Fresno County jail transfers to ICE fell 62% in 2025

Fresno County’s jail sent 63 criminal suspects to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025, a sharp drop from 102 transfers in 2024, even as deputies received 634 ICE requests and kept sorting each case under California’s limits on immigration enforcement.

Sheriff John Zanoni laid out the numbers in a Tuesday update, saying the people transferred were not random immigration cases but suspects tied to felony conduct. The 63 transfers included 36 crimes against people, four sex crimes, 13 property crimes and 10 DUI or drug felonies. The biggest underlying offenses were false imprisonment with violence, felony domestic violence and felony burglary.

The decline matters because Fresno County sits at the center of a familiar California conflict: how to protect public safety without turning local jails into immigration checkpoints. Under SB 54, the state’s Values Act, deputies do not proactively alert ICE about people in custody. Instead, they review federal requests and decide whether a person fits the law’s narrow criteria. The California Department of Justice says that law, enacted in 2017, limits local participation in arrests, investigations, detentions and other immigration-enforcement activity, while still allowing certain forms of contact with federal agents.

The 2025 total came after a much busier 2024. Last year, Fresno County transferred 102 people to ICE, a five-year high, from 389 ICE hold requests and more than 26,214 jail bookings. Zanoni also said there were zero ICE interviews inside the Fresno County Jail in 2024. In that year, the biggest categories were crimes against persons and property crimes, and all of the transfers were in felony cases.

Supervisor Garry Bredefeld seized on the report to argue that cooperation with ICE helps remove people who prey on others. Immigration-rights advocates have pushed the opposite view, saying the county should move to zero transfers because the practice can chill trust in local law enforcement, especially in immigrant neighborhoods where fear of jail contact can keep victims and witnesses silent.

The broader legal backdrop has also tightened the spotlight on Fresno. Attorney General Rob Bonta issued updated SB 54 and TRUTH Act guidance on January 17, 2025, reminding agencies that state and local resources cannot be used to carry out federal immigration enforcement except in limited circumstances. Fresno County is also required to hold a TRUTH Act public forum when ICE accessed people in the jail during the prior year, giving the sheriff a public accounting of holds, transfers, notifications and other contact.

For now, the county’s numbers show a narrower transfer pipeline, but not a quieter debate. The question in Fresno County is whether the drop reflected a deliberate policy shift, or simply the result of fewer requests meeting the legal threshold.