County officials react to jail's new relationship with immigration agents.

Two months after immigration agents were allowed back into Monterey County Jail to look for deportable inmates, county officials are becoming aware of the change.

Supervisor Jane Parker is among those troubled by that news.

"I am concerned because under the previous sheriff there was a policy that the county wasn't to cooperate with [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and I was concerned when I heard that not only was there cooperation, but that they were being given office space in a county building," she says.

In mid-August, Sheriff Steve Bernal granted federal agents access to the jail and its records. He says he did so to prevent "criminal aliens from slipping through the cracks," like an undocumented immigrant did when he allegedly shot and killed a woman in San Francisco.

But since the county Board of Supervisors was never notified, some supervisors are left scrambling for answers, including Supervisor Fernando Armenta.

“I will be checking with [Supervisor] Simon [Salinas] as to how come the sheriff did not come to talk to us and give us a briefing about this,” Armenta says. “I have to say, representing a largely Latino community, this does not sit well with me.”

Armenta says he plans to contact Bernal to request a briefing on the issue.

Parker was unsettled when she had no answers for a resident, who heard a rumor about the change in policy. 

“There is something wrong here if I can’t get the information that I should, it has not been easy to get information over the past two weeks and people have approached me with concerns,” Parker says.

Supervisor Simon Salinas reminisced on the policy implemented by former Sheriff Scott Miller on May 2014, which essentially says immigration holds on inmates would not be honored at the jail.

Salinas says defendants with significant misdemeanors and felonies should be deported, which is Bernal's stance. He counters that this move compromises the work done in the county over the years to build trust within the Latino community.

Former Salinas Councilman Sergio Sanchez agrees. He says he is "disappointed" that this type of cooperation is taking place: "We all agree that criminals and individuals with felonies in this community should be dealt with, I don't defend them, but when you have people with minor infractions and traffic violations taken away from their families, I don't agree with that."

Bernal argues ICE does not have the resources to deport working immigrants, and that federal agents are focusing on convicted gang members and people with previous felonies, "serious misdemeanors" or more than three misdemeanors.

But defense attorneys say some people without a criminal past are being deported.

Santa Cruz-based immigration attorney Michael Mehr says he has had at least two clients who have been deported over drunken driving charges that were never filed.

"[This policy] is supposed to be for serious criminals, but in some cases charges weren't even filed," Mehr says. 

State Sen. Bill Monning says he is worried due process may be at stake and that the change will spread fear among the Latino community.

"When police seem to be in alliance with deportation authorities, you're going to lose that cooperation with the community. To lose the cooperation around misdemeanor charges, just seems foolish," Monning says.

"You want families to cooperate with local law enforcement, maybe to solve one of the 31 murders in Salinas?" he adds.

Assemblyman Luis Alejo said on a Facebook post that he wants Bernal to "immediately" change the policy because it "undermines the spirit of the CA Trust Act that the legislature approved, and the work that many of us did to have a humane policy at our local jail."

However, it looks like Monterey County is not alone on this, but rather part of a big political shift that has local governments cooperating with ICE in California.

Virginia Kice, a spokesman with ICE, says that of the roughly 340 jurisdictions that previously declined to cooperate with ICE, over half have now agreed to cooperate since the San Francisco killing sparked a political backlash on immigration.