Despite reports, widespread belief, and general perception to the contrary, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has been cooperating with the federal government in efforts to effectuate the arrests and deportation of individuals present in the country illegally, according to members of the department and documentation obtained by the Sentinel.
Immediately after Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, his administration began gearing up for an aggressive enforcement of U.S. immigration law. That effort included Tom Homan, who had served as the director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency during Donald Trump’s first term in office, taking charge of the former agency he headed as well as orienting himself with regard to all aspects of the function of the Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations and the Department of Justice. Those federal agencies were involved in rounding up illegal aliens, and were to be instrumental elements that Homan intended to wield in his appointed role, announced by President-elect Trump in November 2024, of “border czar.”
By February, Homan and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security hand initiated action in Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington. Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Tennessee, Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio, which ranked as the states with the second through the nineteenth largest number of undocumented foreigners living within them. Less intense, what were referred to as “token” efforts were taking place in Oregon, Indiana, Utah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Montana.
Prior to raids being initiated in those states, as had traditionally been the case with regard to the operations of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, going back generations, elements within the individual state governments were made aware, either through direct contact with federal officials or indirectly through resource coordination efforts, of what was coming.
Holman held off on launching what he and President Trump intended to be the largest, most energetic and ultimately most comprehensive illegal alien roundup, Operation Alta California, targeting the Golden State where the largest number of illegal aliens in any single state, estimated at 2.7 million, were residing.
Along with other members of the Trump Administration, Holman anticipated that California officials would prove less than cooperative, indeed obstructive, toward the effort to arrest and deport on a massive scale the illegal immigrants living in California.
In the California Assembly 22 of its 80 members are Hispanic and 60 are Democrats. Eighteen of California’s 40 state senators are Hispanic, while 30 are Democrats. One of the state’s two U.S. senators is Hispanic and 12 of the 52 members of the House of Representatives from California are Hispanic and 43 are Democrats.
In 2017 the state legislature passed into law and then-Governor Jerry Brown signed California Senate Bill 54, commonly known as the “California Values Act” which prevents state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources on behalf of federal immigration enforcement agencies. Senate Bill 54 The bill was passed in response to Executive Order 13768, an initiative in the early stages of the first Trump Administration to oppose neutralized the creation of sanctuary cities, a large number of which had cropped up in California, declaring themselves jurisdictions outside the reach of federal immigration authorities while simultaneously codifying ordinances, regulations and restricts and creating policies that prevented public employees from assisting federal authorities in the deportation of illegal immigrants.
Homan and other Trump Administration officials recognized that the resistance and active obstruction of Operation Alta California would likely result in substantial inefficiencies and, more problematic, the perception that the policy was failing. They scheduled the initiation of Operation Alta California while they endeavored to secure cooperation from a handful of key state and local authorities and made arrangements to bypass officials, channels and normal processes that were traditionally a part of immigration enforcement operations.
The normal policy of both practical and courtesy forewarning to state and local officials of the raids that were to take place which was observed in other states was not part of the planning and operational procedure in California. Instead, Homan and senior officials with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol approached those individuals in positions of authority at local levels within the State of California in an effort to secure their assistance with what it hoped to pull off.
Within California there were jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions which elements among the Trump Administration’s leadership were confident would prove amenable to Operation Alta California, consisting, primarily, of fewer than a dozen areas of the state where the Democrats did not predominate politically. Los Angeles or more accurately the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area – essentially Los Angeles County and its periphery – was that area of the state with the highest population and concentration of unregistered aliens, accounting ro approaching one-third of all illegal aliens in the state. Kicking off Operation Alta California there, however, was problematic, however, for a host of reasons, not the least of which was that the governmental structure therein, at virtually every level, was controlled by the Democrats and/or close allies of Governor Gavin Newsom. It was thought that the best course of action would be to seek the assistance and cooperation of one, two, three or four of those areas which were led by Republicans who would not be hostile to the brewing federal action and would be willing to stand up to and perhaps even defy the state’s power elite in Sacramento.
Two of those GOP bastions were San Bernardino County and Riverside County, California’s fifth largest and fourth largest counties in terms of population, respectively. Each had tremendous concentrations of undocumented aliens, with something on the order 127,681 undocumented foreigners in San Bernardino County and roughly 145,882 in Riverside County. In both, the county sheriffs were hard-nosed, no-nonsense Republican lawmen, Shannon Dicus in San Bernardino County and Chad Bianco in Riverside County, indefatigable champion of law enforcement and the principles of rectitude they associated with it, above all, adherence to the law. In the case of Bianco, he had already thrown his hat in the ring as a candidate for California governor in 2026, and he was leading the pack not only as the favorite at that point of capturing the Republican nomination but in the race overall, as his polling numbers were greater than any single one of the half dozen declared Democrat hopefuls in the race. Highly secretive back-channel discussions were taking place between Homan’s ICE designees and either personages close to Dicus and Bianco or Dicus and Bianco themselves.
The Trump Administration was optimistically hopeful that it could dispatch 7,000 ICE agents – more than one-third of its customs division workforce – and repurpose another 2,000 border patrol agents, comprising nearly one fifth of those normally stationed along the country’s periphery, into the Inland Empire, making a lightning set of raids over the course of less than a month at a clip of 4,000 detainments per day to effectuate the arrests and carry out the deportations of approaching or exceeding 100,000 individuals in the country illegally within just those two counties. That sort of success in the Golden State would establish that the federal government was not only determined to enforce immigration law but would be relentless in doing so, precluding any realistic prospect that Trump’s political opponents in California could mount any effective resistance to the federal enforcement effort. Successfully removing that many undocumented aliens from two of the counties to the east of Los Angeles would form the basis of an equally aggressive program in Los Angeles County, where there was n even richer mix of foreigners defying U.S. immigration law, federal officials believed.
California State officials were not without their pipelines of information. Through various means and personages, Sacramento signaled to San Bernardino County and Riverside County authorities – not just those in the sheriff’s departments but throughout the governmental structure, including the boards of supervisors, those counties’ top administrators and their district attorney’s offices – that they were hip to what was being hatched at the federal level and that the federal action was anticipated to be in coordination with San Bernardino County and Riverside County officials and agencies, to include their sheriff’s departments and at least some of police departments. At once, San Bernardino County and Riverside County authorities found themselves under tremendous pressure to renounce any intent to coordinate with the federal government with regard to the mass deportations of illegal aliens within it jurisdiction. Several tense days followed, as reports spread that hundreds of immigration raids within the Inland Empire were imminent.
On March 25, Sheriff Dicus put out a statement on Instagram, informing the community, “We understand that many in our community have concerns about immigration practices in San Bernardino County as they relate to the Sheriff’s Department. I want to assure everyone that our primary duty is to protect all community members, regardless of immigration status. As sheriff of San Bernardino County, my commitment is to public safety and the rule of law. Collaboration with our federal partners plays an essential role in addressing crime and protecting our communities. California Senate Bill 51 currently governs how state and local law enforcement agencies interact with federal immigration authorities. It limits cooperation between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) As a law enforcement agency, we are committed to upholding the laws of California.”
Dicus’s statement continued, “If someone is a victim of a crime, their legal status does not affect our response. We are here to help. We do not ask about immigration status or require proof of citizenship to file a report or initiate an investigation. Our focus is on ensuring safety and justice for everyone in our community. I have been meeting with community members to listen to their concerns and ensure that we address any issues affecting their safety and wellbeing.”
In the same time frame, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who over the years had established as highly critical of Sacramento’s liberal approach to governance and social order, put out a similar if only slightly more equivocal statement than Dicus’s, betraying that Trump Administration officials were seeking the cooperation of Riverside County in moving forward with its immigration policy but that despite his previous statements of discontent with the State of California’s laissez-faire law enforcement, he wasn’t going to buck the California system by joining in with federal government to bring the illegal immigration crisis the nation faces under control.
Dicus’s and Blanco’s withdrawal of support sent the Trump Administration’s plans for intensified immigration law enforcement in California, starting in the Inland Empire and then mushrooming outward as the 2025 calendar progressed, required that the Trump Administration alter its previously well-thought out Operation Alta California game plan, having to restrategize on the fly.