San Diego County sheriff, supervisors at odds over gun range use by CBP

The San Diego County Sheriff and the Board of Supervisors are once again at odds over the local response to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown — this time over federal immigration agencies’ access to two firing ranges the sheriff operates. 

The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to end agreements that for years allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to use two firing ranges, one in Otay Mesa that the county owns and another in Miramar that the county leases.

Hours after the 3-2 vote, however, Sheriff Kelly Martinez said she would still allow CBP to use the range in Otay Mesa, citing concerns about potential federal staffing impacts at ports of entry. 

Her office said she “has notified” ICE that the agency can no longer use sheriff facilities for firearms training, citing community concerns over “ICE agents during armed confrontations in other parts of the country.” 

It’s unclear whether the sheriff or the Board of Supervisors have the final say on this issue, which marks the latest disagreement among the elected officials over immigration this year.

inewsource was the first to report on the firing range agreement in Otay Mesa in April.

The vote to terminate access came after two hours of discussion and comments from dozens of speakers, including immigrant advocacy organizations, cross border business groups and a local top CBP official. 

The majority of speakers voiced support for ending the agreements. 

Supervisor Chair Terra Lawson-Remer and Supervisor Paloma Aguirre introduced the measure at a press conference on Monday. At the meeting, Aguirre said ending the agreements would help protect immigrant communities who have learned to “stay quiet and stay out of sight” in fear of aggressive immigration enforcement. 

“To hear a knock on the door and freeze, to see an ICE uniform and pull your child a little closer, to need help from a hospital, from the police, from your own government, and be too afraid to ask for it.” Aguirre said. “I see what that fear does every day in the South Bay.” 

Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe voted to support the measure along with her Democratic colleagues, Lawson-Remer and Aguirre. Republican supervisors Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson voted against it. 

“Wherever you stand on ICE, I believe we can all agree that more training is a good thing,” Desmond said in a statement. “Today’s action puts politics and optics ahead of common sense and public safety, and it will make our communities less safe. That is why I voted no.”

Since 2024, officials with ICE and CBP have logged about 3,350 hours at the San Diego Regional Firearms Training Center, the range in Otay Mesa. 

The compound at 440 Alta Road includes five firing ranges, five classrooms, two “indoor close-quarters training environments,” a defensive tactics training room and an auditorium. It was built in 1996 through a partnership between the FBI and the county.

Tuesday’s vote could also end ICE’s access to the range at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which that the U.S. Navy owns and leases to the county. 

Ahead of the vote, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a statement that terminating the contracts would “immediately and directly impact the efficient cross border flow of legitimate international trade and travel across San Diego County.” 

Scott said CBP officers who staff ports of entry such as land ports of entry, airports and seaports would be forced to leave the region to complete training and certification. The impacts would include “lane closures, the closure of SENTRI enrollment offices, the San Ysidro Pedestrian West facility, pilot programs, technology testing, and permit offices that service tourist visas, deferred and special cases,” Scott said.

CBP’s Director of Field Operations in San Diego, Sidney Aki, spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, during which he attempted to separate the role of CBP officers at ports of entry, who review all incoming vehicles, pedestrians, commercial traffic and cargo before it enters the U.S., from that of Border Patrol agents and ICE officers. 

CBP officers, who fall under the Office of Field Operations, would be forced to extend the length of training and spend more time away from ports of entry if the supervisors cut access to the range, Aki said. 

The San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego is one of the busiest land ports of entry in the world, with tens of thousands of vehicles and pedestrians passing through daily in addition to significant commercial and shipping traffic. 

Citing the potential impacts, representatives from crossborder business groups including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Smart Border Coalition urged the county to reject the measure and continue the contracts. 

Alejandra Mier y Teran, executive director of the Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce, said she was speaking “on behalf of the thousands of workers that cross the border every single day” who can wait two to four hours to cross the border.  

“I’m literally begging you not to play a part in increasing wait times at our ports of entry,” Mier y Teran said. 

Supervisors Lawson-Remer and Aguirre pushed back on the idea that restricting access to the firing range would lead to longer border wait times. They pointed to the more than $60 billion that CBP has received in funding through a law passed last year that included money for additional staffing and infrastructure improvements. 

“It boggles the mind to think that a $110,000 contract at a county training facility could be the linchpin for a multi-billion dollar cross-border operation,” Lawson-Remer said. “That seems to me to be a distraction from the real issue at stake here.” 

Supporters of terminating the agreements cited the harm federal agents have brought to immigrant communities under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Since Trump’s inauguration in 2025, federal agents carrying out immigration enforcement nationwide have shot and killed six people. 

Immigration advocates said the shared use of the firing range in Otay Mesa, which is also used to train sheriff’s deputies, would fuel fear among immigrants that local law enforcement was working together with ICE. 

In California, most collaboration between federal authorities and local law enforcement for immigration purposes is unlawful under the “Values Act.”

Alondra Alvarez, a community educator with the immigrant advocacy group Universidad Popular, and Lilian Serrano, director of the Southern Borders Communities Coalition, gave a formal presentation to the board at the start of the public hearing on the contracts. 

In the presentation, Alvarez played a recording of what she said was a father being arrested by ICE in Escondido. For about 20 seconds, the sounds of a child’s wails and a woman’s voice pleading for help filled the county chamber. 

“Lots of us deliver food to the homes of families that have been living behind locked doors,” Alvarez said. “People that will not seek medical care, report crimes or interact with any form of government. People will call us in fear that ICE is on their street when in actuality it’s police.”