The San Diego County Board of Supervisors, representing California's second-largest county, voted 3-2 in August to end licensing agreements with the Department of Homeland Security, pulling ICE agents' access to the Miramar and San Diego Regional firearms training centers. That is the policy. The problem is that dozens of that same party's members in Congress have spent months arguing those agents need more training, not less access to it.
California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, a Republican from Poway who represents part of the county, called the contradiction impossible to square. "Leftist Democrats cannot continue to advocate for federal agents to 'get more training' while at the same time purposefully removing opportunities like this to get that very training," Jones told Fox News Digital. He also raised a fiscal read-through the board has not yet answered: the county's licensing arrangements with DHS brought revenue, and Jones asked publicly how much the termination and any breach-of-contract exposure would ultimately cost San Diego taxpayers.
The federal appetite for better-trained agents runs deeper than one minority leader's complaint. A letter signed by 28 House Democrats and led by Rep. Andrea Salinas of Oregon pressed DHS, CBP and ICE on reporting that agency training had been "significantly reduced," directly contradicting Acting Director Lyons's public claims. Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois raised the same concern at a February hearing. Border Czar Tom Homan, speaking to reporters in July, said the administration's own position was that more training is always welcome. "You can never be overtrained," Homan said. "I wish there was more training."
Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, Democrat from San Ysidro, offered the counterargument and it deserves weight. She told the board she sees daily what fear does to communities in the South Bay, and that residents near the Mexican ports of entry in San Ysidro and Otay Mesa experience federal enforcement differently than the critics of her vote do. When communities go silent, she said, elected officials have a duty to speak. The two Republicans on the board, Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson, voted against the measure. Desmond is running this fall to succeed retiring Rep. Darrell Issa.
On balance, the vote settles what county resources will support and nothing more. The read-through for the Democrats behind it: 28 of their federal colleagues signed a letter to DHS arguing that reduced ICE training is the specific danger, and the administration's own border czar said in July he wished agents had more of it.