The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office asserts that a controversial 2023 transfer of a jail inmate without legal immigration status to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody was legal under SB 54, one of California’s sanctuary laws.
Immigrant rights advocates, including lawyers from the ACLU, have publicly highlighted this particular case as a possible violation of state law for nearly a year. It involves a man with a 2002 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.
The Sheriff’s Office had not responded to questions about the case until late last Friday, after KPBS published a story on the issue. The emailed response from a spokesperson for Sheriff Kelly Martinez cited a specific section of SB 54 to justify the legality of the transfer.
That section of the law states transfers can occur when “the individual has been convicted of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state prison system.”
“The individual did meet the transfer qualifications under Government Code Section 7282.5 Section 2,” the spokesperson, Kimberly King, wrote in the email to KPBS.
This Sheriff’s Office did not cite that section of the law when the case was brought up in last year's public forum relating to SB 54, which is also known as the California Values Act.
That section conflicts with another section of the law, which Martinez has cited publicly. It states that local law enforcement agencies can transfer people in their custody to ICE as long as, “The individual has been convicted within the past five years of a misdemeanor … or has been convicted within the last 15 years of a felony for 31 specific criminal offenses.”
The conviction in the 2023 case is 21 years old, which is why advocates flagged it as a potential violation.
The Sheriff’s Office declined an interview request Monday. Lawyers from the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties declined an interview request Tuesday.
In a statement responding to the Sheriff’s assertion of the transfer’s legality, the ACLU lawyers acknowledged that section could be a justification for the transfer. But they questioned why it took so long to make it public.
“We raised this potential SB 54 violation to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office during last year’s TRUTH Act Forum and never received a response,” the statement read. “Now that there is public attention on this individual’s case, the Sheriff’s Office is denying state laws were violated. SDSO has failed to explain why they took so long to address this matter.”
It remains unclear which section of SB 54 trumps the other in instances where separate sections could apply. In this case, the conviction satisfies the section for crimes punishable by imprisonment but does not meet the conviction timeframe of the other.
KPBS reached out to the state Attorney General’s Office for guidance. The office did not immediately respond.
Cause for confusion
Advocates flagged the 2023 case as a potential violation of state law in the May 2024 public forum, which Martinez attended.
They included the case in a PowerPoint presentation and specifically pointed to the fact that the 2002 conviction fell outside the 15-year timeframe for felony convictions.
“That transfer was a possible violation of SB 54, or the California Values Act,” Monika Langarica, senior staff lawyer at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA said during that forum. “We want to flag that we are pursuing additional information about this particular transfer.”
Martinez did not respond to those concerns at any point during the forum. During her own presentation, Martinez offered her interpretation of SB 54.
“It prohibits state and local law enforcement from holding individuals on the basis of federal immigration detainers or transferring them into federal custody unless they’ve been convicted in the last 15 years for one of a list of 31 crimes or are a registered sex offender,” she said. “If not, they may only be held with a warrant from a federal judge.”
During the forum, the sheriff said public safety is her top priority and that her office has support from crime victims to continue the transfers. Other individuals transferred in 2023 had convictions for theft, sex crimes against minors, theft, drunken driving and, in one case, murder.
The section of SB 54 regarding convictions punishable by imprisonment was not mentioned in the forum.
