The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is facing increasing pressure to terminate a contract that grants some federal immigration enforcement agencies access to a local law enforcement database.
This comes after a KPBS investigation revealed how U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pays SANDAG nearly $100,000 each year for access to the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS) database.
Although CBP is prohibited from using the data for immigration enforcement, SANDAG lacks independent auditing authority over how the database is used. This means the federal agencies are essentially policing themselves.
Members of the SANDAG board, which includes elected officials from San Diego County’s 18 cities and the county itself, voiced their concerns during the board's public meeting last week.
“The question is, are all ARJIS member agencies complying with (California sanctuary law) SB 54, and to me the answer is we don’t know,” Solana Beach Mayor and SANDAG Chair Lesa Heebner said.
At the meeting, ARJIS director Anthony Ray gave the board a presentation of the database. He told the board that ARJIS’ main mission is “to get the right information to the right people at the right time.”
Every law enforcement agency in San Diego County feeds data into ARJIS. That data includes traffic citations, arrest records, field interviews, a local jail census and some driver license records. Outside agencies such as CBP and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a subagency of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), pay for access to the database.
Ray also described several search tools available through ARJIS. One is called the "Officer Notification System."
“The way it works is, if a deputy in Vista was looking for Tony Ray as a suspect, witness, victim, whatever, they would put it in the Officer Notification System and if an officer in El Cajon were to contact Tony Ray and run them through the system, they would get an immediate alert,” he said.
SANDAG board members agreed that sharing local information with federal law enforcement is — generally — good public safety policy. But many questioned whether federal immigration agencies can be trusted.
Carlsbad Councilmember Kevin Shin, a Marine Corps veteran, referenced an arrest of a U.S. veteran as a reason to reevaluate the ongoing contracts.
“The relationship with the federal government does need to exist,” he said. “The only problem is the fact that — and this is my military side, it looks like tactics are being taken without any strategic objective.”
Other board members referenced the killings by federal agents in Minneapolis this month and the detention of a 5-year-old boy in that city.
Local privacy advocates who have long criticized the relationships between SANDAG and ARJIS said they are now especially concerned because of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
“More data does not equal more safety,” Patricia Mondragon of Alliance San Diego said.
Several board members asked Ray about the lack of independent oversight from ARJIS. He said that a joint powers agreement specifically states that SANDAG cannot run audits. Instead, it is up to agencies to request audits on themselves.
The last time CBP requested an audit was in 2017, and the agency refused to allow SANDAG to make the audit available to the public.
Lemon Grove Mayor Alysson Snow asked whether SANDAG could simply see how often certain agencies use ARJIS.
“Have we conducted an audit to see what the actual usage is and who is obtaining this data? Have there been spikes in data usage from particular departments?” she asked Ray.
“Are you asking if ARJIS is going that?” Snow said.
“No,” Ray said.
County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre questioned whether CBP and HSI should have access to ARJIS.
HSI is the “premier federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security,” according to the ICE website. Historically, the agency has focused on complex law enforcement investigations targeting transnational criminal organizations that engage in drug and human trafficking.
Since Trump took office last year, however, more than 12,000 HSI agents have been reassigned to do routine immigration enforcement alongside ICE agents, according to a report from the Cato Institute.
Aguirre specifically questioned whether SANDAG could trust HSI not to share ARJIS data with ICE agents.
San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno was more blunt. She called on SANDAG to terminate the contracts in a future meeting.
“I’ve seen enough from our federal agencies to know that I do not want to participate in what ICE is doing,” Moreno said.
Other members cautioned against removing CBP from ARJIS because it may have negative public safety implications.
“We need to find out what it is we can do without having unintended consequences,” Heebner said.
Following Ray’s presentation, the board asked SANDAG’s legal team to prepare a report on ARJIS that includes actionable items for the board to consider in future meetings.
