Los Gatos joined a growing list of Santa Clara County governments on Monday night when its Town Council approved a temporary ban on immigration detention and custodial processing facilities anywhere in town.
The urgency ordinance needed four of the five council votes and got exactly four. Council Member Mary Badame, who was on Tuesday's ballot, abstained, and the Los Gatan reported that she left without commenting on the measure or her abstention.
What it does
The moratorium bars the town from accepting, processing or approving applications for detention or custodial processing facilities, and from allowing any to be set up or operated, while staff studies permanent rules, according to the town's agenda report. It lasts 45 days.
State law lets the council extend it after a public hearing for 10 months and 15 days and then one more year, each time by a four-fifths vote.
The ordinance defines covered uses broadly, from jails and immigration detention centers to sites used to book, fingerprint, screen, stage or transfer people in custody, even if no one stays overnight or the building is described as an office or reporting center. It covers both private property and land owned by governments, including the federal government.
Routine police work, medical and residential care, ordinary supervision at schools and child care, and simply passing through town are excluded.
Town code already bans any use it does not list, the staff report notes, but staff wanted to remove any argument that a detention site fits a permitted category.
Why now
The report cites a federal plan described in February to expand immigration detention through large centers, regional processing centers and purchased facilities, and a proposed processing site on about 25 acres near Gilroy that California and Santa Clara County sued over in June. A federal judge temporarily halted construction there in September.