Editorial: Marin must pull out of immigrant information program

Marin supervisors may sever the county’s contractual ties with the federal Immigration Customs Enforcement agency, which has developed a horrific track record while deploying the Trump administration’s heavy-handed crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

For years, the county has had a contract with ICE, receiving federal funds for holding “undocumented criminal aliens”  in the county jail.

While the county has already decided that it won’t assist with ICE arrests or proactively alert the agency that it has arrested undocumented immigrants, its contract has provided the federal immigration agents with information that could lead to arrests.

Other California counties have already dropped their ICE detention contracts.

County Executive Officer Derek Johnson says he will ask the board to do the same.

While he says the county can cover the income it would be losing from dropping the contract – $461,446 in 2022 – the decision is more about ICE’s brutal crackdown, which included its agents shooting and killing two anti-ICE protesters, both U.S. citizens, in Minneapolis.

The crackdown, which President Donald Trump promised on his 2024 campaign trail, has brought waves of armed and masked agents to the streets of our nation, mostly singling out Latinos and arresting them for deportation.

Initially, ICE’s leadership – Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem among them – defended the shootings. Noem said the two were attempting to engage in “domestic terrorism.”

Videos of the deadly incidents fail to uphold Noem’s defense.

Outrage over the killings led to a drawing down of ICE’s intimidating presence and enforcement levels in Minnesota.

On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump called for reversing federal policies that have let “millions of people from jails, from prisons, from insane asylums, from mental institutions, drug dealers pour in.”

Sweeping accusations, generalities and hateful stereotypes from his administration are common. They are not supported by the facts that most of the undocumented immigrants in our nation are jobholders looking for better lives than their homelands could promise them. Many have been here for decades – working, raising families and staying out of trouble.

ICE’s race-focused crackdown has cast a frightening shadow that many Marin residents want no part of. Over the past few months, residents have crowded the supervisors’ meeting, urging the county to drop the ICE contract.

The contract – the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program – requires the county to submit to the U.S. Department of Justice the names of jail inmates, those who have been incarcerated for at least four consecutive days, their birthdate, foreign country of origin and date of release.

That information is enough to assist ICE in its arrest of undocumented immigrants, even those who have not been jailed on suspicion of violent crimes.

Johnson’s pledge to use county funds to cover those lost due to ending the SCAAP contract is important, but not as vital as the message it sends to Marin’s Latino residents as well as their supporters who fear and object to the disturbing conduct of ICE agents.

The county should have no business supporting ICE’s fear-fueled, numbers-driven strategy, masked agents and racial targeting that have Latino families – even those who are U.S. citizens – fearful of sending their children to school, afraid of calling police to report crimes and even fearing going out in public.

While the administration characterizes undocumented immigrants as violent criminals, drug dealers and the like, most don’t fit that xenophobic stereotype. Many have lived here for generations. In many cases, they have lived here longer than the countries to which Trump wants them to be deported. They have raised their families here and play productive roles in our community.

The county is not taking an “open borders” stance, but deciding to end an information-sharing partnership with an agency whose agents have shown they are heavy-handed inciters of fear. The shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens is shocking confirmation of the county needing to take decisive action.

The sooner the better.