INFURIATED BY THE RECENT KILLING of Minneapolis protester Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, a passionate crowd of nearly 100 protesters filled the chamber at the Marin County Board of Supervisors again Tuesday.
They were there to ask the board to end the Marin County Sheriff’s Office’s participation in a funding program with ICE or at least place the issue on the county’s agenda for debate.
Susan Morgan said she was speaking on behalf of 5,000 members of the political advocacy group Indivisible Marin.
“The U.S. president is not in his right mind,” said Morgan. “He is unleashing an illegal and unconstitutional fury on our communities to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for power and wealth. All of us, especially those who hold public office, must no longer act according to business as usual. We must act with urgency in our local communities to do what we can to protect the vulnerable among us.”
The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice in conjunction with ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. SCAAP funds are used to pay states and local governments to cover officer salary costs incurred for jailing immigrants lacking permanent legal status who have at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions and are incarcerated for a minimum of four consecutive days.
To determine eligibility to receive funds, local law enforcement must provide a detainee’s name, date of birth, country of birth, and other personal information with the DOJ.
In 2024, Marin County received $338,136 in SCAAP funding, according to records from the Bureau of Justice Assistance within the DOJ.
Other counties in California have rejected SCAAP grants. San Francisco has been a non-participant in SCAAP since the early 2020s, reaffirming that position in 2025 as being inconsistent with the city’s sanctuary ordinance due to the sharing of immigrant data.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark announced in August that the county would no longer participate in SCAAP. In 2018, then-Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva cut ties with SCAAP, saying in a statement that it “essentially sold our undocumented inmate database information for federal funds.”
‘We’re not going anywhere’
Tuesday’s protest was organized by the Marin Democratic Socialists of America and the Latino advocacy group Fuerzas Unidas. They announced that over 4,700 signatures have been collected by a coalition of community organizations including Mill Valley Force for Racial Equity & Empowerment, Indivisible Marin, Indivisible Novato, Indivisible West Marin and Indivisible Sausalito.
The last protest at a board meeting was Dec. 9. At that meeting, County Executive Derek Johnson said the consideration of SCAAP funding is one of the issues that will be addressed by the county’s newly formed Civilian Oversight Commission.
That commission, which was created a year ago to provide accountability for the Sheriff’s Office’s policies and procedures, as well as process citizen complaints, is in the process of adopting bylaws and developing an operating agreement.
“I call on you not to wait on that board,” said Denise Herman of San Rafael at Tuesday’s meeting. “We have an immoral and brutal organization that we can’t collude with any longer. And so, I do ask that you put it on your agenda right away.”
The Rev. Scott Clark from First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo said to the board that they were seeing an uprising of constituents demanding the agenda item.
“And you know what? We’re not going anywhere,” Clark said. “We’re going to keep coming back and insisting, insisting, insisting that you do the right thing. Daily we see the unconstitutional cruelty of ICE in Minneapolis. What we’re not seeing are the thousands of families who are hiding in their homes because they’re scared to death of the United States government. That cannot happen in Marin.”
He said, “I am so impressed by the political leaders in Minneapolis who have the courage to stand up to this lawless regime. I know that you can do the same thing.”