Number of immigrants transferred to ICE in Fresno County high for second year in a row

The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office says it transferred 44 immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2021, according to the office’s newest data.

The new data was released ahead of Tuesday’s TRUTH Act forum during the Fresno County Board of Supervisors’ meeting where the figures were presented to the public by Sheriff Margaret Mims.

This is the second year in a row the Sheriff’s Office reports having handed more than 40 immigrants to federal immigration officials. According to the Sheriff’s Office data, 27 of the immigrants transferred to federal agents were serving jail time for crimes against persons; five of them for sex crimes, five of them for crimes against property and seven for drug/DUI.

Civil rights attorneys and advocacy groups have scrutinized Mims in the past over her handling of state laws prohibiting cooperation with immigration agents. Mims, who is in her final year as sheriff, has publicly admitted not being a fan of some of those laws, such as the state’s sanctuary law.

Mims presented a long list of specific kind of offenses that, she said, had been committed by those who her office had transferred to ICE. Some of those crimes included child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, possession or a firearm, arson, crime with intent to terrorize or terror threats, false imprisonment, stealing a vehicle, discharging a firearm, cruelty to a child, sexual assault to a child, unlawful sexual intercourse and conspire to distribute and possess narcotics, among others.

“Those are the kind of offenses that the law allows us to to transfer to ICE,” she said during the forum. “We obey the rule of law and transfer those that we can legally transfer.”

County supervisors didn’t pose any questions for Mims about the data, and initially, none of them made any comments.

Three people spoke during public comment and the ACLU of Northern California submitted comments in writing. Some of those who spoke said they believed Mims’ data is inaccurate, in particular, because of past discrepancies in the numbers.

The Sheriff’s Office last year reported having transferred 47 immigrants to ICE in 2020 — marking a significant shift in the number of transfers reported to the California Attorney General’s Office and the public in prior years since state laws began to require transparency from law enforcement agencies on those transfers.

Last year’s sudden increase in the number of reported transfers to ICE followed a report by The Fresno Bee that revealed ICE’s own figures on arrests at the county’s jail in previous years were much higher than those being reported by the Sheriff’s Office.

During the first year the Sheriff’s Office was required to disclose this information to the public, it reported having transferred four people in 2018. But ICE’s own figures for the same year showed more than 100 arrests at the county jail.

A report by the ACLU of Northern California released this year found the underreporting practice was common among sheriff’s offices in the central San Joaquin Valley. More than 1,000 immigrants in the San Joaquin Valley were transferred to ICE since state laws prohibiting local law enforcement cooperation with immigration officials went into effect.

The number of transfers, the report found, was nearly three times higher than the official count local sheriff’s offices have reported to the state’s Attorney General’s Office since 2018.

Rocio Madrigal, who was among those who spoke during the public forum, said she is an outreach worker in Fresno County and has seen families broken apart by deportation.

“I do not believe that it’s 44 people that were transferred to ICE,” Madrigal said.

Where do transfers take place?

Mims in an email to The Bee after the meeting said, “The distrust is from the reporting that makes it seem that arrests and transfers are the same thing. They are not the same and will not match.”

Mims said transfers take place in a secure area of the jail.

“There were no arrests in the vestibule and we do not track any other arrests by ICE not transferred by us,” she said.

Mims maintains that the vestibule is a public area, despite a sign indicating it’s a secure area.

Sheriff’s spokesman Tony Botti on Tuesday described it as a “confined area” that was created as a safe space option for ICE.

“The only purpose of that is it’s a confined area so that if the person were to get, you know, belligerent in some way, it helps to reduce public safety spillover in the lobby,” he said.

No arrests took place in the vestibule area in fiscal year 2021, he said.

Madrigal said she had other reasons for believing the data was not correct. She said she has heard from families in Sanger and Parlier who have said they have seen “sheriff patrol cars waiting near the field when people leave work — hard-working farmworkers that are working today in 103-, 104-degree weather.”

“This is a money-making cycle where they take their cars — they are not able to prove license, they are not able to prove registration,” she said.

These situations, she said, put families in a worse situation when “all they are trying to do is work in the fields, get the food on our tables.”

“So, I ask you to please review what is being said here because it is incorrect,” she told county supervisors.

Supervisors Magsig, Brandau weigh in

County Supervisor Nathan Magsig said he has found Mims to be reliable with her data. But he said he recognizes that there are people in law enforcement, or any other government agencies, who make mistakes.

“I do want to be very clear, if there are allegations that are being leveled here today, you need to provide evidence to us, and if the allegations have no evidence, all you end up doing is hurting someone’s credibility,” he said. “I’m very open to some of the things that were said here today, but without evidence, there’s really nothing I can do to act.”

Mims said this was the first time she was hearing these allegations but concurred with Magsig. “When this happens and someone thinks it is for nefarious reasons we need to know immediately and where it is happening,” she said.

Meanwhile, Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau, who was the first to comment after Madrigal spoke, said he believes what breaks families apart is “these criminal predators that get involved in human trafficking, putting fentanyl in the streets of Fresno County.”

“That’s what I think rips families apart,” he said. “So I’m very supportive of any other law enforcement agency here, and about the misdeeds of these individuals, and if it leads to deportation, I’m really extra good with that.”

Brandau didn’t respond to a request by The Bee to enunciate on his comment.

Under the TRUTH Act, local jurisdictions and law enforcement in 2018 were mandated to hold an annual public forum to let the public know about ICE activities in their local communities. The law also requires local law enforcement to release statistics on whether they cooperated with ICE the previous calendar year.

The Sheriff’s Office had a total of 22,954 bookings at the county jail in 2021, according to its data. ICE requested that the Sheriff’s Office hold 136 immigrants for immigration officials to pick them up, and 44 were transferred.

ICE didn’t interview any inmates at the county jail in 2021, according to the data.