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Local leaders push Bay Area wide policies to stop detention centers
- The Mercury News
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Published: 5 Auguts, 2026
In the face of a potential ICE facility in Santa Clara County, Bay Area and congressional leaders are urging city and county governments to leverage local policies to push back against immigration enforcement, with San Jose and San Mateo County introducing efforts in the coming weeks.
“Protecting hardworking and law-abiding immigrants and families … takes an all-hands-on-deck approach,” said U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., at a press conference on Wednesday announcing the legal framework. “All levels of government must be involved. All levers of government must be pulled.”
The approach, spearheaded by local congressmember and former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, would leverage the mundane, bureaucratic oversight of local government in the fight against immigration enforcement facilities. Under the framework proposed by Liccardo, a jurisdiction would use a special case of California law to set a temporary moratorium against the development of ICE facilities. During that pause, a city could tweak its zoning and permitting laws to potentially dictate how and where facilities might be allowed, requiring stringent safety standards that could include measures against overcrowding or fire safety.
The proposed stringent requirements respond to unsafe and overcrowded conditions in detention centers and holding cells – where detainees have described being treated “like animals,” according to reporting by this news organization.
“We are setting the bar high intentionally because we believe every human being who is in ICE custody deserves the respect and dignity of being treated in accordance with our values and the Constitution,” said Liccardo. “… and if (ICE facilities) can’t get built, I don’t think anyone’s going to lose any sleep.”
Liccardo pitched the framework as a legislative model that could be emulated across levels of local government in the Bay Area to create region-wide protection against potential ICE facilities.
San Jose and San Mateo County are currently planning to implement the framework next week. A San Jose rules committee is considering the moratorium against any new detention facility, with San Mateo County also considering taking it’s first steps toward adopting the framework.
“We’re going one step further, along with the rest of our region, and we hope that other cities across California follow suit,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
Meanwhile Santa Clara County, along with the California Attorney General, continues its legal battle against a proposed ICE facility just outside of Gilroy. ICE spokesperson Jason Sweeney has described the facility as an ICE office with “temporary, short-term holding rooms for individuals awaiting transfer to another facility or release” rather than a detention center. Work on the facility – first reported by this news organization in May – has been paused by the federal government until Sept. 9 as part of a voluntary deal with the state and county.
“We are at an inflection point in our history … No city or county can meet this moment alone. And when we act together, we are stronger and more effective,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong. “We will not back down from the fight against this mass deportation machine.”
Just how far local governments can go to impose restrictions on federal activity is “unsettled” legal territory and can depend on who owns the land and operates a federal facility, said P. Deep Gulasekaram, who teaches constitutional and immigration law at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
A local government can’t target the federal government directly with, for example, an outright ban on immigration facilities. Even so, it could possibly impose more general health, safety, environmental and zoning restrictions on buildings that might include detention centers, like any prison-like facility.
“That’s where municipalities are on strongest legal footing,” said Gulasekaram, in part because local governments would be on the hook to provide services like utilities or emergency fire and medical attention to any such facility in their jurisdiction. He adds that several jurisdictions have succeeded in imposing land use laws that are neutral or don’t specifically target the federal government.
While Liccardo expects that the federal government would challenge local ordinances in court, he framed the litigation itself as a deterrent: arguing that property owners wouldn’t want to lease to federal immigration enforcement knowing a property could be “tied up in litigation … for years.”
As local leaders work on how to respond to potential immigration enforcement facilities, the impacts of the potential ICE facility and general fears of detention and potentially violent or fatal interactions with ICE have already rippled through immigrant communities in Gilroy, Santa Clara County and beyond.
“This is a public health crisis of children, of families, of individuals living in fear … and we are seeing the psychological traumatic impact that it’s having every single day,” said Belinda Arriaga, CEO of the farmworker and immigrant advocacy group Ayudando Latinos A Soñar. “This is not just about the building of detention centers. This is about the restoration of humanity.”
