County supervisors called for greater transparency after a News-Press investigation into ICE arrests at Santa Barbara County jails.
“When so many are living with fear and uncertainty, the public deserves clear, comprehensive, and transparent information,” Laura Capps, second district Santa Barbara County supervisor, told the News Press.
A News-Press report last week revealed that while the Sheriff’s Office reported 12 official transfers of inmates to immigration agents in 2025, federal data shows ICE agents arrested eight times that many people at locations they tagged as Santa Barbara county jails.
The California Values Act, also known as SB 54, prohibits local law enforcement agencies from transferring inmates to ICE, unless they have serious criminal records — as did the 12 people in the transfers the Sheriff’s Office reported to the state.
But many more people were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in jail lobbies or just outside the jailhouse doors — including some who had no criminal record at all.
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The Sheriff’s Office says they aren’t always aware when ICE makes arrests on their property, though the News-Press found the office received dozens of official “detainer” requests from ICE, a signal that agents were interested in holding a specific inmate. The Sheriff’s Office says it does not collaborate with federal agents outside the bounds of SB 54, but experts say ICE agents may have access to a variety of law enforcement databases that help them make targeted arrests at the jails.
Data from the first two and a half months of 2026 shows a rising tide of ICE activity at local jails, with 26 arrests listed in ICE records, nearly half of them people who did not have any criminal conviction.
Some local officials reacted to the findings with alarm.
“The Board does not have authority over the Sheriff; we cannot tell the Sheriff how to do his job. Nonetheless, we do have a right to transparency,” Supervisor Joan Hartmann told the News-Press.
Each year the sheriff is required to present a report to the Board of Supervisors detailing transfers to ICE and appear at a public meeting known as the TRUTH Act Forum.
“If the numbers he has reported to the public at Board Truth Act meetings are deceptive, that would undermine trust all around,” Hartman said.
“I’m a big believer in transparency,” Supervisor Roy Lee told the News-Press. “This is an example of a lack of transparency and seems to be the opposite of what the state law is trying to achieve.”
Sheriff Bill Brown’s office answered questions via e-mail from the News-Press but did not agree to an interview with senior leadership about SB 54, and did not respond to the investigation’s findings.
Capps said she has asked the Sheriff’s Office for clarification regarding ICE jail arrests. “I’m alarmed by the findings and requested more information from the Sheriff’s Office,” she said.
State Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara), said he has been concerned about the frequency of ICE arrests at local jails for years, and previously wrote to the Attorney General with concerns about the sheriff’s “failure to provide information to the California Department of Justice.”
State law directs each law enforcement agency to report their ICE transfers to the California Department of Justice each year, but letters last year between the Sheriff’s Office and the Attorney General showed Brown wrote that his office didn’t believe any ICE arrest at jails — regardless of people’s criminal histories — constituted “transfers” under the law, and therefore had not reported any of the ICE arrests.
The office subsequently updated seven years worth of the annual data it had reported.
Hart said the sheriff has “consistently failed to correctly report the basic facts about his collaboration with ICE agents to the Attorney General on numerous occasions.” The Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Hart’s claims.
While public scrutiny continues, so too do the ICE arrests. Hours after the News Press published its investigative report Thursday, activists said they spotted ICE agents at the North County jail.
News-Press editor Joshua Molina contributed to this report.
