it is,” Reesey said.
Leo Ortega, a youth program coordinator with the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, said he was concerned about the Sheriff’s Office’s “ voluntary collaboration with ICE.”
“I was once young and had a father who was arrested for a DUI,” Ortega told the board. “After a couple days in county jail, he was later deported. This was back in 2008 in the Obama era.”
Ortega said the county should work on education and prevention of DUI’s, rather than “investing in trauma.”
Deliberation from the Board of Supervisors
Near the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Supervisor Laura Capps proposed that the county should only honor transfer requests from federal immigration agents that come with a judicial warrant.
Supervisor Bob Nelson pushed back against that suggestion, arguing the reason ICE seems to be so active at Santa Barbara County jails is due, in part, to the actions of the board related to immigration.
“We've seen it in Minnesota, you're seeing it here,” Nelson said. “When the temperature rises, guess what? This president reacts.”
Supervisor Roy Lee was tentatively interested in Capps proposal.
However, Supervisor Joan Hartmann was concerned that it wouldn’t be possible to implement unless the sheriff supported the policy himself.
Hartman also pointed out that the meeting’s topic, centered on county inmates arrested by ICE, could seem to imply that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes.
In fact, people born in the U.S. are more likely to be convicted of a crime and incarcerated.
The meeting closed with the supervisors voting unanimously to accept the report on ICE transfer from the Sheriff’s Office, with no official change in county policy.
