Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/santa-ana-jail/)
City Council members had voted in June to reduce staffing at their mostly-empty jail. But a new plan emerged to house additional U.S. Marshals inmates, which the acting police chief said would reduce the city’s budget deficits and save jail jobs.
Santa Ana’s detainees now are held at county jails, leaving over 300 empty beds at the city jail. Most City Council members said they want to consider a mental health facility.
Santa Ana’s police union argues It is foolish for city council members to cut off a jail contract with ICE. Police Union Presidet Gary Serrano argues council members should do everything possible to re-engage the federal ICE contract and honor the current lawful agreement which in place.
Councilman Jose Solorio proposed keeping the ICE contract, saying it helps detained immigrants stay close to their families and attorneys. Immigration activists loudly opposed it calling Solorio a “Latino Trump.”
In a letter Thursday to city officials, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced they were triggering a 90-day period to cancel the contract, in reaction to decisions by the council to reduce the number of detainees who could be housed there.
Activists trying to stop detention of undocumented immigrants at the Santa Ana Jail had started a hunger strike on Monday. By Thursday, they ended it.
Despite public pressure, including a hunger strike, the Santa Ana City Council did not vote this week to close the city’s jail, which houses immigration detainees through a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A city accounting shows it makes financial sense to keep the controversial jail open and housing federal immigration detainees in exchange for a fee. Another accounting says otherwise.
Activists showed up in force to a Wednesday meeting on the Orange County Sheriff’s Department policy of handing over jail inmates to federal immigration authorities.
Activists who see the city’s contract with the federal government to house immigration detainees at the city jail as an insult to Santa Ana’s majority Latino population clashed Tuesday with jail employees who say the activists have painted an inaccurate picture of conditions at the jail.