By Richard Hernandez
San Bernardino County, its politicians and its residents missed out on an opportunity to reap a huge financial windfall in the form of federal special program augmentation funding earlier this year when its highest-ranking officials – virtually all of whom are Republicans – elected to back Sacramento rather than the Trump Administration with regard to stepped up immigration law enforcement.
Top administration officials up to and including President Donald Trump himself were banking on and had indeed taken for granted that the political leadership in far-flung San Bernardino County, one of the last bastions of Republicanism in what Donald Trump considers to be off-the-charts liberal California and a gateway to more moderately political Arizona and Nevada, would fall in line with his efforts to aggressively remove unregistered and undocumented foreigners from the country. The president took it as a personal betrayal when the sheriff, who by tradition and wide reputation is the most powerful political figure in San Bernardino County, in the words of one federal official “pussed out” when the governor and leading members of the state legislature began pushing local and county officials to somewhat gratuitously declare their intent to comply with a nearly eight-year-old law that had been put in place during the first Donald Trump administration to undermine federal immigration control efforts then.
For president Trump and several of his top aides overseeing national security and immigration issues, there was immense disappointment when the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors – of which four of five members are Republicans – backed the sheriff in saying the county could be counted upon to abide by the Golden State’s unregistered alien sanctuary policy. That was interpreted by the recently installed second Trump Administration as an unmistakable signal that the governmental and law enforcement institutions in San Bernardino County would not be going along with what was at that point a three-quarters-gestated strategy to dismantle, county-by-county, California’s sanctuary status.
While statistics available to the government and the private sector are inexact, the incoming Trump Administration was function on an estimate that there were 127,681 illegal immigrants – that is to say undocumented aliens – in San Bernardino County in the weeks just prior to Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Of those, roughly 71.8 percent, or 91,675, were from Mexico, while 6.1 percent or 7,789 were from El Salvador and 4.3 percent or 5,490 were from Guatemala and just a tad under 11 percent (10.9938 percent) or 14,037 were from Asia. Continue reading →

A coalition of Joshua Tree residents has sued San Bernardino County over the approval of a 64-home project in the midst of that 6,767-population rustic community, asserting the board of supervisors merely rubberstamped the development without doing an adequate environmental analysis.
On January 23 the San Bernardino County Planning Commission approved the 64-unit Lovemore Ranch residential subdivision on 18.4 acres on Alta Loma Drive between Hillview Drive and Sunset Road in Joshua Tree.
More than 60 local residents, contending that neither the project proponents, Axel Cramer and Dane Hollar, nor the county gave proper notice to the owners of land that falls within a distance of 300 feet of a project site. Residents who are to be impacted by the project therefore did not have an opportunity to weigh in with regard to it before its approval, they maintained, and they appealed the planning commission’s decision to the board of supervisors.
The board of supervisors, citing California’s Housing Affordability Act, rejected the appeal, giving go-ahead to the project on April 8. Those officials said state mandates calling on local jurisdictions to approve housing projects to ease the California’s housing crisis tied their hands, such that they had to approve the project.
Residents in Joshua Tree, including those living or owning property at the periphery of Lovemore Ranch and others living both proximate to the site and at a further distance banded together, functioning under the aegis of both the Morongo Basin Conservation Association and Joshua Tree Village Neighbors.  They retained San Luis Obispo-based attorney Babak Naficy. Nacify specializes in that province of the law relating to land use, the California Environmental Quality Act and environmental public policy issues. Continue reading →

A former City of Big Bear Lake code enforcement officer has sued the city, maintaining he was fired when he resisted what he and his lawyer say is the city’s practice of unfairly and unevenly applying the city’s codes in favor of those who were politically connected and against those who were at odds with the city’s top elected and staff officials.
Jack Greenburg had previously worked for the City of Big Bear Lake in the code compliance department from 2000-2003 and from 2020 to 2021. During the latter stint, he was serving in the capacity of a consultant rather than a municipal employee. In 2022, he was hired, effective as of July 1 of that year, as the city’s code compliance manager.
According to David Vasquez, an attorney representing Greenberg, “Although through his consulting with the city, Greenberg was familiar with some of the deficiencies with the city’s code compliance program, upon taking over management of the operations, he discovered that the dysfunction was far more extensive that he realized.” According to Vasquez, Greenberg’s “initial analysis determined that the code was being enforced in an inconsistent and sometimes unequal manner.” and Greenberg “immediately set about establishing procedures to ensure that the code compliance program was administered fairly and without favoritism.” Continue reading →

A 32-year-old Rancho Cucamonga man got exactly what he deserved when he mixed it up with deputies who had been called to an apartment complex in March 2024 in response to his erratic behavior and he ended up dead, those proud of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department say.
In contrast, the man’s family members have filed suit against the department, alleging excessive force was employed against the man and inadequate care was rendered to him after he was severely beaten.
Some 22 minutes after midnight on March 19, 2024, deputies in Rancho Cucamonga engaged in a violent encounter with Mohd Hijaz in the 10100 block of Foothill Boulevard, just east of the Foothill/Hermosa Avenue intersection, following a report by a nearby resident that an individual was acting erratically, seeking to open apartment and vehicle doors, and that he had pulled the building’s fire alarm.
After locating Hijaz “seated in a bush” and yelling incoherently, two female deputies reported that Hijaz without warning advanced toward them and refused multiple commands to stop, at which point they both employed their tasers in an effort to keep him at a distance.
A second patrol car arrived, whereupon two male deputies intervened.
“[A] use of force occurred.” according to the department, during which Hijaz struck one deputy in the face. In the ensuing struggle, Hijaz was lifted off his feet and brought with force to the ground by a deputy in an ultimately successful move to end Hijaz’s combativeness. Continue reading →

Five San Bernardino County residents are among twenty Southern California residents who have been criminally charged by federal prosecutors after they were caught in a dragnet conducted the by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local police agencies.
According to court documents, Kevin Lopez, 24, of Rancho Cucamonga, Jacqueline Carolina Fonseca-Flores, 24, of Rancho Cucamonga, Brandon Ryan Osika, 22, of Ontario and Meloney Osika, 24, of Ontario, were involved in a fentanyl-distribution enterprise. At least one of their customers died after ingesting the drug Lopez, Flores and Brandon Osika had provided. That victim died in January. Meloney Osika, who was arrested with the others on May 7, has not been charged in relation to that death but the other three are named in an indictment in which they are charged with having furnished fentanyl to a person under the age of 21 resulting in death,
The Fontana Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency investigated the case.
A federal judge ordered all four defendants jailed without bond. The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges against them and the trial for all four is slated to begin on June 23.
Assistant United States Attorney Christopher M. Brunwin of the Riverside Branch Office is prosecuting this case.
Alexander Nihar Biswas, 42, of Loma Linda, has been charged in a single-count indictment with distribution of fentanyl resulting in death. Biswas allegedly distributed the synthetic opioid, which is on the order of 50 times more powerful than heroin, to a victim in San Bernardino County. The use of the drug resulted in the victim’s death in January 2024. Biswas has been in federal custody since March 10. He pleaded not guilty to the charge and awaits an October 20 trial date in U.S. District Court in Riverside.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the DEA are investigated this matter. Assistant United States Attorney Erin C. Kiss of the Riverside Branch Office is prosecuting this case.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been working in tandem with local law enforcement agencies in operations targeting the production and/or distribution of fentanyl. That effort, law enforcement officials announced on May 15, has resulted in the filing of 20 criminal cases in which the consumption of fentanyl and fentanyl-laced pills that directly resulted in the death of at least one victim. All of those cases pertain to deaths which have occurred since January 1, 2025.
Under the OD Justice program for the DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division, DEA agents have established collaborative relationships with local law enforcement agencies across the seven counties that make up the Central District of California.
The DEA and various local agencies have established what has been dubbed the OD Justice Task Force, a project designed to investigate fatal fentanyl poisonings and identify the individuals who provided the fentanyl that directly caused the deaths.

Five San Bernardino County residents are among twenty Southern California residents who have been criminally charged by federal prosecutors after they were caught in a dragnet conducted the by federa Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local police agencies.

A coalition of Joshua Tree residents has sued San Bernardino County over the approval of a 64-home project in the midst of that 6,767-population rustic community, asserting the board of supervisors merely rubberstamped the development without doing an adequate environmental analysis.

A former City of Big Bear Lake code enforcement officer has sued the city, maintaining he was fired when he resisted what he and his lawyer say is the city’s practice of unfairly and unevenly applying the city’s codes in favor of those who were politically connected and against those who were at odds with the city’s top elected and staff officials.