By Nigel Duara | CalMatters
It’s equally true to say that Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman believes he’s upholding federal law, specifically the section of the U.S. criminal code that forbids harboring people in the country illegally.
Both views are likely to get tested in court, just as soon as he makes his first call to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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California’s sanctuary law, passed in 2017 during the first Trump administration, prohibits police from participating in immigration enforcement. They are allowed to inform immigration authorities of someone in the country illegally after the person has been convicted and served their sentence, or otherwise is about to be released from custody.
Between 2018 and 2023, the last date for which data was available, there were 4,192 transfers of people from California jails to immigration authorities.
Now, Redman is planning to test the sanctuary law as President Donald Trump promises the largest deportation program in U.S. history. Trump’s allies have signaled they want to target for the deportations cities and states with sanctuary laws. They have also indicated that they’ll sue local agencies that they view as obstructing immigration enforcement.
At the beginning of the new administration, most California sheriffs told CalMatters that they will not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities, based on their own policies or laws passed by their counties, and will forbid immigration agents from using county personnel, property or databases without a federal warrant.
Others said that while California law prevents direct cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, immigration authorities are free to use their jail websites and fingerprints databases to identify people of interest. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who has announced his plan to run for governor in 2026, vowed to work “around” California law to assist federal immigration enforcement.
But only one sheriff has pledged to break California law by contacting immigration enforcement at the time of a person’s arrest.
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“Ninety-nine percent of (California’s sanctuary law) we’re following and we’re going to continue to follow,” Redman said. “I’ve been asked by several people in the community, when you come in contact with violent felons, somebody who you arrested for rape, and they’re here illegally, what are you gonna do?
“I said, well, I’m not putting them back in the community if they get released. So that’s where the violation of (California’s sanctuary law) would come into play.”
Trump already tested California sanctuary law
When the sanctuary law was up for debate, a number of California sheriffs came out against it. After its passage, the California Department of Justice pledged that it would closely monitor law enforcement departments for compliance.
Now, in response to Redman’s assertion that he will break the sanctuary law, the attorney general’s office said California’s sanctuary law has already survived a Constitutional test when the Trump administration sued the state in 2018. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state sanctuary law didn’t conflict with federal law.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to put the case on their docket, effectively affirming the 9th Circuit ruling.
“Federal courts have upheld (California sanctuary law) and have found it to not be in conflict with federal law,” the attorney general’s office said in an email. “We are closely monitoring law enforcement compliance with (California’s sanctuary law).”
The original Trump administration lawsuit sought to invalidate California’s sanctuary law by saying it conflicted with a federal law – one that forbids state and local law enforcement from interfering with the communication of someone’s immigration status.
But Redman is asserting that a different federal statute compels him to contact immigration enforcement, and that legal theory hasn’t yet been tested.
“I’m looking at it as, we’ve got federal law that specifically talks about harboring in a building. My jail is a building,” he said.
Maria Romani, immigrant rights program director at the ACLU of Northern California, said the most typical violations of California’s sanctuary law are policy issues within a sheriff’s office or police department, such as where immigration enforcement authorities can legally pick up a person who is being released from a county jail.
Romani said most of those incidents are resolved with a conversation rather than a lawsuit.
But Redman is the first sheriff she’s encountered who has declared that he knows he’s violating the law, she said.
“I think it opens his office to liability and I don’t think it’s good for his own staff,” Romani said. “That sort of messaging, it’s not good for public safety. I think the immigrant community will be afraid to contact the sheriff when it has a sheriff that says I will call (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) anytime anyone’s arrested.”
Sheriff: Deputies want to call ICE
Redman said he’s not a hardline conservative, and isn’t taking this position based on his feelings about immigration. He describes himself as a Kennedy Democrat, one who grew up in Los Angeles before moving north, closer to where his wife was raised.
He has lived in Amador County since joining the sheriff’s department in 1998. The county has changed significantly in that time, Redman said, with Bay Area transplants altering the political geography.
That doesn’t mean it’s become more liberal: Voter registration in Amador County was split nearly evenly between Democrats and Republicans in the 2000 presidential election. By the 2024 presidential election, Republican registration was still at about 49%, but registered Democrats had fallen to just 26% of all county voters.
Redman insists that, despite his new policy, he’s not involved in immigration enforcement.
“We’re not in the enforcement aspect of immigration,” Redman said. “We’re not going to be involved in roundups. We don’t have that kind of population.”
He said that his county doesn’t have a major agricultural base compared to the larger Central Valley counties to his south. The county’s major industries are casinos, a prison and vineyards. Redman said his deputies’ most frequent contacts with unauthorized immigrants happens during raids at illegal marijuana grows.
“We just don’t deal with a lot of illegals, however, over my career, we’ve dealt with the cartels,” Redman said. “Usually it was along the lines of large-scale marijuana operations here. And we were dealing with armed subjects who were illegal.”
If anything, Redman said, he’s responding to the requests of his deputies, who fume at the limitations placed on them when they encounter someone in the country illegally but cannot hold the person or refer them to immigration enforcement.
“They look at it as, the person’s here illegally, it’s against the law, why can’t we do anything?” Redman said. “It’s kind of that black and white.”