Last year, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office transferred almost three times more inmates to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody than in 2024, according to an annual transfer report.
The dramatic increase in transfers is almost entirely due to a spike in federal warrants from ICE and has led to renewed calls for Sheriff Kelly Martinez to end the practice.
Under California’s sanctuary laws, county sheriffs can transfer immigrant inmates to ICE custody as long as they’ve been convicted of certain crimes or if ICE presents a federal warrant.
In 2025, sheriff’s deputies transferred 83 people to ICE custody, up from 30 transfers in 2024. Martinez shared the numbers last week during a public forum. Data show federal warrants accounted for 53 of the 2025 transfers.
While many of the 83 transfers had violent criminal convictions like murder, assault, kidnapping and child abuse, several had nonviolent offenses from several years ago.
For example, a Mexican national with a 1996 robbery conviction was rearrested for drug possession in May 2025. The Sheriff’s Office used the 1996 conviction as justification for the transfer.
Relatives of one man transferred last year, Cosme Koutalou, said he had been in the U.S. for 15 years.
“Immigration is getting completely out of control,” his aunt Memee Hernandez, said at the forum. “Being pulled over for tinted windows … and then being arrested and sent to the middle of nowhere, just imagine how we feel.”
Records show Koutalou, a Cuban national, was convicted of robbery in 2022 and rearrested for a parole violation in January 2025. A few days later he was transferred to ICE custody and then deported to Mexico.
Immigrant advocates at the forum asked Martinez to stop transferring San Diegans to ICE custody. They point out that state sanctuary law is discretionary — meaning it does not force sheriffs to transfer inmates, it merely allows them to. Activists noted that other counties, like Los Angeles, have ended the practice.
County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said the state’s sanctuary laws are meant to increase trust between local law enforcement and immigrant communities. And she argued transferring inmates to ICE custody erodes that trust.
“We know we’re living in a time where fear is real in our communities, I would even call it terror,” she said.
Toward the end of the forum, Aguirre asked Martinez whether she planned to change her office’s policy.
Martinez said she would not. She said it’s safer for ICE agents to pick up targets in county jails instead of going out in the community and potentially arresting people with no criminal history — a practice ICE describes as “collateral arrests.”
“If they’re going to go into the community, there will be collateral damage and that’s my biggest concern,” Martinez said.
In 2024, county supervisors tried to limit Martinez’s ability to transfer inmates to ICE. However, Martinez has argued that, as an independently elected official, she has the “sole and exclusive” authority to operate the county jail system.
