Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston’s cooperation with ICE, and controversy about that cooperation, is not new. In October 2018, The Washington Post published an article which led with: “Activists in Alexandria, Va., are pressing the sheriff to drop an agreement to detain migrants for ICE. The sheriff in Contra Costa County, Calif., canceled a similar contract in July, soon after at least 1,000 protesters marched on the local jail.”
In July of this year, before a public forum and the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors (BOS), Livingston stated in a report that his office was alerting ICE about anticipated release dates for detainees on ICE watchlists, sparking renewed controversy. This notification is not mandatory in California under SB54, the “California Values Act,” but unlike Alameda County, Contra Costa does not have a “non-cooperation” with ICE policy affecting the sheriff’s office.
In August, immigrant rights activists, under the group title Indivisible Resisters Contra Costa (IRCC), protested at the Martinez county administrative building before a supervisors’ meeting, demanding that the county implement a non-cooperation policy. At the meeting, despite intense criticism from several BOS members, Livingston refused to back off his interactions with ICE and was quoted in multiple news sources saying, “When you have individuals that are in the country illegally, undocumented, and they commit new crimes in this county in my case, we have an obligation, I believe, to notify ICE.”
In a telephone interview, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia stated, “Murderers and rapists are not being released from detention … to notify ICE when someone is released after committing a minor property crime, such as graffiti, has a chilling effect on our immigrant community, including legal immigrants.”
Reimagine Richmond is part of Contra Costa Immigrant Rights Alliance, “a coalition of community, faith, advocacy and immigrant-led organizations formed in spring 2017 to provide a platform to support actions by multiple players across the county.”
Andrew Melendez, a community organizer for Reimagine Richmond, said, “[Sheriff Livingston] has been complying with ICE agents. These compliances are a violation of people’s rights.”
The fear and anxiety generated by the sheriff’s office actions have made people afraid “to send their kids to school, or to go to businesses,” he said.
“Every meeting of [the BOS], we mobilize in front. We are using community pressure to pass a sanctuary ordinance,” he said. In Richmond, he said, pressure on the city council helped pass a March 25, 2025, reinforcement of the existing “sanctuary city” ordinance, titled “An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Richmond Limiting the Use of City Resources for Federal Immigration Enforcement.”
But, county-wide, additional oversight of the sheriff’s office has yet to be implemented by the BOS despite calls for it by Gioia who, at the August meeting, proposed civilian oversight or an inspector general, according to published reports. “I have always publicly supported oversight of the sheriff’s office, preferably civilian oversight,” Gioia said. “However, the board voted 3-2 against it.”
Instead, the full BOS agreed to refer the discussion to the county’s equity committee, which oversees the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice. “The committee has met and begun this discussion,” said Gioia, but no decision about recommendations has been made.
“There is a need for oversight to encourage trust in law enforcement,” said Melendez, and IRCC will continue to press for it. There is a procedure under state law that allows for the recall of elected officials, including the sheriff, but at this time no organization is pursuing this option.
The 2018 Washington Post article also quoted a statement from ICE “former acting director” Tom Homan in which he said that California’s sanctuary laws “would undermine public safety…ICE will have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at worksites, which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests.”
This same Tom Homan, currently the Trump administration’s “border czar,” was taped in a 2024 FBI sting “in which he allegedly accepted a $50,000 cash bribe from two undercover agents posing as businessmen, in exchange for getting those agents federal contracts in a potential Trump administration,” according to The New York Times and MSNBC.
The Trump administration is attempting to quash a further probe.
Tom Homan? Bribe? Who would have thought? Next up, who would have thought Coast Guard Island would become an ICE/DHS staging area? Let’s see, one bridge on one side and a narrow channel (the Estuary) on the other? Sounds ripe for a blockade. Why would they choose CGI?