Hundreds of undocumented immigrants removed from county jail.







  • Nic Coury


A positive effect of the policy change in the eyes of Undersheriff Michael Moore would be that people who are being removed are people who have prior convictions, and therefore, making the county safer.



It’s been a year since Sheriff Steve Bernal launched a pilot program allowing federal immigration agents inside Monterey County Jail to sift through records and determine if inmates may be eligible for deportation based on their criminal records.

Since August 2015, when the policy change was made quietly and without prior public input, 448 individuals with prior convictions have been removed from the jail and at least one person has been taken by mistake, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman James Schwab. The rate of removing individuals from the jail is 26 times higher than it was before the policy change.

“I think we are good [with the policy],” Undersheriff Michael Moore says. “At this point it is a permanent policy.”

Bernal made the change in the midst of a political debate over the nation’s immigration system, sparked by the shooting death of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco. A man with a criminal record and an immigration hold that was not honored was charged in her murder. In Monterey County, immigration holds – meaning inmates are held past their sentences to be detained by ICE – are not honored.

Instead, ICE agents are allowed access to jail records and notified when someone is about to be released from custody.

For ICE agents to take custody of inmates, they must be present in the jail, Moore says. If ICE agents aren’t on site, jail officials release inmates when they finish serving their sentences, regardless of immigration status.

Moore says 45 percent of the individuals taken from county jail had one or more prior felony convictions, while 55 percent had one or multiple misdemeanors on their record, such as driving under the influence or domestic violence convictions.

While Bernal made the move in the name of public safety, a year later crime statistics do not show a decrease in crime in unincorporated areas of Monterey County. Though felony arrests have declined, property crimes and violent crimes have increased, Moore says, but he cannot pinpoint an exact cause.

Michael Mehr, a Santa Cruz-based immigration attorney, says numerous clients of his have been removed by ICE agents, and sees the policy as having a long-term cost to the community.

“A lot of kids will be growing up without parents,” Mehr says. “Frankly, the argument that it is to increase public safety is very short-sighted.”

Meanwhile, the individuals who have been removed are scheduled for hearings with the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the San Francisco Immigration Court, where a federal judge ultimately determines what their fate will be. The outcomes, Schwab says, can result in deportation back to their country of origin; detention in the privately-funded Mesa Verde Detention Facility, where immigration detainees can sometimes spend years due to a backlog of more than 31,321 immigration cases in the San Francisco court system; or they can be released with GPS-monitored ankle bracelets.

“For security reasons, these people go to different places,” Schwab says, who adds their locations cannot be disclosed to the public due to privacy laws, saying it is for the “general safety of everyone and not about secrecy.”

For this reason, it is difficult to ascertain where the individuals taken from county jail have gone.

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