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The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors held a community forum Tuesday to discuss the role of county law enforcement had in assisting U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025.
Over more than two hours, the supervisors received presentations from Sheriff David Livingston and an immigrant rights organization, and heard from community members, who, for the most part, called on the sheriff to end all cooperation with ICE.Â
The meeting was required under California’s Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds Act, or the TRUTH Act. Enacted in 2018, the law requires an annual forum to publicly disclose and explain any qualifying cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE during the previous year.
It is considered a companion to the California Values Act, Senate Bill 54, which limits state and local resources from being used to carry out immigration detentions and deportations.
In his presentation, Livingston emphasized that his department does not participate directly in any immigration enforcement but, pursuant to SB54, notifies ICE about the release dates of certain immigrants held in county jails with serious felony or misdemeanor convictions.
In 2025, Livingston said, ICE made 724 notification requests to his office, of which only 124 qualifying requests were completed. Of those, 32 were repeat notifications of the same individuals, who were detained and released multiple times in the same year.
As a result, the Sheriff’s Office notified ICE about the release dates of 92 unique individuals.
Their crimes included assault, burglary, possession of firearms, sexual assault, DUI, and elder abuse, among others, and all but one of the individuals had prior conviction histories, according to the data in Livingston’s presentation.
“What you need to remember,” said Livingston, “is that many of the victims of these crimes are themselves immigrants. So, it’s a Catch-22 for our deputies.”
Livingston reiterated that the notification of the release dates was the only involvement of his office in immigration enforcement.
“We don’t assist ICE, we don’t track ICE,” he said. “They can only go where the public can go,” he said, clarifying that his officers do not help immigration officers if they come to pick up a detained individual after their release.
But in her own presentation, Miosotti Tenecora, a senior staff attorney at immigrant rights group the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, questioned whether all 92 individuals qualified under SB54 for notification to ICE to begin with.
For instance, Tenecora said that a couple of individuals with misdemeanor convictions were referred to ICE, but in Tenecora’s reading of the law, their crimes were not serious enough for referral under SB54.
“Immigration law is one of the most complex areas of law, I should know,” said Tenecora. “And that analysis cannot be made by someone without an immigration law background.”
She called on the Sheriff’s Office to cease all cooperation with ICE altogether.
“Does this county really want to align with a regime that is killing people?” she asked.
In the public comment that followed the presentations, community members mostly echoed Tenecora’s sentiment.
District 5 Supervisor Shanelle Scales-Preston asked Livingston why his office continued notifying ICE when not doing so is an option. She cited the example of San Mateo County, where the Sheriff’s Office did not complete a single notification request from ICE in 2025.
“We have an obligation to the community at large to provide public safety services,” said Livingston in response. “If they (immigrants) are here, they commit crime after crime after crime, and ICE wants to interview them or detain them, we allow that,” he added.
The conversation on the county’s cooperation with ICE will continue Sept. 8, when the Board of Supervisors will discuss a proposed non-cooperation policy, a revision of an ordinance that they delayed voting on in July.
– Story by Tanay Gokhale, Bay City News Service
