photo credit: Courtesy ACLU
Inside an immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

Activists taking the podium at a recent public hearing accused the county sheriff's office of increasing cooperation with federal immigration authorities. That's something local voters and political leaders have taken issue with in the past. But the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office says that just isn't so.

At a goal-setting session January 9th, activists from North Bay Organizing urged county supervisors to take action. They said the sheriff's office has increased it's cooperation with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, an agency also known by the acronym, ICE.

But reached by phone Friday, sheriff's office spokesman Rob Dillion disputed the accusations.

"That is not correct, we have always followed the guidelines of SB-54 and continue to do so," Dillion said.

That's a statewide law limiting local cooperation with ICE, with exclusions for violent offenders.

Asked directly how he thought activists had arrived at that conclusion---did they make it up? Dillion declined to speculate.

"Uhh, no, I'm sure that umm they feel that their justification is righteous, however, since 2021 we've seen a reduction in the number of responses that we've provided to ICE," Dillion said.

The issue may lie in how statistics are interpreted. According to Dillion, of nearly 15,000 people booked into custody last year,

"ICE requested notification 492 times, we provided 72 responses, so we actually didn't respond to 420 of ICE requests in that," Dillion said.

That works out to about 14 and a half percent of the time.

In 2019, prior to COVID, Dillion says ICE asked for information about 596 people in custody out of more than 20,200 being booked.

The office also complied 72 times.

The raw number is the same, supporting the argument that cooperation hasn't increased. However, the proportion works out to 12 percent, somewhat supporting the contentions by activists.

Dillion said the agency is following policy.

"When we receive these requests, there are some that we can adhere to and others that we don't. When we choose not to for whatever legal reason, both the attorney of the incarcerated person and the incarcerated person are notified that we did not respond. So, it's, I'm not sure why the feeling is that we're providing more cooperation with ICE than we have previously, but it's not correct," Dillion said.