L.A. suburb is holding ICE detainees in its city jail, sidelining sanctuary rules
- Share via
Immigrants detained by federal agents in Southern California are being housed at the Glendale City Jail, making the Los Angeles suburb one of the few, if not the only, known jurisdiction in the “sanctuary” state to sidestep rules prohibiting local law enforcement from assisting in federal immigration enforcement.
It’s unclear how many detainees are being held at the 96-bed facility, but The Times confirmed at least two individuals were placed there over the last week by immigration officials. The facility is one of the busiest jails in the state and is staffed by the Glendale Police Department.
Glendale City Council members defended the detentions this week, saying that the city had an 18-year-old contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to temporarily house noncriminal detainees. They said the agreement is in compliance with state Senate Bill 54, a landmark law that made California the first in the nation to create a sanctuary state.
“Glendale has a contract with ICE, and yes, on occasion, ICE detainees will be given bed space at our facility,” said Annette Ghazarian, a spokesperson for Glendale.
Shortly before President Trump took office, Glendale Police Chief Manuel Cid told the council that the jails hadn’t been used frequently for immigrant detainees since the Obama administration.
He said that the mass sweeps would be logistically difficult given the capacity of the federal detention centers and that he didn’t expect local agencies to fill the gap given state law.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Values Act into law in 2017, limiting state and local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration agents.
But advocates fear that is exactly what’s happening. They believe that Glendale’s arrangement takes advantage of a loophole in state sanctuary laws that omit standing contracts. And it raises questions about the state law amid ramped up enforcement efforts by the Trump administration, which has said it aims to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants daily.
“It is deeply, deeply troublesome,” said Andres Kwon, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “This contract very much goes against the principle and value of creating a bright line between local resources and federal immigration enforcement.”
At a minimum, Kwon said the contract should end immediately.
“This is where the attorney general has jurisdiction and responsibility to review and oversee how Glendale is acting pursuant to this contract,” he said. The attorney general also has a mandate to review and report on conditions of confinement in Glendale, which it has yet to do.
Other municipalities terminated their contracts after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 54, which prohibited local and state municipalities from using funds for federal immigration enforcement purposes, including the use of jail facilities. But Glendale’s then-Police Chief Robert Castro, who opposed the law, did not. And at the time, the city manager warned against nixing the contract in a bid to maintain a good relationship with federal authorities.
Jennie Quinonez-Skinner, a resident of Glendale, said she has been urging council members to abandon the contract since learning about it during the first Trump administration.
“They can end if they want to, they just don’t want to,” she said. “I see no justification for doing it. Under the current administration, with lack of due process, it’s harmful.”
At the time the contract was signed in 2007, the federal government promised to pay Glendale $85 a day for each detainee. Nearly 10 years later in 2016, the city reported that it received a little more than $6,000 for its services in one year. City documents show the contract terms are indefinite and “may be terminated by either party with 60 days’ written notice.”
At the Glendale City Council meeting Tuesday night, immigration lawyer Sarah Houston, whose client had been detained at the jail and been without food for nine hours due to being transferred between multiple facilities, questioned why Glendale was adhering to a decades-old agreement that runs afoul of SB 54.
“We have SB 54 that says very explicitly, local law enforcement cannot provide resources, including cells, to immigration enforcement. California is a sanctuary state,” Houston said at the meeting. “Do you want Glendale to be one of the only cities that allows local police departments to work with the Department of Homeland Security, so that they can just house and detain a lot of our immigrant sisters and brothers?”
Los Angeles Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez is calling on the city to create clearer protocols regarding its immigrant sanctuary laws after Los Angeles police officers were spotted during a local enforcement operation.
Glendale Councilmember Elen Asatryan tried to distance the city from immigration operations.
“We do not get involved, we are not even booking them, they are using the cells as a holding place in the city of Glendale,” Asatryan said. She disputed that detainees were not being provided food or water.
The use of the Glendale City Jail to hold migrants has come up in recent weeks as the Trump administration pushes to increase the number of immigrant arrests by targeting them as they leave the courtroom.
Immigration officials admit the effort has stressed their own resources as they look to increase capacity. ICE has about 7,000 beds in California with six privately owned facilities and has been looking to expand its footprint in the state as its enforcement begins to outstrip its detention space.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enhanced enforcement operations and routine daily operations have resulted in a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity,” said Richard Beam, an ICE spokesman. “While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements.”
In Los Angeles, Santa Ana and around the country, masked federal agents in plain clothes have been arresting migrants as they leave their immigration hearings, often after a government lawyer asks that their deportation proceedings be dismissed. Family members who come to support their loved-ones often are left distraught.
The Department of Homeland Security is asking to dismiss its own deportation cases, after which agents arrest immigrants as they leave the courtroom and pursue expedited removals, which require no hearings before a judge.
Typically, someone arrested by ICE in public would be transferred to a detention facility, but the rush of detainees probably strained the system and forced officials to look for other options, said Melissa Shepard, legal services director at Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“I can imagine it will be an influx for detention centers that probably don’t have the resources in place to keep all of these folks,” Shepard said. “In Southern California, the detention centers were quite unprepared for the number of people being detained.”
Times reporters witnessed more than half a dozen arrests at courthouses in downtown Los Angeles and Santa Ana courthouses Monday. In Los Angeles, Jianhui Wu, of China, was detained after the government moved to dismiss his case and seek expedited removal proceedings.
The judge granted the man another hearing in August to give him time to find an attorney, telling him “you need to talk to someone competent” about his case.
But as he left the courtroom, a plainclothes ICE agent followed him, while another stopped him in the hallway. One agent took the man’s backpack as they handcuffed him and swiftly took him down a service elevator.
By Tuesday, he was being held at the Glendale City Jail.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
In Season 2 of “Crimes of the Times,” host Christopher Goffard revisits one of the longest and most bizarre murder trials in U.S. history.
On this week’s bonus, Madison McGhee and Jake Deptula share some of their more controversial takes on today’s true crime beat.
In this episode, Sammy Roth speaks with geography professor James McCarthy, who’s studied how authoritarianism and environmental destruction can be deeply intertwined.
