Politics and reality in Trump’s xenophobic America collide locally.

Certainly there are voters in Monterey County who share President Donald Trump’s unwarranted hatred and fear of immigrants, even though we live in a county where nearly a third of the population is foreign-born. But fortunately, most of us view this as a gift of the melting pot that is the United States of America, a chance for people to pursue economic opportunity, live in freedom, build a life – and of course for all of us, wherever we were born, to soak up the cultural experience of living in a diverse community.

That concurrence is shared at all levels of local government. Since Trump was elected on a platform of xenophobia, elected officials have raced to articulate their support for our immigrant community and pledge to uphold and honor their rights. This is true of all five members of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and also the Monterey County sheriff.

But the devil is in the details, and the details were so fraught in a discussion on Tuesday, April 14 that Sheriff Tina Nieto asked the board to appoint a special legal counsel to represent her department, raising concerns about a potential conflict of interest since County Counsel’s office represents both the sheriff and the Board of Supervisors.

The issues at hand mostly concerned the degree to which the sheriff communicates with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In 2025, ICE requested access to 285 inmates in the Monterey County Jail, about 3 percent of the incarcerated population. The Sheriff’s Office approved the release of just 21 of those inmates to ICE custody.

We know that data thanks to a mandatory presentation California sheriffs must provide to the public each year, and which Nieto did in January. But faced with additional concerns from the board, she was back on April 14 with more detail about those people.

She read off descriptions about the charges or convictions against the 21 people: One was convicted for lewd acts on a child; one was arrested for attempting to stab a victim in a parking lot while intoxicated; another stabbed his roommate, injuring the victim to a point that required hospitalization, and was arrested for attempted murder. The grim list went on. “These are not minor offenses,” Nieto said. “These individuals pose a potential danger to the community if released.”

No Monterey County supervisor condones such conduct, but they did have questions centered on the eight of the 21 individuals who had not yet been convicted for their grisly crimes.

“I believe this sort of collaboration is the definition of extrajudicial,” Supervisor Kate Daniels said. “The safest thing to do is to let the judicial system play out and ensure violent criminals are convicted and sentenced. That’s what would be the safest thing.”

“Are we making our communities safer today?”

She and Supervisor Wendy Root Askew vehemently agreed that eliminating any shred of cooperation between the County and ICE was in the best interest of public safety. But the two supervisors who serve on the county’s committee to deal with threats to immigrants’ rights under the Trump administration, Luis Alejo and Chris Lopez, were skeptical.

“Are we making our communities, especially Latino communities, safer through the actions we are taking today?” Lopez said. “I don’t think we are… we’re scoring political points.”

Given the data, Alejo questioned the need to request a complete prohibition that goes beyond California’s standards. “I want to be sure we aren’t putting a solution forward in search of a problem,” he said.

Root Askew asked for a policy that the HR department require County employees to disclose outside work for immigration enforcement agencies. She asked for the long-awaited creation of a third party with oversight over the sheriff. (Supervisor Glenn Church, her colleague responsible for advancing that oversight board, said the committee has not met in about two years.)

The biggest challenge, perhaps, is that the Board of Supervisors does not actually have authority over the sheriff, also elected. That makes the creation of an oversight board – long promised, and something Nieto herself said she was open to during her campaign – all the more important.

The supervisors will revisit the topic on June 9.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com