Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston’s cooperation with ICE, and controversy about that cooperation, is not new. In October 2018, The Washington Post published an article which led with: “Activists in Alexandria, Va., are pressing the sheriff to drop an agreement to detain migrants for ICE. The sheriff in Contra Costa County, Calif., canceled a similar contract in July, soon after at least 1,000 protesters marched on the local jail.”
In July of this year, before a public forum and the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors (BOS), Livingston stated in a report that his office was alerting ICE about anticipated release dates for detainees on ICE watchlists, sparking renewed controversy. This notification is not mandatory in California under SB54, the “California Values Act,” but unlike Alameda County, Contra Costa does not have a “non-cooperation” with ICE policy affecting the sheriff’s office.
In August, immigrant rights activists, under the group title Indivisible Resisters Contra Costa (IRCC), protested at the Martinez county administrative building before a supervisors’ meeting, demanding that the county implement a non-cooperation policy. At the meeting, despite intense criticism from several BOS members, Livingston refused to back off his interactions with ICE and was quoted in multiple news sources saying, “When you have individuals that are in the country illegally, undocumented, and they commit new crimes in this county in my case, we have an obligation, I believe, to notify ICE.”…