ICE Ignored Orders to Leave Santa Rita Jail Lot, Alameda County Says
Alameda County is calling on ICE to stop conducting operations outside a Dublin jail amid a recent uptick in immigration enforcement across the Bay Area.
Members of the county-backed immigration-related rapid response network ACILEP said they believe that, starting around Oct. 25, rotating groups of up to six ICE agents began using the parking lot outside Santa Rita Jail as a hub for detaining people exiting and entering the facility.
“They’ve been, like, bum-rushing people upon release,” said Tash Nguyen of Restore Oakland, one of dozens of community and nonprofit advocates who have been keeping vigil outside the jail in rotation. Nguyen described agents “racially profiling people, detaining and then releasing them, if they’re not who they’re looking for.”
Nguyen added that she’s also seen ICE officers entering the lobby and asking the sheriff’s office staff about specific individuals in their custody.
Alameda County Interim Counsel Andrea Weddle penned a cease-and-desist letter to ICE Monday, detailing several occasions where the sheriff’s office instructed agents “to leave and to refrain from conducting civil immigration enforcement activities in and around the jail and its parking lot.” The letter added that “ICE personnel have repeatedly ignored those instructions.”
Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas issued her own statement Monday as well, noting that the county’s ICE-free zones policy prohibits ICE entering county property without a judicial warrant, or from using county property, including the jail’s parking lot and lobby, as staging grounds for its activities.
The sheriff’s office is also prohibited by its own departmental policy from having any contact or communication with ICE, except in cases of a criminal warrant.
“ICE pursued someone from the parking lot into the lobby and detained them….I would say a lot of them are rogue, incredibly untrained and unprofessional,” Bas said, stressing that the approach is putting the public at risk — restricting “people’s ability to do the normal things that they would do,” like running errands or going to school and work.
“That is not keeping our community safe,” Bas said.
Advocates said that as of Friday night, the sheriff’s office had locked the jail lobby, ostensibly with the goal of keeping ICE at bay. The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Folks like Nguyen said they would prefer to see sheriff’s deputies preventing ICE from entering the parking lot altogether, barring proof of a warrant, while allowing visitors and others to continue to use the space to arrange for safe passage.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the cease-and-desist letter, and it’s unclear exactly what steps Alameda County will take if its warnings are further ignored, but Bas said her body would continue to push back. The number of local arrests across the Bay Area as of Tuesday total at least 19.
“Our board will have to meet and make some decisions about what the next step will be, and it would likely be legal action,” she said.
Meanwhile, Bas said the county aims to discuss ways to improve the training and protocols concerning ICE at area hospitals, after federal immigration agents last month entered Wilma Chan Highland Hospital without showing a warrant and maintained custody of a patient.
In 2025, the county supervisors created Alameda County Together for All, or ACT for All, a committee to support those impacted by federal policy and benefit changes. Bas said that ACT for All will hold a hearing Dec. 7 on the county’s immigration enforcement response plan. It also aims to discuss a report by the Alameda Health System, which the committee requested after the ICE incident at Wilma Chan Highland Hospital.