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 {ICE]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 of 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, such that it had to restrategize on the fly.
Instead of concentrating on sweeps in areas where there were substantial numbers of undocumented migrants within zones where the local authorities were supportive and committed to providing federal agents with dependable backup and in which the agents could conduct in-depth surveys and gather specific intelligence about their targets, the environment in which they lived and worked and the nature of the work they were engaged in and the businesses that employed them, ICE and the Border Patrol began Operation Alta California in Los Angeles and the greater Los Angeles area, in neighborhoods and districts where the population and the civil authorities, including law enforcement agencies, were, if not out and out hostile toward them, at best unfriendly and uncooperative.
Despite initially having the advantage of surprise and the freedom to maneuver and redirect the assets available to it at will, ICE, Border Patrol and Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations [DERO] agents encountered undocumented aliens whose reactions to their presence and enforcement efforts ran the gamut of response, from docile acceptance and immediate compliance to stunned resignation to mute and silent unwillingness to communicate to attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, to flee, to sullen resistance to combativeness. In the initial two to three days, the agents discerned no organized resistance, but that soon drew to a close. Within the first week, there were signs of a primitive networking among the community of undocumented California residents, a phenonmenon that grew more sophisticated by the day. By the end of the second week, there were unmistakeable signs of coordinated resistance, extending not just to the illegal aliens themselves but a support network that included citizens and elements of the community and even the local government structure that would have been unheard of in most other states. Those being detained, arrested, incarcerated and eventually deported were themselves armed with cellphones and smart devices, with which they relayed in real time to others information pertaining to the presence and relative strength and numbers of the ICE, Border Patrol and Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations units they were encountering. Depending upon the strength and relative numbers of those ICE, Border Patrol and DERO units, those receiving the information might avoid the area altogether or, in the alternative, show up en masse, in overwhelming numbers, to confront the governmental agents, protest, obstruct the operations or engage in a display of force, overturning ICE and Border Patrol vehicles and on occasion pelting the agents with rocks, bricks, bottles or other objects. Soon, those in the country illegally residing in California and immigration advocacy groups were making use of social media platforms, apps, encrypted messaging, maps tracking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department task forces’ locations to actuate creative digitized anti-detention programs, known by names such as ICEBlock and the Rapid Response Network. These employed a succession of hotlines via phone numbers those in Southern California were able to call or text to report sightings of federal officers, primarily ICE, Border Patrol and DERO officers. Those managing the hotline then relayed word to hundreds, indeed thousands, of affiiated activists through cell phone contact, giving precise instructions and directions to where ICE was setting up or involved in actions. Those activists in turn contacted individual migrants to pass the information along, signaling them to leave or stay out of a specified area or building while the raid was ongoing.
The Mexican government created an app, ConsulAppContigo, to facilitate communications with Mexican citizens in the United States, allowing migrants to instantaneously contact consular officials and reciprocally allow consular officials to contact them, which was typically used when those Mexican nationals were confronted by Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or were taken into custody by Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations agents. The information exchange allowed consular officials to both contact the family members of those arrested and arrange for legal assistance.
Amidst the federal action, local law enforcement agencies, most notably those where the most intense enforcement was taking place – the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department – were desperately seeking to remain uninvolved, not lending assistance to the federal agents in carrying out the operations, even when civilians obstructed the federal agents or, in a handful of noteworthy cases, engaged in violence against the federal agents. In only a handful of cases, one of which involved protesters and demonstrators on a freeway overpass throwing rocks at CHP officers and policeman or another in which cars were overturned and set on fire did the Los Angeles Police Department intervene by making arrests.
Local law enforcement remaining on the fence led, initially, to the Trump Administration calling out the California National Guard to provide population control in the areas where the raids were being conducted. After the State of California filed a legal challenge to the use of the National Guard, the federal government deployed over 700 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms to specific locations in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties to “protect federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
This created an atmosphere of tension and volatility, replete with the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys making an evaluation of the tactics being used by the federal government the hundreds of arrests that had been made and filing legal action in federal court challenging the operations. Meanwhile, predictably, there has been and remains intensive criticism of the Trump Administration over the ongoing immigration enforcement. In recent months, while operations in California continue, much of the ICE, Border Patrol and DERO manpower has been withdrawn for operations in other states.
Clearly, there are deep philosophical differences among Americans and Californians with regard to 1) whether immigration enforcement should take place at all and, among those who believe immigration enforcement should in some form take place, 2) what constitutes legitimate immigration enforcement. Some Americans, most particularly those characterized as left wing or far left wing Democrats, reject the notion that immigration enforcement should take place at all. Their position is that the nation should have open borders and either no or extremely limited regulation and/or registration of those who come into the country. Commonly, their position is that enforcement of the existing immigration law is inherently racist and xenophobic.
Among those who concede or maintain that immigration control is a desirable element of public policy, differences exist in the form of multiple conceptualized gradations as to the proper intensity of that regulation. Most basically, this divide relates to whether a foreigner’s simple disobedience or flouting of immigration law is property cataloged as a criminal act. To some, an individual’s failure to register as a foreign visitor and obtain a visa or permit to be in the country, which technically is a violation of federal law, constitutes a criminal offense which should subject that person to deportation. Others consider failure to abide by the law requiring foreigners in the country to register themselves as present in the country and obtain a permit to remain in place, renew it when it expires or leave if it is not renewed to be either a de minimis offense or not a crime. Those holding that view feel that a technical violation of immigration law should not be grounds for arrest or deportation and that the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations should confine their operations to foreigners who have committed more “serious” or “legitimate” crimes.
In California, though there are some exceptions and there are residents registered to vote who identify neither as Democrats nor Republicans, it is Republicans who, primarily, consider violations of immigration law to be criminal acts which should result in the perpetrator being subject to arrest and deportation and it is Democrats who hold, generally, that ICE, the Border Patrol and DERO should lay off those foreigners who have come into the United States surreptitiously without declaring their presence, registering or seeking and obtaining governmental permission to be here.
At present, the federal government, led by President Trump and the Republicans, defines violations of federal immigration law as a deportable offense. California officials, including Governor Newsom and the Democrats who dominate the legislature and the statehouse, do not see it that way.
Earlier this year, when Sheriff Dicus and his counterpart in Riverside County, Sheriff Bianco, Republicans both, were faced with the choice of siding with Sacramento or Washington, D.C., chose, at least publicly, to align with Newsom rather than Trump.
Their public action, which preserved for them and the counties they inhabit the governmental, financial and social umbilical connection to state government that is necessarily a part of everyday life in the Inland Empire, belies a certain reality. Law enforcement in all of its intricacies, like life itself, does not confine itself to one category or a single jurisdiction. Criminals and their activities cut across multiple levels of existence, geographical confines, bailiwicks and strata, involving the defiance of local ordinances, state laws and federal statutes. Some crimes are more serious than others, just as some criminals are more dynamic, creative and further reaching in their criminality and sociopathy than others.
Quietly then, with little fanfare and a concerted determination to prevent anyone that doesn’t need to know from knowing, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has coordinated with federal government, including the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations with regard to certain investigations, activities and arrests over the last ten months. That is a continuation of how it operated under President Joseph Biden, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Indeed, a protocol for that cooperation has existed for two decades, having been codified into a memorandum of understanding between former Sheriff Gary Penrod, one of Sheriff Dicus’s predecessors, and the Bush Administration. That protocol remains in effect.
Though local law enforcement agencies are not empowered to enforce immigration law, the 287(g) Program, which came into being during the 1990s during President Bill Clinton’s Administration, allows the federal government to delegate immigration violation arrest power to local police departments and county sheriff’s departments.
In 2005, San Bernardino County signed on as a participant in the 287(g) Program, allowing it to assist in immigration enforcement. The initial agreement involved the county, its sheriff’s department, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the federal government.
The Sentinel obtained the memorandum of understanding pertaining to the 287(g) Program signed by San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod on September 12, 2005 and John P. Clark, the acting assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on October 10, 2005, Vice Chairman of the San Bernardino county Board of Supervisors Paul Biane on September 20, 2005 and Randy Beardsworth, the acting undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security for Border and Transportation Security on October 17, 2005. That document states, “The purpose of this MOU is to set forth the terms and conditions for this agreement to authorize selected SBSO personnel to perform certain functions of an immigration officer within San Bernardino County Jail facilities.”
According to the memorandum, “Before participating SBSO personnel will be authorized to perform immigration officer functions granted under this MOU. they must successfully complete mandatory training in the enforcement of federal immigration laws and policies as provided by the Department of Homeland Security instructors and pass examinations equivalent to those given to ICE officers.”
Under the terms of the agreement, deputies taking part in the program are under federal law granted authority by which they have the “power to Interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or remain in the United States… to take and consider evidence… to issue detainers [and engage in] transportation of aliens.”
The functions sheriff’s personnel are allowed to engage in under the agreement include “Interrogation in order to determine probable cause for an immigration violation… completion of required criminal alien processing, to include fingerprinting, photographing. and interviewing [as well as] preparation of affidavits and the taking of sworn statements for ICE supervisor review… preparation of a notice to appear (NTA) application for signature of ICE officer for aliens in categories established by ICE supervisors [and] preparation of immigration detainers for aliens in categories established by ICE supervisors.”
Under the agreement, the sheriff’s department designates which of its personnel are to be involved in the ICE enforcement effort. Furthermore, according to the agreement, “ICE will provide appropriate training of nominated SBSO personnel tailored to the designated immigration functions and types of cases typically encountered by SBSO or correctional personnel at a mutually designated site in San Bernardino County, utilizing ICE-designated curriculum and competency testing.”
The agreement makes clear that sheriff’s personnel, while assisting in immigration law enforcement, are not considered to be federal employees.
“Participating SBSD personnel shall not be treated as federal employees except for purposes of the Federal Trot Claims Act,” the memorandum states. “Participating SBSD personnel who are named as defendants in litigation arising from activities carried out under this MOU may request representation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Such requests must be made in writing directed to the Attorney General of the United States, and be presented to the ICE Special Agent In Charge In Los Angeles.”
According to the memorandum of understanding, “SBSD agrees to cooperate with any federal investigation related to this MOU to the full extent of its available powers. It is understood that information provided by any SBSD personnel under threat of disciplinary action in an administrative investigation cannot be used against that individual in subsequent criminal proceedings, consistent with Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967).
According to a member of the department who spoke to the Sentinel with an implied understanding of an assurance of anonymity, Press coverage, including articles which appeared in the Sentinel earlier this year that reported on Dicus’s March 25 statement conveyed, erroneously, that there is no cooperation or coordination with or between the sheriff’s department and any of several federal agencies dealing with undocumented aliens, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations.
In actuality, according to that officer, there have been multiple cases handled by the department this year involving arrests, including ones in which the officer was directly involved and personally uninvolved, where ICE and other federal agencies dealing with foreigners illegally in the country were contacted. In all such cases, according to the officer, one or more of the federal agencies participated in the post-arrest processing of the suspects taken into custody and in some, though not all, of the cases, a federal agency was or federal agencies were involved in operations before those arrests were made.
It was noted that, in the most general of terms, Sheriff Dicus, with regard to the enforcement of immigration law, has steered his department to the middle ground between the two political extremes relating to the controversy that surrounds the controversial and divisive matter. While he has not had his deputies engage in wholesale roundups of those in San Bernardino County who are present in the country illegally and has not lent either the investigative or enforcement assets at his command to the federal agencies engaged in immigration enforcement efforts, in those cases where the normal course of investigative or enforcement work the department is engaged in comes across foreigners without visas, work or residency permits or who are otherwise illegally present in the U.S. without being registered or legally entitled to be in the country, there has been no hesitancy in having his department coordinate with federal authorities in bringing the full weight of both state and federal law to bear against those suspected of engaging in criminal activity in the 20,105-square mile area in which Dicus is the ultimate elected law enforcement authority.