San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez banned ICE from using sheriff's facilities for training and firearms qualifications, but refused a county board directive to also cut off Customs and Border Protection, warning that doing so would hurt commerce, workers, and border communities on both sides of the line.
Martinez announced the ICE ban this week, citing what she called "community concerns about the agency's conduct during armed confrontations elsewhere in the country." At the same time, she broke with the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which had directed county administrators to terminate lease agreements with both ICE and CBP at county-owned facilities, including the Otay Range used by border agents for firearms qualifications.
The split decision puts Martinez in an unusual position: siding with the board against one federal law enforcement agency while openly defying the same board on another. And it raises a pointed question about whether the sheriff's stated principle, "community trust", is being applied consistently or selectively.
Martinez framed the decision as a balancing act. Fox News Digital reported that the sheriff spent two weeks meeting with community stakeholders before deciding to maintain CBP's access to the Otay Range, a county-owned firearms facility where border agents complete required classroom instruction and gun qualifications.
Her office provided figures to justify keeping CBP in place: more than 225,000 people cross into the United States through San Diego's ports of entry each day, along with more than 90,000 vehicles, over 50,000 pedestrians, and roughly 5,500 commercial trucks. Border wait times already run between one and three hours. Losing trained CBP officers, Martinez argued, would slow those crossings further, increase pollution from idling vehicles, and ripple into neighboring Imperial County, where some agents also rely on the Otay Range.
Martinez said in a statement:
"Too many people on both sides of the border would be harmed by a decision to end CBP's use of the facility."
She added that her office is exploring future training options, though she offered no specifics. The only alternative mentioned was Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which she acknowledged has limited availability.
What Martinez did not explain is why ICE agents, who also carry firearms and also serve federal law enforcement functions, deserve less access to training resources than CBP officers. The stated reason, vague concerns about ICE's "conduct during armed confrontations elsewhere in the country," came with no specifics: no incident names, no dates, no locations. Fox News Digital reached out to ICE, CBP, and San Diego County for comment. None had responded at the time of publication.
Martinez's decision did not happen in a vacuum. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors has been moving steadily toward cutting ties with federal immigration enforcement for more than a year.
In late 2024, the board voted 3-1 to adopt what critics called a "super sanctuary" ordinance, a policy that went beyond California's 2017 Values Act by banning all county cooperation with federal immigration officials, including for serious felonies. The sole Republican supervisor, Jim Desmond, voted against it. Desmond called the policy "an affront to every citizen who values safety and justice," noting that it shielded illegal immigrants who had committed "violent and heinous crimes."
At the time, Martinez pushed back on the board. She declared that her office, as an independently elected entity, would not comply with the resolution and would continue communicating with ICE about violent criminals, a stance permitted under California's own Values Act. Just The News reported that nearly half of San Diego County's $8.5 billion budget, 48.5 percent, comes from the federal government, putting billions in funding at risk under the Trump administration's enforcement priorities.
So Martinez was willing to defy the board when it tried to block her from talking to ICE about violent criminals. Now she is voluntarily banning ICE from her own training facilities, and citing community trust as the reason.
Martinez leaned heavily on the language of trust in her public statements. She said:
"Our authority to enforce the law depends on the trust and confidence of the communities we serve, and I always balance my decisions based on community trust and public safety."
She also invoked her duty broadly:
"As sheriff, I have a duty to protect and serve everyone who lives in or enters San Diego County."
Those are fine words. But the sheriff's framing raises an obvious tension. If community trust requires denying ICE access to a firing range, what does community trust require when illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes are shielded from federal agents? Martinez answered that question differently just months ago, when she stood against the board's super sanctuary vote. Her willingness to draw different lines for ICE and CBP, both federal agencies, both operating under federal authority, suggests the calculus has less to do with principle and more to do with political pressure.
The board's directive to terminate lease agreements with both ICE and CBP remains in place. Martinez is complying with the ICE portion and resisting the CBP portion. The legal mechanism for resolving that conflict, whether the board can force the independently elected sheriff's hand on facility access, remains unclear. No court filing or formal legal challenge has been reported.
Lost in the political maneuvering is a practical reality: federal law enforcement officers must maintain firearms qualifications to do their jobs. CBP officers are required to complete classroom instruction and gun range qualifications as part of their ongoing training. ICE agents face similar requirements. Denying them access to local ranges does not eliminate the training mandate, it just makes it harder and more expensive to meet.
Martinez herself acknowledged this when defending CBP's continued access. She warned that pushing border agents to facilities with limited availability, like Miramar, could degrade readiness and slow port-of-entry operations. The same logic applies to ICE, but Martinez did not address it.
San Diego County sits directly on the busiest stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 225,000 people pass through its ports of entry daily. The county's sheriff controls access to training infrastructure that federal agents depend on. Turning that access into a political lever, granting it to one agency and pulling it from another based on unspecified community concerns, is a policy choice with real consequences for public safety and federal operations.
When local officials decide which federal law enforcement agencies deserve to train and which do not, the principle they are applying is not community trust. It is selective cooperation, and the communities left holding the consequences deserve to know the difference.
