The Los Angeles suburb of Glendale announced that it was severing its 18-year relationship with the United States Department of Homeland Security and will refuse to house illegal aliens for the federal agency moving forward.
The longstanding intergovernmental service agreement between the city and the federal enforcement agency was signed in September of 2007 and saw ICE paying the city $85 per day, per detainee.
The City of Glendale released the following statement:
“After careful consideration, the City of Glendale has decided to end its agreement with U.S. Homeland Security/ICE to house federal immigration detainees. This local decision reflects our core values: public safety, transparency, and community trust. The Glendale Police Department does not enforce immigration laws and remains fully compliant with SB 54. Our focus remains in serving Glendale residents and businesses while preserving it as one of the safest cities in the Nation.”
Sarah Houston, an immigration lawyer based in California and one of the first to raise an issue with the longstanding agreement, spoke before the Glendale city council earlier this month, urging the body to sever ties with the Department of Homeland Security and cease housing Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees within their city jail.
Glendale, according to Houston, was one of the last remaining cities with a grandfathered contract with the Department of Homeland Security. That’s because in 2018, with the passage of California State Bill 54 (colloquially referred to as its sanctuary state law), local governments and law enforcement were prohibited from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement officers. Despite a lengthy legal battle with the Trump administration, which argued the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, the laws have mostly been upheld.
Under SB 54, localities with standing contracts as of June 2017 were free to maintain the association so long as they did not increase the scope or number of detainees.
Now, DHS is likely to house administrative detainees — the term they apply to those not held for criminal violations — in one of the private detention centers with which they are contracted throughout the state.
Orange County, which previously held the largest detention contract with ICE, rescinded its agreement in March 2019. In 2023, ICE opted to terminate its last county-level agreement with Yuba County, despite having inked a contract that was set to last until 2099.
These contracts are quite lucrative for the local governments. For example, Yuba’s canceled contract netted the county $8.6 million.