The program, known as Operation Stonegarden, is administered by the Department of Homeland Security and distributes an average of $11 million a year to California law enforcement agencies that partner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its Border Patrol division on border security missions. Dozens of agencies across the state have tapped the grant over the years, including UC San Diego’s police department, which had participated since roughly 2012.

Reporting in February detailed how campus police used the grant money to patrol stretches of coastline near La Jolla in coordination with federal border agents. The revelation sparked swift backlash among students, many of whom said the arrangement put undocumented and international students at risk simply by association. By late February, students had flooded campus officials with emails and organized a public rally, prompting Police Chief Lamine Secka to agree, in a private meeting, to pull the department out of the grant program, according to student organizer Aryan Dixit.

University spokesperson Melinda Battenberg would not directly confirm that campus police had withdrawn from the program. However, internal emails from March, reviewed by CalMatters, show that Vice Chancellor Niraj Dangoria told a retired university employee and longtime advocate for Chicano education issues that the university intended to stop drawing on the grant and had no plans to reapply. A lieutenant with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which oversees Stonegarden operations locally, later confirmed to CalMatters that UC San Diego would not take part in future rounds of funding.

Word spread fast on campus. Daniel Negrete, a fourth-year business economics student, said he was stunned to learn his university had any working relationship with the Border Patrol.

“I was surprised the university let this happen,” Negrete said. “There’s no way someone in upper administration didn’t know about this.”

Students who took part in a Feb. 18 walkout against Immigration and Customs Enforcement also called out the university’s ties to Homeland Security, according to the student newspaper, The UCSD Guardian.

Operation Stonegarden, created in 2006, is meant to strengthen cooperation between local and federal law enforcement on border security, according to a 2025 grant document, and requires regular information-sharing meetings and reporting between agencies. But the program has long drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates and raised questions about compliance with California’s sanctuary state law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged President Donald Trump to eliminate the program entirely in a 2025 memo, arguing that surveillance technology companies have incentives to push police departments into the program so they’ll purchase their products.

UC San Diego police sergeant Patrick Dobbins, who served as the university’s Stonegarden coordinator, told CalMatters in November 2025 that the grant covered overtime pay for officers running border patrols and was intended to support public health and safety.

Since 2020, Homeland Security has directed grant recipients to prioritize training officers to act as immigration enforcement agents — despite the fact that doing so is illegal under California’s sanctuary law. That directive became the grant’s overarching priority in both 2025 and 2026, according to federal grant documents.

In his March email, Dangoria wrote that UC San Diego’s Stonegarden funds were used “for operations focused on drug trafficking and human trafficking, not immigration enforcement.”

Still, Negrete pointed to a 2025 audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General that found only 15% of Stonegarden funds nationally go toward drug interdiction efforts, with the department itself describing drug seizures as merely “incidental” to the program’s operations.

“The idea that this is some innocent program that’s just about getting drugs off the street isn’t true,” Negrete said.

In Riverside County, the majority of traffic stops tied to Stonegarden operations in 2023 and 2024 by sheriff’s deputies resulted in intelligence-gathering rather than drug seizures or arrests, according to activity reports obtained by CalMatters through public records requests. Other law enforcement agencies declined to release similar reports, claiming they become federal property once logged into the Homeland Security Information Network. Battenberg said UC San Diego police can view such reports but cannot access them once they’re submitted to Homeland Security, and did not say whether the university would release its own reports through public records requests.

Dixit, an economics and cognitive science student who at the time served as associate vice president of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in student government and led the Student Civil Liberties Union, first emailed Chief Secka on Feb. 17 requesting a meeting to discuss “critical student concerns” about the grant. He said he never got a response.

A week later, the Student Civil Liberties Union teamed up with the Ellis Collective, a research group led by Negrete, and announced a rally for Feb. 26 protesting the police department’s acceptance of Homeland Security funding. That announcement, Dixit said, prompted Secka to agree to a private sit-down the day before the demonstration. During that meeting, Dixit said, Secka told him the department would suspend its involvement in Stonegarden and not reapply the following year.

Secka did not respond to multiple interview requests from CalMatters.

About 100 students showed up to the Feb. 26 rally anyway, with speakers denouncing the university’s longstanding cooperation with federal immigration authorities, according to The UCSD Guardian.

San Diego State University’s police department also received Stonegarden funding back in 2013, when Secka served as interim police chief there. The school hasn’t appeared in funding documents since. A spokesperson for SDSU police said those funds were used for drug interdiction efforts.

Meanwhile, other agencies continue to participate in the program, which is only growing. California’s overall Stonegarden allocation increased from $12.1 million in 2025 to $13.4 million for 2026, according to federal grant records. As of 2025, sheriff’s departments in 11 counties receive funding — Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Monterey, San Mateo, San Bernardino and Imperial. Dozens of smaller police departments have joined as well, alongside state agencies such as the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Parks and Recreation.

In fiscal year 2024, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Interagency Task Force, known as LA IMPACT, joined Stonegarden. The task force investigates serious crimes, particularly narcotics trafficking, and maintains some of the state’s most extensive surveillance resources, according to the state Attorney General’s office. It includes roughly 75 sworn officers from 48 local and state law enforcement agencies — a full roster that had not previously been made public. Michael Burke, LA IMPACT’s executive director, told CalMatters the task force’s Stonegarden activities are limited strictly to drug trafficking investigations in Los Angeles.

UC San Diego police had made no public statement about the grant until March, when a coalition of local educators called the San Diego Chicano/Latino Concilio on Higher Education, which advocates for Latino student success, pressed Chancellor Pradeep Khosla directly by email.

Patrick Velasquez, the coalition’s co-chair, argued that Stonegarden pulls police resources away from campus safety while enabling the purchase of surveillance equipment such as search cameras and data-collection devices. He noted that Dobbins had told CalMatters that campus officers don’t enforce immigration law directly but instead use border patrols to search for migrants crossing by boat. Velasquez also raised concerns that civilians can’t obtain information about Stonegarden operations from local police, and pointed to a 2025 Imperial County grant document that encourages officers to detain any suspected “criminal aliens” — raising fears that Latino students could be targeted based on appearance or language. The coalition demanded the university exit the program entirely, Velasquez wrote.

In his March 4 response, reviewed by CalMatters, Dangoria confirmed the police department would not reapply for the grant and said campus police have followed a decade-old University of California policy barring officers from working with ICE or detaining people based on suspected immigration status.

Dobbins had told CalMatters in 2025 that UC San Diego had participated in Stonegarden every year since about 2012. But Dangoria wrote in his email that campus police hadn’t actually taken part in Stonegarden activities since 2024 — a claim the university’s communications team corroborated. A 2024 funding agreement shows those operations were slated to run from April 2025 through February 2027.

In a follow-up message to Velasquez on March 11, Dangoria noted the police department could still apply for other Homeland Security grants unrelated to immigration enforcement, since the department oversees numerous federal agencies, including FEMA, which administers Stonegarden.

“I want to reiterate that UC San Diego is deeply committed to cultivating and maintaining a safe and welcoming campus environment for all members of our community, regardless of immigration status,” Dangoria wrote.

Original source: CalMatters

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With graduation season in full swing across Southern California, public school officials are confident that high school commencement ceremonies will not be disrupted by the kind of student activism that has flared at college campuses throughout the nation over the Israel-Gaza war.

Educators say that although they have not seen student-led demonstrations at their high schools, they still are prioritizing safety — and maintaining the “celebratory” environment — at upcoming commencement events, when thousands of graduates in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties will receive their diplomas.

“Safety, it’s always our top priority, especially at events such as graduation,” said Hilda Ramirez Horvath, a spokesperson for the Pasadena Unified School District. “Graduations are always a really important milestone for students and their families, and we want these events to be special and meaningful for our community.”

Horvath said the district will take general safety precautions — with support from the Pasadena Police Department and venue security — at its six ticketed graduation ceremonies planned at Pasadena’s Civic Auditorium, starting with Blair High School’s commencement at 11 a.m. Thursday, May 30. But, she quickly added, those measures are “not related to the idea of any protest.”

Similarly, Temecula Valley Unified is “not aware of any incidents or info related to either side of this issue on our campuses,” spokesperson James Evans said, but he noted that security measures will be in place as they routinely are at large campus events.

“As always, safety and security is our number one priority,” said Evans, noting that the district’s graduations are scheduled for June 6 and 7.

In the Long Beach Unified School District, which will hold its graduation ceremonies in June, spokesperson Elvia Cano said, “We remain confident in our safety preparedness for a successful graduation season.”

The Orange Unified School District, which will have its commencement events June 5 and 6 at Fred Kelly Stadium, is making  preparations “to ensure a safe and memorable experience for our graduates and all attendees,” spokesperson Hana Brake said.

Other Orange County districts, including Newport Mesa Unified, Garden Grove Unified, Santa Ana Unified and Irvine Unified, echoed similar sentiments for upcoming late May and June graduations. Officials said they haven’t seen protest activity on high school campuses, and schools have established safety protocols in place to ensure a smooth graduation.

“We do not have any indication that protests will occur during graduation ceremonies,” Irvine Unified spokesperson Annie Brown said. “As with any IUSD-related event or activity, our priority is the safety and well-being of our students, staff and families.”

And in the Jurupa Unified School District, where graduations for its four high schools already are underway, spokesperson Jacqueline Paul said, “Everything is going well.”

School district officials throughout the region are mindful that their graduating seniors have been exposed to widespread media coverage of pro-Palestinian campus protests at universities for more than a month. Locally, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Cal State L.A., Chapman University and Pomona College have been hotbeds of student activism.

And, recently, some graduates have walked out of commencement ceremonies nationally — notably, at Harvard, Yale, Tufts and George Washington University — and others at Morehouse College turned their backs on President Joe Biden during his address to highlight their support of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and divestiture of its financial support for Israel.

Columbia University, ground zero for the pro-Palestinian campus protests, canceled its main commencement, as did USC, which pivoted to smaller ceremonies for individual schools after tensions boiled over partly because of the cancelation of a speech by Muslim valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a Chino Hills resident.

Whether graduating high school seniors in Southern California feel empowered to emulate their college counterparts, of course, is unknown, but public secondary schools operate under slightly more restrictive free expression rights.

High schoolers are limited partly because public schools mandate attendance up to a certain grade level, while going to college is voluntary, said Aaron Terr, director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which defends and promotes free speech on school campuses. Additionally, he said, teachers and administrators, working under strict district guidelines, stand in the place of parents to some extent while students are at school.

Still, Terr said, public schools cannot punish students for free speech just because “it expresses a view that makes students or administrators uncomfortable.”

Student speech on public secondary school campuses, the Supreme Court has ruled, is protected unless it substantially disrupts or interferes with school operations. That standard emerged from a high court decision in 1969, Tinker v. Des Moines, that affirmed public school students’ First Amendment right to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.

“Students don’t shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” the justices wrote, affirming the right to the armband protest because it was quiet and passive, and did not interfere with other students’ learning environment.

“The following year, millions of college and high school students around the country participated in walkouts to protest the United States’ escalation of the Vietnam War and, soon after, the Kent State shooting,” Terr said. “Like the current campus protests, they were a mix of peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and violence or lawlessness.”

Terr also recalled the 2018 walkout of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, to protest gun violence in the wake of the shooting that killed 14 students and three staff members, and injured others.

That demonstration, he said, is “another historical precedent” for the current student-led, pro-Palestinian protests.

Public school districts say they are mindful of the need to balance student rights to free expression with the desire to avoid disruptions at school events, such as commencement exercises.

“We strive to allow students the opportunity to express their viewpoints in a way that is consistent with maintaining safe and welcoming environments,” said Los Angeles Unified School District spokesperson Rebekah Salgado.

LAUSD — which this year has 116,507 students in grades 9 through 12, including thousands of graduates — has specific plans in place to “ensure that graduations are safe and welcoming events,” Salgado said, noting that commencement ceremonies begin in early June.

At all events, she said in an email, the district will welcome students’ voices “amplified and supported as appropriate to the ceremony. We support each school on a case-by-case basis, factoring in several elements such as size of the graduation, venue, etc.”

In the Torrance Unified School District, activities at commencement ceremonies must abide by the district’s policy on civility, which maintains that “all speech and expression will comport with norms of civil behavior,” spokesperson Sara Myers said by email.

About 2,000 seniors will be graduating from the district’s four high schools the week of June 10, and Myers said commencement events will have “well-communicated rules and security protocols” to help manage crowds.

“We recognize the effect that global events and tragedies can have on our students, so we have continued to work as a community to support each other and promote wellness, safety and kindness during these trying times,” Myers said.

Torrance schools, she said, have hosted multicultural events that celebrate all backgrounds, customs and traditions, and they welcome that spirit of diversity at school events.

Similarly, Pasadena Unified’s Horvath said, “As far as protests, our position is always that the best place for students to talk about concerns or issues is in school with teachers and staff. We actively encourage dialogue and campus activities where all opinions are respected in both words and actions. And so we have structures for that to happen.”

One high school senior who participated in an off-campus, pro-Palestinian protest in Redlands said she hopes to see more activism from secondary school students in her community and beyond.

“I feel like our voices are always the most important because we have staff members, adults and community members looking at us, and we’re the next generation, so it means even more,” said Bayan Yousef, a member of a student-led group called Redlands for Palestine. “Sometimes, because we’re young, we get more attention on the cause when we do it, too.”

Yousef, who plans to attend community college, acknowledged that those who protested with her in early May at Sylvan Park were concerned about retaliation from school officials or college admissions offices. But compared to what’s happening in Gaza, she said, that seems unimportant.

“I was a little worried that they were going to take our graduation away for protesting, and some people were worried their university acceptance letters would be revoked,” she said, “but it doesn’t stop us, of course.”

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