San Diego, CA

San Diego County Board, sheriff battle over new policy ending ICE transfers

Published

1 year ago

December 14, 2024

San Diego County Board, sheriff battle over new policy ending ICE transfers

A battle is brewing over San Diego County’s new policy aimed at limiting the sheriff’s transfers of undocumented individuals into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed the measure to end the use of any county resources for immigration enforcement by a vote of 3-1.

The policy builds on Senate Bill 54, a state law known as the California Values Act that was passed in 2017 to limit state and local participation in deportations, with some exceptions for people convicted of crimes like assault and battery.

The Board’s new measure closes those exceptions, which Board Chair Nora Vargas called “loophole[s]” in introducing the policy. The measure ends voluntary transfers from the county into ICE custody, or notifications of anyone’s release from detention, requiring the federal agency to get a judicial warrant. Approximately 200 people were transferred from San Diego County into ICE custody last year.

Hours after the policy’s passage on Tuesday, Sheriff Kelly Martinez said in a statement she would not enforce it, noting she “will continue to follow state law and there is no loophole in state statute.”

“The Sheriff’s Office will not change its practices based on the Board resolution and policy that was passed at today’s meeting,” the statement from Martinez’s office reads in part. “The Board of Supervisors does not set policy for the Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff, as an independently elected official, sets the policy for the Sheriff’s Office.”

“California law prohibits the Board of Supervisors from interfering with the independent, constitutionally and statutorily designated investigative functions of the Sheriff, and is clear that the Sheriff has the sole and exclusive authority to operate the county jails,” the statement concludes.

Advocates have long pushed for the new Board policy.

“We believe this is very important when it comes to ensuring public safety,” said Ian Seruelo, the chair of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, a coalition of advocacy groups.

“The only way for our communities to trust the local government and the local police is to show that our local police is separate and not part of ICE, is not part of immigration enforcement,” he said. “You may not want to report to the police if you think the police is part of ICE, right?”

On Thursday, Seruelo and the SDIRC sent a letter to Martinez, copying the County Board and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, urging her to comply with the new policy.

At issue is the clause within SB 54 that states, “A law enforcement official shall have discretion to cooperate with immigration authorities only if doing so would not violate any federal, state, or local law, or local policy.”

The SDIRC’s letter said “any transfer of notification that is made without a judicial warrant is a direct violation of state law,” because it would violate the new local policy.

“We hope that your statement was a mere misunderstanding on your part of the full scope of the California Values Act, and not a flagrant disregard for state law, our democratic processes and our constitutional rights,” the letter reads.

In response, Martinez again reiterated in a statement Friday, “The Sheriff’s Office will not be expanding nor changing anything we have been doing,” adding that the office “will continue to follow state law and maintain the way we have been operating for several years.”

“The sheriff’s department is saying, ‘Stop. That’s not the state law,’” said immigration attorney Esther Valdes Clayton. “We follow the state constitution and the government code. And the what the government code says is that we can cooperate when it comes to these particularly egregious crimes.”

Valdes Clayton said she believed the Board policy was a “largely symbolic resolution” to score political points before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

“Why was this important to San Diegans?” she asked. “I think it was more important to the three Board of Supervisors and their political careers to have this go on paper and try to attempt to Trump-proof our community.”

Valdes Clayton noted she thought there would be several lawsuits over the policy, adding, “This is something that I believe the Department of Justice is going to have to clarify, all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Seruelo said he too believed lawsuits were a distinct possibility.

“We are ready to continue to be vigilant and to monitor the implementation of the resolution,” he said. “If the sheriff, you know, indeed refuses to follow the resolution and transfers any of our community members without any judicial warrant, then, you know, we may – if we will have to go file a lawsuit in this regard, we would. That would be one of our options, definitely.”

When asked about the conflict, Bonta’s office said in a statement in part, “it is our expectation is that all local law enforcement agencies comply with SB 54 and all applicable local policies enacted in accordance with SB 54.”

“In light of the President-elect’s threats of mass detention, arrests, and deportation, we are monitoring compliance closely; we will take a look at the facts of each scenario as it arises; and we will respond appropriately if we believe an agency is violating the law,” Bonta’s statement continued, pointing back to the county for issues of compliance with local policy.

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San Diego, CA

San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Elephant Valley: Get closer to elephants

Published

2 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Elephant Valley: Get closer to elephants

Todd Martens
| Los Angeles Times

San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.

The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.

“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”

Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.

In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.

“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”

Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.

“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.

“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”

But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.

“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”

That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.

Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.

There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.

One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.

With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”

And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.

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San Diego, CA

Man fatally struck by hit-and-run vehicle in San Diego

Published

15 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Man fatally struck by hit-and-run vehicle in San Diego

A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.

The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.

The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.

The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.

A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.

“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”

Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.

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San Diego, CA

Here are the 9 San Diego County communities that set or tied heat records

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Here are the 9 San Diego County communities that set or tied heat records

San Diego County is known for having wet, cold weather in February. But it had numerous hot spells this year. And when the month ended on Saturday a high pressure system produced heat that broke or tied temperature records in nine communities from the desert to the sea, the National Weather Service said.

The most notable temperature occurred in Borrego Springs, which reached 99, five degrees higher than the previous record for Feb. 28, set in 1986. The 99 reading is also the highest temperature ever recorded in Borrego in February.

Escondido reached 95, tying a record set in 1901.

El Cajon reached 92, three degrees higher than the record set in 2009.

Ramona topped out at 88, five degrees higher than the record set in 2009.

Alpine hit 88, four degrees higher the record set in 1986.

Campo reached 87, four degrees higher than the record set in 1999.

Vista hit 86, four degrees higher than the record set in 2020.

Chula Vista reached 84, one degree higher than the record set in 2020.

Lake Cuyamaca rose to 76, four degrees higher than the record set in 1986.

Forecasters say the weather is not likely to broadly produce new highs on Sunday. Cooler air is moving to the coast, and on Monday, San Diego’s high will only reach 67, a degree above normal.

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