Orange County is an outlier in California, a state that has become increasingly friendly to immigrants.
As state leaders resisted President Donald Trump's hard line against illegal immigration, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens told the administration that she wanted her deputies to work more closely with federal immigration officials.
When state legislators drafted a bill that positioned California as a "sanctuary" for those who are in the country without legal status, Hutchens spoke out in opposition.
But as 2017 drew to a close and with the bill becoming law at the start of this year, Hutchens took a step back and ended her agency's participation in a federal-local immigration enforcement program known as 287(g), which allowed Orange County deputies to act as immigration agents in its jail.
The program was emblematic of the county's historical opposition to illegal immigration and cozy relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The county sheriff's department was the only governmental entity in the state to participate in the program. Los Angeles County dropped out of the program in 2015.
It's no surprise that a place that gave rise to some of the most influential immigration enforcement activists in the country would hold on for so long, said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine.
"It certainly has always been an anchor of right wing populism in the state," he said.
In the mid-1990s, Barbara Coe of Huntington Beach launched Proposition 187, a ballot initiative approved by voters that sought to deny public services such as public schooling and healthcare to people in the country illegally. The measure was eventually struck down in the courts.
In 2005, Jim Gilchrist of Aliso Viejo co-founded the Minuteman Project, a civilian militia that patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
On Dec. 27, Hutchens announced she'd halt her department's participation in program because it would run afoul of the state legislation that she'd lobbied against but was ultimately signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in October. Still, Hutchens promised to cooperate with ICE as much as the law allowed. Orange County, for example, has a contract to house ICE detainees in its two jails and will continue to do so.
Orange County has long had a closer relationship with ICE than any other county in the state, and that isn't likely to change unless the county's leadership changes, DeSipio said.
"Orange County has just been stuck in the past. It still looks like the state used to in the past and I think it will take a change in the Board of Supervisors. For that sort of change to happen, you need a change in the electoral demographics that can have an effect on county agencies, including the sheriff's department," he said.
The 287(g) program trained deputies to screen jail inmates for their immigration status, place a hold on those they deemed removable from the country and notify ICE. The new state law forbids state and local law enforcement from using resources or staff to help immigration agents with deportations.
Under the new law, local law enforcement agencies can still notify ICE of inmates' release dates if they were convicted of specific crimes _ mostly violent or serious ones.
Orange County has an estimated 250,000 residents who lack legal status, according to an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California.
