The Shasta Sheriff’s Office gave information to ICE about seven inmates last year. What does that mean?

The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office gave information about seven jail inmates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025, the most that’s been shared since the agency was required to publicly announce cooperation with ICE almost a decade ago. 

The information was announced during Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting in a one-minute presentation by Undersheriff Gene Randall, where he shared that the Shasta County Jail received 33 requests from federal law enforcement agents to provide information about noncitizens incarcerated at the jail. Only seven of those individuals met the criteria for their information to be shared with ICE under state law, he said.

The presentation was required by California’s TRUTH Act, which states that law enforcement agencies must hold a public forum if they provided ICE access to an individual during the last year. Shasta County has held such forums since 2018, when the public forum provision of the law went into effect. 

These points of access are usually the result of detainer requests, communications from ICE asking a law enforcement agency to either hold an individual for up to 48 hours past their release date, transfer an individual into ICE’s custody or notify ICE of the details of an individual’s release. 

Last year in a similar presentation to the board, Randall shared not only that officials had notified ICE about a single individual in 2024, but also why — saying the individual was wanted under a federal warrant. On Tuesday, Randall didn’t provide any explanation for what led the sheriff’s office to decide to share information for each of the seven individuals it informed ICE about, and he refused to answer questions from a reporter after the meeting.

The Trump administration has been expanding its immigration enforcement strategies to meet the president’s deportation goals since the start of his second term. In California, the Values Act prohibits local and state law enforcement from assisting in federal immigration enforcement, though it has some exceptions that allow for limited cooperation. 

Documents obtained by Shasta Scout tell a more complex story than Tuesday’s presentation, raising questions about the sheriff’s office’s practices.

How ICE detainer requests work — and what Shasta’s records show

Since the start of his second term, President Donald Trump has been implementing various strategies to expand deportation efforts, from raids and mass arrests to the 287(g) program — which the Shasta Sheriff’s Office tried to join last year — along with the detainer requests that ICE uses to request access to county inmates. 

Jordan Wells, a senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, has experience with litigating cases involving detainer requests. He said these requests are yet another strategy to aid in ICE’s efforts.

“Just like the 287(g) program, detainers are a way for the federal government to accomplish more arrests than ICE can do on its own,” he said. “They’re enlisting local resources to accomplish their goal of maximizing detention and deportation.” 

When someone is booked into jail, they’re fingerprinted, and that fingerprint gets entered into an FBI database. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have access to that data, Wells said. 

ICE can use that data and compare it to their own. If a person of interest is identified, ICE sends a detainer request asking a law enforcement agency to assist with providing access to an individual, whether that’s through a hold, transfer or notification request. 

The Shasta County Jail received more than 30 of these requests in 2025, according to documents obtained from the sheriff’s office by Shasta Scout. Per the Values Act, the jail is prohibited from complying with these requests unless the inmate meets the criteria for an exception to the law, which could be that the individual has a federal warrant out for their arrest or that they have been convicted of certain crimes, such as child abuse or human trafficking. 

The Values Act also prohibits law enforcement agencies from holding individuals past their release date, even if ICE made a hold request. 

The records obtained from the sheriff’s office for 2025 show that it planned to comply with at least six detainer requests — for one additional request, it’s unclear if the jail planned to comply due to the way an internal form was filled out. All six requests appear to have met the criteria for a Values Act exception, allowing the sheriff’s office to comply. 

Documents raise questions about data presented by the sheriff’s office compared to actual records 

Per the TRUTH Act, if a law enforcement agency receives a detainer request and plans to comply with it, the agency must notify the subject of the request by informing the individual of the agency’s planned compliance and provide a copy of the request. Additionally, if an agency notifies ICE of the release date of an individual, the agency must provide the same notification in writing to the individual and their attorney.

During Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, Undersheriff Randall said the jail gave information to ICE about seven individuals. But documents obtained by Shasta Scout show only five individuals were notified that the sheriff’s office planned to inform ICE of their release date so that ICE could detain them. It’s possible that in some cases the sheriff’s office notified ICE but didn’t inform inmates of its planned notification — though that step is required under California law. Randall declined to speak to a reporter after the meeting to address this and other questions and did not respond to a follow-up email.

Public records do not document the sheriff’s office having sent a second letter to these individuals or their attorneys telling them that ICE had officially been notified, something that should have also occurred. Shasta Scout made an additional records request to the sheriff’s office asking for the second letters, but a public records officer stated that “there is no other form that the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office provides.” 

Here’s what records show happening after the sheriff’s office notifies ICE 

After a law enforcement agency notifies ICE about the release date of an individual, ICE may try to coordinate with the jail to pick up the inmate. Last June, email communications showed that a deportation officer coordinated the pickup of a subject that ICE had a detainer request for, asking the Shasta Sheriff’s Office if they could arrive at the jail’s sallyport for direct transfer. The deportation officer later canceled the transfer without providing a reason.

Another email from a jail staffer obtained through document requests explained to the sheriff’s office that ICE had picked up multiple individuals from the jail lobby after they were released. The email was sent in response to a reminder from the California Department of Justice for law enforcement agencies to submit mandated reporting of any assistance they provided to ICE. 

Last year holds the record for the most times in a single year that the Shasta Sheriff’s Office has publicly documented providing ICE access to, or information about, an individual since the office was mandated to publicly announce such information in 2018. That year, the sheriff’s office provided ICE access to two individuals, which was previously the most in any single year.

Critics condemn detainer requests, while ICE argues public safety

Wells, the senior staff attorney with the San Francisco civil rights nonprofit, said detainer requests are problematic for multiple reasons. 

For one, he said, when a law enforcement agency complies with a detainer request, it is “prioritizing the agenda of the Trump administration over local law enforcement needs [and] local community needs” by pulling local resources away from local concerns. 

Wells also said that when law enforcement agencies are known to assist ICE, it can lead to immigrants calling for police help less often out of fear they’ll be arrested and deported.

“When state and local authorities cooperate with ICE detainers,” Wells said, “then people essentially become afraid of calling the cops when they need them.” 

But Jason Sweeney, a public affairs officer for ICE who’s based in Sacramento, said in an email statement that detainer requests are a matter of public safety. 

He argued that detainers increase the safety of all involved “because it allows ICE to arrest these individuals in a secure and controlled custodial setting as opposed to at-large” where a noncitizen could potentially harm a community they would’ve been released in.

Sweeney also said that detainers conserve “scarce government resources” by allowing ICE to take noncitizens into custody directly rather than using resources to locate them at-large. ICE is the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country, with a budget of $85 billion. 

In February, the Department of Homeland Security called out the state of California for failing to comply with ICE detainer requests sent to incarceration facilities within the state, saying that when they’re not honored, the safety of ICE officers and the public is at risk. 

“We are calling on Governor Newsom and his administration to commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 33,000 criminal illegal aliens in California’s custody,” former DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the press release. “It is common sense and vital for public safety.”

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