photo credit: Sonoma County Sheriff's Office/Canva

 Sonoma County Sheriff Eddie Engram tells KRCB News he was told the county would be spared of large-scale immigration actions, for now, while the federal Dept. of Homeland Security focuses on more heavily populated areas

EDDIE ENGRAM: I am Sheriff Eddie Engram, Sheriff of Sonoma County.

SHANDRA BACK: What do these conversations or communications look like with ICE? Would we know if they were planning on coming and do we know what, what Sonoma County looks like in terms of deportations or mass deportations or anything that we're looking for into the future?

ENGRAM: What I was told in my meeting with them was that the agent who's in charge of this area has a pretty large area, I think he said from Santa Clara County to the Oregon border and over into Hawaii. And that they've been given a target by the administration or their bosses or whoever, and they will go where they are more likely to hit their numbers. Sonoma County is not that place. When you compare Sonoma County to Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, we're 500,000 total people.

But what I can say has happened in the past and not for the sheriff's office here, not Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, but other sheriff's offices and other police chiefs that I've talked to is that when they're coming to do an operation in Sonoma County, they have been targeted operations and there have been 15 to 20 minute lead time and it's been sort of generalized information: "We will be in this area, we are operating, it is a targeted operation."

What I was told was that I should not be expecting any sort of large scale immigration roundups or raids or anything of that nature. But what he did caveat that with was those are my orders today. So that's the information I know as we sit here today.

BACK: Would you know if they were coming in? Does there have to be communication there or not?

ENGRAM: There doesn't have to be, but to my knowledge, I can't speak to LA but I can speak to what's happened in the county here, that there has been at least 15 to 20 minutes warning or advising that they're here and in an operation. And that's mostly for de-confliction reasons. So we don't get dispatched to a call where people are doing, you know, mass people doing something and we don't know who it is. But that has been the experience that I've heard from others. I don't know if that would be the same thing if they were doing a, a mass rate or not, because I haven't spoken with anyone who's experienced that.

BACK: Do you have a protocol for, if you were to get a call about 15 or 20 minutes, would, would you take action? What, what's the protocol there?

ENGRAM: We would not take any action there. They are a law enforcement agency doing law enforcement work, whether we agree with the tactics they're doing or not. However, if we did receive a call from a resident, we would respond to that and ascertain whether a crime was taking place or not.

BACK: When you said that the person from Santa Clara to the Oregon border, including Hawaii,there's a target that has to be met. What does that mean?

ENGRAM: A number of arrests. So that person explained that there's a number of arrests that they have in a certain given time.

BACK: Was there any clarification?

ENGRAM: He didn't clarify and I didn't ask. As I said, it was more of a meet and greet and I was more concerned about what was going to be happening here in the county and if we had to worry about mass arrests or things of that nature and he led us, and Supervisor Hopkins sat in that meeting as well, to believe that that wouldn't necessarily be the case.