San Diego County Ends Contracts for Federal Immigration Agent Training

Three thousand three hundred training hours. That’s how much time federal immigration agents logged at San Diego County firing ranges since 2024 alone, learning to do a dangerous job better and safer. And this week, three county supervisors decided that was a problem.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to yank training contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. No more practice at the county-owned range near the border. No more sessions at the Navy facility out at Miramar. The feds have used these ranges for years. CBP since 2017. ICE since 2021. But now, suddenly, that’s a moral crisis.

Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe explained the vote with a straight face: “Federal immigration agents have harmed our communities many different ways here locally and throughout the nation. We just don’t want to be complicit in that.”

Complicit. In training. At a firing range. Bless her heart.

Monica Montgomery / San Diego County Administration Center (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Let me walk through the logic here, because I want to make sure I understand it. Federal agents who enforce immigration law along the busiest border crossing in the country need to be good shots. They need range time. They need to practice so that when things go sideways, and they do go sideways on that border, they don’t hit the wrong person. And the county’s answer is: we’d rather you drive two hours to find another range and train less?

That’s not moral courage. That’s theater. And it’s theater that makes the people these supervisors claim to protect less safe, not more.

Supervisor Jim Desmond, one of the two who voted no, said what any sane person would say: law enforcement agencies should be working and training together. Making agents travel farther doesn’t accomplish anything except letting three politicians feel righteous on a Tuesday afternoon.

Here’s what I can see with my own eyes. A county of more than 3 million people sits right on the Mexican border. Federal agents there do a job that is dangerous, necessary, and thankless. They check cargo. They process crossings. They enforce laws that Congress wrote and that every single one of these supervisors’ preferred presidential candidates promised to enforce until about five minutes ago. And the county’s contribution to the national conversation is to cut off their access to a practice range.

The supervisors say they want to “keep the trust” of immigrant communities. They say they’ve worked hard to distinguish local police from federal agents. Advocates are worried because federal authorities sometimes wear masks and street clothes, and it’s hard to tell which agency they work for.

Sgt. 1st Class Gordon Hyde (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

I have a question. How does kicking ICE off a firing range fix any of that? The agents are still going to show up. They’re still going to do their jobs. They’re just going to be less practiced when they do it. If you’re worried about agents in your neighborhood, you should want them well-trained. You should want them sharp. You should want them to have spent every possible hour at a range learning to handle a weapon properly.

Other communities faced the same choice. Escondido, just up the road, debated it. So did towns in New York and Minnesota. They all kept their contracts. Because somebody in those rooms had the common sense to realize that a firing range is not a political statement. It’s a place where people learn not to shoot the wrong person.

But San Diego’s supervisors looked at all that and said: no, we’d rather make a point. A point that helps nobody and endangers everybody who has to carry a badge near that border.

Three thousand three hundred hours of training, gone. Because three politicians wanted to feel clean. That’s not leadership. That’s a press release with a body count waiting to happen.