Marin County has removed from its new budget a federal funding source that requires sharing the immigration status of certain people held in county jail.
County Executive Derek Johnson announced the decision to cut the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program grant at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
“I want to note this morning that the budget that I’m preparing and will be presenting to the Board of Supervisors does not include SCAAP funding,” Johnson said.
The coalition of public speakers who assembled at the meeting to protest SCAAP funding applauded the announcement.
“I take seriously the concerns that have been raised,” said Johnson. “I just want to clarify that Marin County remains committed to investing in programs, services and partnerships that promote safety, dignity and access to support. We stand ready to be with our immigrant residents during times of uncertainty or challenges.”
The SCAAP program is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice in conjunction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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 date of incarceration and date of release with the DOJ.
Flying under the radar
Curt Ries, co-chair of the Marin Democratic Socialists of America, said in a call before the meeting that jail booking data does not include someone’s immigration status. Therefore, someone can be jailed yet remain invisible to agencies like ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol that are only looking for immigration status, unless they have a previous federal record that matches information on their booking record.
Ries said when the county sends the DOJ a list of information about undocumented detainees that meet SCAAP funding requirements, the county is helping them build their database.
Ries said that the coalition calling for the funding to be cut had been meeting individually with supervisors since their previous protests at board meetings in October, December and January. At Tuesday’s meeting, the same coalition that came to demand an end to SCAAP funding began to ask for additional protections.
“We think more protections is much safer than trying to fly under the radar with this Trump administration who is, you know, vindictive and does whatever it wants,” said Ries.
He pointed to San Francisco’s system of modifying their searchable jail booking logs in a way that allows the loved ones of those in custody and their attorneys to find information to track them by name, but a public list of those currently in custody is not available to federal agencies like it is in Marin County.
Other suggestions raised by public commenters included establishing ICE-free zones on public property and limiting the use of automated public license plate reader camera systems.
In 2024, Marin County received $338,136 in SCAAP funding, according to records from the Bureau of Justice Assistance within the DOJ.
Scrapping SCAAP funding
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 last year 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.”
Ries predicted that President Donald Trump will someday focus an enforcement surge in the Bay Area, just as he did in Minneapolis.
“It is a very likely outcome given that (Gov. Gavin) Newsom has a home in Ross and Marin County, and the Bay Area is a very Democratic stronghold,” said Ries. “We feel like we need to do all that we can within our local power to prevent them from being able to easily target our undocumented neighbors.”