Good evening, Chairman Fletcher and Supervisors and Sheriff’s office representative.
My name is Kai Guzman (They/Them). I am an organizer with the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. The ACLU is a member of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
San Diego County residents deserve to live in a region where families stay together and do not live in fear that an encounter with law enforcement will result in deportation.
We are here tonight because the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department’s collaboration with DHS puts our immigrant community at risk. The sheriff’s department routinely, directly, and indirectly, transfers county residents into immigration custody.
By collaborating with ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies, the sheriff’s department exposes our immigrant families, friends, co-workers and neighbors to immigration detention and deportation that can result in permanent family separations, like my own.
In the past year, this collaboration has resulted in the deportation of 18 members of our community and potentially 80 more, according to data reported by the sheriff’s department.
Every year for the last five years, the ACLU and our community partners have attended these Truth Act meetings asking for sheriff’s department to: stop this collaboration with DHS, stop transferring county residents into ICE custody and stop being complicit in detaining and deporting county residents. It’s time for this collaboration to end.
We urge the county and the sheriff’s department to immediately stop using local resources to facilitate DHS’s deadly detention and deportation machine.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
