Santa Clara County to fund legal aid for Bay Area ICE detainees

Santa Clara County will be the first in the region to fund efforts to release every Bay Area resident unlawfully detained by ICE.

County leaders are signing a roughly $200,000 agreement with La Raza Centro Legal, a nonprofit legal clinic based in San Francisco, to expand the Bay Area Habeas Network, whose attorneys work to secure habeas corpus proceedings for people in the custody of federal immigration authorities. Habeas corpus is a legal procedure requiring government officials to justify the detention of someone in their custody before a judge. Advocates said the county funding will help expand the number of attorneys to file habeas petitions.

“The hope is that the regional rapid habeas project can provide representation to anyone who is detained in the Bay Area and is eligible for habeas relief, which is a big goal,” David Campos, a deputy county executive and former San Francisco supervisor, told San José Spotlight. “The reason why you have seen a really great deal of success in cases where there is representation, is because the actions of ICE and Homeland Security have been out of line with due process. Because of the success of the habeas project, in some cases, ICE stopped some activities because they know if the matter goes to court, they are going to lose.”

Habeas corpus petitions in San Francisco have had a high success rate in securing the release of people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to the extent that President Donald Trump’s administration has weighed suspending habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants.

The Bay Area Habeas Network is overloaded, with each habeas corpus case taking two weeks of attorneys’ time to argue motions and appear for hearings. The infrastructure for release hearings also took a hit with the closure of San Francisco’s immigration court last month, forcing those with habeas corpus motions in the Bay Area to go to the next closest immigration court in Concord, roughly 30 miles away.

“We have skeletal coverage right now,” Jordan Weiner, La Raza Centro Legal’s interim executive director, told San José Spotlight. “We have attorneys on call five days a week to file habeas petitions, but it’s the bare minimum. If more than one person gets arrested in a day, then we’re at capacity.”

While Santa Clara County has not seen mass raids like those in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the region has seen targeted arrests of more than 200 people, according to immigration advocates.

Campos said the contract with La Raza Centro Legal is being finalized, with the goal of getting the other eight Bay Area counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Solano, Sonoma and San Francisco — to help pay for more attorneys. Officials also want help from Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.

Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo likes the idea.

“I have not received the details yet, but we would seriously consider supporting these efforts,” Alejo told San José Spotlight. “I would bring this to my board’s attention for future consideration.”

Funding legal fights

The Bay Area Habeas Network launched May 1 and has filed six same-day habeas corpus petitions, with judges ordering ICE to release five clients immediately and a bond hearing for the sixth. The network’s clients hailed from Mendocino, Sonoma, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties, with two coming from Santa Clara County. The network is comprised of five participating organizations: La Raza Centro Legal, Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, VIDAS and UC Law SF Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.

Each organization has either a full time attorney dedicated to the project to be on call one day a week, or splits the position between several people, Weiner said. She added the network won’t turn people away if they live in a county that’s not formally participating. But with every county that funds the effort, the network can add more attorneys and shore up capacity.

“We never know when ICE is going to arrest someone … you get a call at 11 a.m. for an SF resident and then at 1 p.m. it could be a Santa Clara County resident,” Weiner said. “We’re usually successful. But we’re tired already.”

Huy Tran, executive director of Services, Immigrant Rights And Education Network (SIREN), said the Bay Area Habeas Network will be critical with plans for an ICE facility near Gilroy, in unincorporated South County. San José Spotlight first reported on plans for the facility, which prompted ICE to acknowledge the site — and a joint county and state lawsuit against the Trump administration in an attempt to stop it.

“Habeas petitions have been one of the best tools available to free those who are unjustly detained,” Tran told San José Spotlight. “It has worked because ICE as an agency has refused to operate within the bounds of our Constitution and consistently violate the due process rights of those they detain.”

SIREN is a member of the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network, which also includes Amigos de Guadalupe, the Asian Law Alliance and other groups. The network deploys attorneys and community members to observe immigration enforcement and provides guidance for families of detainees. Research has shown ICE enforcement operations have created a chilling effect on the public life of undocumented people, including reduced school attendance and missed medical appointments for immigrant families and mixed-status households.

Santa Clara County has pushed back on federal immigration enforcement. The county led a coalition, which included San Francisco, that sued to stop attempts to cut funding to cities and counties that declare themselves sanctuaries for people without citizenship. The county has also taken steps to coordinate real-time responses to ICE operations and ban immigration authorities from using county property for enforcement.

Tran said much of this work has hit its stride in Southern California because that is where existing detention centers are largely concentrated.

“If we can build up our local capacity to file habeas petitions in the Bay Area, then we have a great shot at freeing those who are eligible before they are transported to the inhumane detention centers in Kern County and beyond,” Tran said. “This also reinforces why we need to fight any expansion of ICE facilities here in Dublin or Gilroy. Allowing any of these facilities to open and operate in the Bay will increase the risk our communities face, but do nothing to reign in ICE’s brazen violations of the law.”

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.