In the past few months, Orange County residents began criticizing city officials for receiving federal funding through Operation Stonegarden, a program designed to improve coordination between local police departments and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
This past fiscal year, over $85 million was reserved for funding the operation, with seven cities within Orange County receiving department funding under the program. Cities such as Costa Mesa, Orange, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, La Habra, Seal Beach and Laguna Beach have all received a combined $990,000 in federal cooperation grants through the program this past year.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) official website, the program’s funding is meant to enhance cooperation between state and local law enforcement agencies and the federal government in order to protect land and maritime borders.. It is also one of three programs under the Homeland Security Grant Program, a funding initiative for state and local agencies that’s stated purpose is to prevent and respond to terrorism and other national threats.
Some Orange County police officials say the program’s funds will notably be used to reimburse sheriffs who assisted in joint enforcement operations focused on drug trafficking and exchanging information between city officials and law enforcement agencies.
A staff report by the city of Newport Beach upheld the operation’s importance in ensuring ocean border security, citing California’s coastline as a “border-crime target” for drug smuggling that opens the door for other crimes like kidnappings, murders and money laundering. The report further details that the funds received through the operation will be crucial in increasing law enforcement’s presence in Newport Beach.
Although the operation does not explicitly address immigration enforcement in its official outline, many Orange County residents worry that their city officials have been working around the program for this exact purpose.
According to a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) press release, law enforcement partners from the Operation helped the US Border Patrol arrest 95 immigrants in Arizona. The Operation’s resources and federal assistance were cited throughout many CBP press statements as serving a significant role in the arrests of multiple immigrants across the country.
Sandra De Anda, the director of policy for the Orange County Rapid Response Network, told the Voice of OC that local cities need to cut ties with the DHS and reject these grants. De Anda has repeatedly emphasized that Border Patrol’s significant role in the ongoing immigration patrols diminishes reliability and that any federal grants from the DHS would deter trust between city officials and residents.
“Why are cities working with the Department of Homeland Security when they just have such a poor reputation in the county?” De Anda told the Voice of OC.
The funds are primarily administered through the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES), Governor Gavin Newsom’s emergency response office. CalOES officials claim that they have been receiving these federal funds since 2010 and have also claimed that the funds are to protect state borders from drug trafficking rather than strictly immigration enforcement.
Residents like De Anda still question how their representatives could accept DHS’s funding, and whether the federal grants will make local law enforcement more aligned with the Department’s goals rather than public safety.
“Border Patrol hasn’t been helping us out on the issue of public safety, because they’re part of the roving patrols,” De Anda told the Voice of OC.
This is not the first time that OC officials have been accused of willingly collaborating with DHS. Earlier this year, the Voice of OC reported how police officials have notified federal agents over 300 times in the past year with the intent to send off immigrants who have been convicted of “serious felonies.”
Though the sheriff’s department is legally prohibited from directly sending individuals to ICE, many have found a way to pass on information by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and allowing federal agents to pick up detainees outside of prisons. Sheriff-Coroner Don Barnes defended his department’s collaboration with ICE, and said that many of the immigrants who have been released are “felons” and are highly likely to reoffend.
“These offenders pose a significant risk to our communities and removing them is consistent with the department’s mission to enhance public safety for all Orange County residents,” Barnes told Voice of OC. “Allowing federal partners to take custody of individuals already in detention is more targeted, efficient and safer for everyone.”
The only supervisor to call out this activity was former mayor of Santa Ana Vicente Sarmiento, who has criticized ICE’s policies in Orange County as a “rogue agency.” Sarmiento also brought attention to how other counties, such as Los Angeles County, have made the decision not to cooperate with immigration and even saved money by disobeying ICE.
“No one is saying that they don’t have them to serve,” Sarmiento told Voice of OC. “We are now saying that the second step is a volitional step, and is something we need to reconsider.”
Within Orange County, there exist wide disparities in how city officials have handled ICE. A Voice of OC report found that the only cities within OC that have supported donation drives to help immigrants with legal or financial support are Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Irvine. Anaheim was also the only city in OC to post daily updates on ICE activity. With the exception of providing online informational resources, the remaining 30 cities within OC have done nothing this past year in regard to ICE.
Patterns of how city officials have dealt with ICE have consistently misaligned with the Orange population’s perception of immigration. A survey conducted by UCI’s School of Social Ecology found that nearly 44% of respondents hold positive views towards immigrants and consider them as “beneficial” towards helping the country and the job sector. 67% even viewed that they “enrich civic life,” and supported a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants rather than deporting them.
These findings suggest a disconnect between public opinion over ICE and how city officials beyond Orange County have been handling ICE’s goals. For students at UC San Diego, some have taken it upon themselves to correct their representatives’ mistakes. Earlier this year, UC San Diego police decided to cut ties with Operation Stonegarden and retire using the funds from the program after many students began protesting against the campus’s relationship with border control.
De Anda told Voice of OC that UCSD’s experience with Stonegarden should be considered an example to Orange County of how to sever ties with the program and distance itself from the Department.
“It just seems like really there is apathy and really negligence of our elected leaders understanding the implications of what a contract like that would lead to,” said De Anda.
Tariq Abdelkarim is a News Intern for the summer 2026 quarter. He can be reached at tabdelka@uci.edu.
Edited by Konstantin Diatlov
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