SANTA CRUZ, California — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived at the Santa Cruz Main Jail on Saturday morning without giving the county sheriff any advance warning, Sheriff Chris Clark told Lookout Santa Cruz in an interview on Monday.

"Saturday's incident was interesting in the sense that I didn't get any forewarning," Clark said. "We didn't get a call." In earlier incidents, he said, ICE had given his department a courtesy notification before enforcement activity; Lookout has tallied at least 39 such courtesy calls across the county in the past two years.

Source: Lookout Santa Cruz

Clark said the agents later told his office they had come to pick up a man who had been arrested shortly after midnight early Saturday on suspicion of DUI — his fourth such arrest, which Clark noted is classified as a felony. Because of the charge, the man was not released that morning and could not leave until he could post bail, so the agents' wait ended without a transfer.

The Sheriff's Office said in a statement on Saturday that the agents left without detaining anyone. Volunteers with Your Allied Rapid Response, a group that monitors ICE activity, first reported the agents at about 9:30 a.m.; vehicles carrying agents remained outside into the afternoon and had left the parking lot by 2:30 p.m., with nearly 20 volunteers on scene.

Source: Lookout Santa Cruz

Clark said the agents entered only the jail's public lobby and never its secured areas. His department does not share the immigration status of people in the jail, as restricted under California's Senate Bill 54, and he said ICE likely learned of the arrest through fingerprint records shared with a central FBI database. "I want to reiterate that we don't work with ICE. We don't participate in immigration enforcement," Clark said.

Clark also clarified that the county ordinance barring ICE from using county property as a staging or processing base does not bar agents from being on jail property, and that his department would have to comply if agents arrived with a judicial warrant. It was not clear whether the agents would return.