Marin County is about to face some serious scrutiny from community activists over its relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On Tuesday, county officials will host a public forum at the Showcase Theater in San Rafael to review how local law enforcement has been interacting with ICE, and organizers are expecting hundreds of people to show up with signs and demands for change.

The meeting is required by California’s TRUTH Act, which stands for Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds. It’s basically the state’s way of keeping tabs on whether local cops are helping federal immigration authorities do their jobs. The forum kicks off at 5 p.m. and will be livestreamed on the county website if you want to tune in from home.

Here’s where things get heated: the Marin County Sheriff’s Office is about to reveal that 23 people were flagged for ICE notifications in 2025, up from 14 the year before. That’s the kind of number that’s got the No ICE in Marin Coalition fired up. Over 6,000 residents have already signed a petition demanding the sheriff stop cooperating with ICE unless there’s a judicial warrant involved. They’re also pushing the county to drop out of a federal reimbursement program called SCAAP that pays counties for immigration-related incarceration costs. Good news on that front: Marin County actually dropped SCAAP funding from its proposed 2026-28 budget back in February.

Activists are pointing to what other Bay Area cities are doing as proof that there’s a better way forward. San Francisco has figured out how to let people’s families and lawyers find them in jail without making their information publicly available to federal agencies the way Marin does. San Francisco and Alameda have both created ICE-free zones on certain public properties. Then there’s Mountain View, Santa Cruz, Los Altos Hills, and Santa Clara County, all of which ended contracts with Flock Safety, a license plate reader company, after discovering the system was sharing data outside of California.

State law actually backs up these moves. Senate Bill 54, California’s 2018 sanctuary law, explicitly prohibits using state and local resources for federal immigration enforcement. Senate Bill 34 from 2016 bans sharing camera database information with federal agencies altogether.

Marin County officials want to be clear that Tuesday’s meeting is purely informational. The Board of Supervisors won’t be taking any action during the forum. But based on the momentum building in the community, don’t expect that to be the last word on this issue. The conversation around ICE cooperation in Marin County is just getting started.