The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency recently moved one of its regional offices into a building in Morgan Hill, but city officials promise the relocation doesn’t mean local police will start cooperating with federal authorities on immigration enforcement.
The ICE office located off Vineyard Boulevard a block away from the Morgan Hill Police station is an Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) sub-office that moved from San Jose in September 2016, according to ICE spokesman James Schwab. He added the move is simply a relocation after the agency’s lease expired at their previous office up north.
The office is not a detention facility, and ICE does not have any plans to establish a detention center in Morgan Hill, Schwab said.
However, federal authorities can temporarily hold subjects accused of violating immigration laws at the site. In fact, ICE has submitted an application to the city’s planning department to expand their new Morgan Hill location with temporary “holding rooms.”
“Anyone arrested by ICE who is going to remain in the agency’s custody for more than 12 hours will be transferred to a detention facility specifically equipped for that purpose,” Schwab said in a statement.
He added the ERO sub-office serves as a worksite for assigned ICE employees, and “like all ERO office space,” the office has to be secure for interviewing and “briefly holding” subjects from the area who enter ICE custody.
ICE submitted its expansion plans to the Morgan Hill planning office on Dec. 21, according to City Manager Steve Rymer. “The proposed tenant improvements would expand an existing ICE administrative office facility to include temporary holding rooms and detainee processing,” reads a statement from the city.
The city has not approved the ICE expansion plans, and has told the federal office that its proposal would be in violation of the city’s zoning ordinance, which prohibits detention facilities, according to Rymer.
ICE responded to the city that it will “comply with local safety regulations and will work with the city to comply with local zoning and development standards as much as feasible,” Rymer’s statement continues.
Even if Morgan Hill formally rejects ICE’s proposal, as a federal agency it can override local land use laws, according to city staff.
Rymer added that ICE has not asked the city for anything that would require council approval, and the two layers of government are not sharing any funding or resources as part of the federal agency’s move.
The Morgan Hill City Council in December issued a public “statement of support and assurance” in response to community concern about the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to take forceful action against undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and other marginalized segments of the country’s population.
The city council’s statement says, in part, that MHPD has not and will not be used for federal immigration enforcement, and that will continue to be the case even with a federal enforcement office in the same neighborhood as the police department.
“We totally stand by the statement we made last month,” Mayor Steve Tate said Jan. 12 when contacted by the Times.
The council’s statement also more broadly addresses concerns about discrimination based on “race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, color or disability.”
The statement is about 450 words. The section on immigration enforcement reads, “Local police should not be involved in federal immigration enforcement and our police officers will continue to focus their time on high priority crimes. In accordance with best practices of local law enforcement professionals nationally, we will stay out of immigration enforcement. Our priority is to maintain the trusting relationship Morgan Hill police officers have with our community.”
Morgan Hill resident Ann Horner was among those who pushed the council to issue such a statement, though she told the body in December she wished it was stronger.
She said Thursday, without knowing all the details of the new local ICE office and its purpose, that it could seem unsafe to some residents, including those who were born here to foreign-born or undocumented parents.
“If Donald Trump is willing to put people on a list and export them out, that’s why I was pushing for a more powerful stance,” Horner said. The relocation of the ICE office “doesn’t seem consistent with (the statement), ‘This is going to be a safe place.’ It causes pause and concern.”
