The Morgan Hill City Council voted during a special closed session June 24 on whether to join a multiagency amicus brief opposing construction of a proposed ICE detention facility near Gilroy, then declined to publicly disclose the result.
City Manager Christina Turner announced following the session only that there was “no reportable action,” and that Morgan Hill “will always be a welcoming community.”
The Brown Act, California’s open meetings law, requires local agencies to report out council actions taken in closed session, but does not require disclosure when no action is taken.
The brief supports a federal lawsuit filed June 10 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti seeking to block construction of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility at 7240 Holsclaw Road in unincorporated Santa Clara County, roughly 11 miles south of Morgan Hill.
The lawsuit alleges the project violates five federal and state laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and California’s Williamson Act, which restricts the property to agricultural use.
Councilmember Yvonne Martínez Beltrán, who requested the special meeting in order to meet the deadline for joining the brief, said she was disappointed by the outcome.
“I’m disappointed again by the council’s failure to protect our community’s interests,” Beltrán said. “We will not protect our residents, we will not protect the investment in our community, and we’re allowing the very small regulations and processes that do have to be followed to be run over.”
Only four of the five council members were present at Tuesday’s session; Councilmember Miriam Vega did not attend. Councilmembers Iwanaga, Vega, and Librers declined requests for comment, citing Brown Act concerns.
“By law, we do not reveal votes in closed session where there is no reportable action,” said Mayor Mark Turner. “While the council could vote in closed session to do otherwise, it sets a bad precedent simply for the sake of politicizing a topic. The council is bound by the law, not political expediency.”
Because the council took no action and did not opt to report out the vote, the exact outcome has not been officially confirmed. With four members present, passage would have required three yes votes.
The decision not to disclose the vote drew criticism from community members who had turned out in force during the public comment period preceding the closed session. More than 20 speakers addressed the council, with all but one urging the city to join the brief.
Ron Kirkish, a Gilroy resident, was the lone public commenter to oppose joining the brief. He urged the council not to sign on and raised concerns about what he described as inadequate staging areas for law enforcement operations in the area.
“These detention centers are necessary,” Kirkish said, arguing that staging areas allow customs officers to conduct operations safely. “Staging is what is used to keep the officers, the people under investigation, and the surrounding citizens and the kids safe. If they’re not allowed to stage, it’s a very unsafe situation.”
Dan Coultier, a Morgan Hill resident and member of Indivisible South County who helped organize Tuesday’s public turnout, called the outcome a failure of transparency.
“I thought the city council and the mayor were all about transparency, but they were so reluctant to come out with anything other than ‘no reportable action,’” Coultier said. “That’s a complete lack of courage, decency and integrity. How do you decide that way, given that all but one of the public comments that night were asking you to please join the amicus brief? There’s no legal implication to joining. It doesn’t put the city at risk.”
Speakers at the meeting argued that joining the brief required no litigation budget, no legal liability, and no formal position on immigration policy, only a signal to the court that Morgan Hill shares concerns already on the record raised by other affected jurisdictions.
“Tonight, you are not being asked to take a position on immigration policy in Washington,” said resident Erin O’Brien. “You are being asked whether a federal agency gets to mislabel a project, skip the review the law requires, and build it anyway, 11 miles from where we’re standing.”
Despite the council’s lack of action on the amicus brief, ICE opponents in Morgan Hill are not giving up yet. Beltrán said she intends to bring two items before the council when it returns from recess on Aug. 19: a no-ICE-expansion resolution and a no-staging policy that would prohibit the use of city property for immigration enforcement operations.
“We can’t just hide in the corner because it’s the federal government,” Beltrán said. “We need to stand up for ourselves.”
