Alameda County Approves $3.5 Million to Scale Up Immigrant Defense Amid ICE Surge

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday afternoon to approve a $3.57 million emergency allocation to dramatically scale up legal services, community outreach and rapid response networks for the county’s immigrant and refugee residents.

Sourced primarily from the Measure W Essential Services Fund, the allocation includes $2.5 million designated for immigrant and refugee support and an additional $1 million for a flexible contingency pool. The funds will extend and increase contracts for three frontline community coalitions.

These funds extend the county’s initial $3.5 million emergency package approved on March 11, which helped establish the rapid response services now facing critical demand.

Spearheaded by Supervisors Nikki Fortunato Bas and Elisa Márquez, the action is a direct response to what county staff reports describe as “exponentially more attacks” and “unprecedented levels” of federal immigration enforcement.

“This is about real-time response and building an infrastructure that will continue to educate and empower our communities to withstand this escalation of threats and attacks,” Márquez said.

Under the new federal budget, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is set to receive an additional $75 billion over four years, representing a more than 300% increase in enforcement and detention capacity.

Bas said that residents demanded greater support after a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows federal ICE agents to conduct stops based on perceived ethnicity, raising concerns about heightened racial profiling. The move also follows an incident last month where federal immigration officers detained a man inside an Oakland courthouse.

“With the surge in ICE arrests again, the targeting of our immigrant communities, the community has come to us to say it is urgent that we boost our capacity,” Bas said. “This will allow us to expand the rapid response hotline into the weekends and continue defending immigrants in our legal system to ensure they have due process.”

The six-month funding extension is designed to fortify the local safety net in a county where one in three residents is foreign-born and half of all children live in a mixed-status household, according to a letter from Bas and Márquez to the board recommending adoption.

Enforcement data for what ICE refers to as the San Francisco “Area of Responsibility,” which stretches from Kern County to Hawaii, Saipan and Guam and includes Alameda County, showed that immigration arrests doubled in early 2025.

This spike disproportionately impacts working-class families, particularly nationals from Mexico, Guatemala, India, El Salvador and Honduras, according to the supervisors’ letter.

The Alameda County Immigration Legal Education Partnership’s rapid response hotline documented a 500% surge in monthly call volume since its relaunch earlier this year, receiving over 1,300 calls between March and October 2025. At Tuesday’s meeting, ACILEP said during the weekday, one staffer currently mans the phone at a time, highlighting the group’s limited capacity.

The $3.57 million will support the county’s three core partners in scaling their services:

• ACILEP: The largest portion of the funding will support the expansion of the organization’s Rapid Response Hotline to operate on weekends and ensure 24/7 coverage, alongside bolstering legal services and community volunteer network coordination.
• California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice: The funds will maintain removal defense capacity, offset filing fees for low-income clients and fund legal education and outreach—ensuring immigrants in removal proceedings have access to due process and legal protection.
• Trabajadores Unidos Workers United: The group will use the funding to provide resources, mutual aid and community organizing opportunities to low-income immigrant workers and their families.

The board also designated $50,000 for the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office. This funding will help offset skyrocketing immigration application and litigation fees for low-income clients, such as the recent significant increase in costs for asylum applications and green cards following the passage of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful” budget bill.

Unlike all three of its neighboring counties — Contra Costa, San Francisco and Santa Clara — Alameda County does not currently operate a dedicated Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

“We definitely have to do more strategic planning and develop stronger infrastructure for the long term,” Márquez said.

Alameda County Together, an ad hoc committee prioritizing equity and inclusion for residents, recommended that the county establish such an office, which would be tasked with coordinating resources, overseeing immigrant-serving programs and advising the Board on responsive policies.

County staff have been directed to return to the Board on Oct. 21 with a comprehensive coordination plan, and again on Oct. 28. The county is engaging with philanthropy, including the San Francisco Foundation’s new initiative, the Stand Together Bay Area Fund, to support these initiatives.

“It’s really important that people have a sense of belonging in this county,” Márquez said. “By us investing in these services, to acknowledge the challenges that are occurring and finding a way to mitigate that, just reaffirms our commitment to being a space and inclusive community for everyone.”