California ICE Detainers: DHS Claims 24,000 Releases

DHS says California let nearly 24,000 people go despite ICE detainers since January 2025. The number has grown fast, and the department has not said exactly what it counts.

California ICE detainers are back at the center of the sanctuary fight. On Nov. 2, the day before the midterm vote, the Department of Homeland Security said California jails had released “nearly 24,000 criminal illegal aliens” since Jan. 20, 2025, instead of holding them for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The claim lands on county sheriffs, state officials and the people booked into California jails, and it rests on a figure that is roughly five times what ICE was citing as recently as February.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin framed the release as an indictment of the state’s leadership, saying Gov. Gavin Newsom “and his cronies in California have turned the Golden State into a hotbed of illegal alien crime.” The department tied the released people to “more than 81,000 criminal charges or convictions,” including 169 homicides, 147 sexual assaults, 1,088 drug trafficking charges, 1,097 assaults and 3,295 burglaries, and it named 10 people from six counties.

What a detainer asks, and what California law forbids

A detainer is a request signed by an immigration officer, not a judge. It asks a jail to notify ICE before a release and to hold the person up to 48 hours longer so officers can take custody.

California’s answer is the California Values Act, the 2017 law known as SB 54. Government Code section 7284.6 bars state and local law enforcement from “detaining an individual on the basis of a hold request.” It allows transfers to ICE only with a judicial warrant or judicial probable cause determination, or under a separate section, 7282.5, that lists the criminal histories for which cooperation is permitted. Even then, the statute says responses to ICE notification requests “are never required.”

That framework survived a Justice Department lawsuit: the Ninth Circuit upheld its core in 2019, and the Supreme Court declined review. A new federal push is more likely to come through funding conditions or public pressure than a repeat suit.

Three federal numbers, three different measures

When stated	Who said it	Figure	What it counts
Feb. 6, 2026	DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, in a letter reported by Fox News	33,179	Detainers lodged on people in California custody; no period given
Oct. 29, 2026	ICE figure cited in a House Judiciary Committee Republican report, as reported by the New York Post	4,561	People released despite detainers, Jan. 20, 2025, to early February 2026
Nov. 2, 2026	DHS press release	Nearly 24,000	People released despite detainers since Jan. 20, 2025; no end date stated

Sources: DHS release of Nov. 2, 2026; Fox News, Feb. 6, 2026; New York Post, Oct. 29, 2026.

Read together, the figures imply that roughly 19,400 releases were added in about nine months, a calculation from the two federal release counts above. That would be a sharp acceleration. The release does not define a “non-honored detainer,” does not say whether the count includes people later picked up by ICE, and does not separate state prisons from county jails. Those gaps matter because California’s prison system does work with ICE: the state corrections department has transferred more than 12,000 people into ICE custody since 2019, Fox News reported in February.

The 81,000 figure also mixes charges with convictions, and several of the 10 people DHS named are described only as arrested for the most serious offenses listed.

Where the two sides stand

The administration’s position, in the words of its release, is that California chooses to send people with criminal records “back onto the street” rather than turn them over to ICE. A House Judiciary Committee Republican report, as reported by the New York Post, found the Los Angeles Police Department honored 4 of 4,177 detainers from January 2020 to June 2026, and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office declined all 2,201 it received from January 2020 to August 2026.

California’s position, stated by the governor’s office in February, is that “claims that California ‘blocks’ cooperation with ICE are simply false,” and that the state cooperates when it comes to removing people convicted of serious crimes from its prisons. Federal courts have found that jails holding people solely on an ICE detainer can violate the Fourth Amendment.

For people in California jails, nothing changes in practice: a detainer alone will not keep them in custody, though it raises the odds of an ICE arrest after release. The same fight runs from the dismissed Justice Department suit against New York City’s sanctuary laws to Colorado’s Amendment 81 ballot measure, and California’s suit over ICE courthouse arrests. As with DHS’s 2.2 million USCIS enforcement tally, the headline number will be hard to test until the department publishes the data behind it. The most likely independent check is the annual report of ICE transfers that section 7284.6 requires every California agency to file with the state Justice Department.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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