'ICE-Free Zones' Approved In Alameda County: Report

ALAMEDA, CA — The Alameda County Board of Supervisors has approved an ordinance banning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from all county-owned buildings, according to a report from The Daily Californian.

County officials unanimously voted on the decision to enact "ICE-Free Zones" during their meeting on Tuesday, according to the report.

“We are in a true crisis, not only in protecting our immigrant community, but also in a crisis in the rule of law and upholding our constitution,” supervisor Fortunato Bas, who authored the proposals, said, according to The Daily Californian.

A Jan. 22 memo by Forunato Bas encouraged them to adopt the resolutions, citing previous reports of large-scale immigration enforcement in the Bay Area in October 2024 and the recent shootings by ICE agents of Renee Good in Minnesota and Keith Porter in Southern California.

Bas said in the memo that Alameda County did not have policies in place to restrict federal immigration enforcement agencies from using county-owned or county-controlled land.

Without those protections, Bas said, county or public assets may be " inadvertently weaponized against the very communities we are sworn to serve – eroding trust in local government."

Physical barriers and signs prohibiting ICE officers from entering these spaces will be enacted as part of the resolution, along with new requirements about reporting any attempts from federal agencies to use county property for immigration enforcement operations to several county agencies, according to the Daily Californian.

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