The Alameda County Together for All Ad Hoc Committee held a special meeting on April 30, 2026, to receive the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) Implementation Study presentation. The meeting focused on recommendations for establishing a permanent office to coordinate immigrant and refugee services. Supervisors Marquez and Fortunato Bass co-chaired. The committee heard from consultants, community members, and discussed next steps. No formal action was taken as this was an informational item.
Thank you for being here. The meeting of the Alameda County Together for All Ad Hoc Committee will come to order. Will the clerk please call our role? Supervisor Marquez present. Supervisor Fortunato Vass. Present. We have a quorum. Thank you. Thanks again, everyone, for being here. We do have a Spanish interpreter. Mr. Norman, do you mind sharing instructions? Hi, good afternoon. Buenas tardes. My name is Norman, and I'm here with interpretation in Spanish and English. So we'll be the other people talking simultaneously. We apologize for that, but we don't apologize for language access. So Norman Alex y vamos a provider. Okay. Thank you, Norman and Alex, for providing Spanish interpretation today. So again, welcome to the Alameda County Together for All ad hoc committee meeting. Just as a reminder, this committee is a forum to coordinate a proactive response to protect, support, and lift up communities that are impacted by federal policies and budgets, as well as to ensure that we are all informed, prepared, and coordinated in protecting critical health programs, social services, and the constitutional rights of our Alameda County residents. We usually meet monthly on the first Thursday of every month. However, this is a special meeting because we have very important and timely information to share through a presentation today. And to stay informed, please check out our webpage, which you can find at district 5.acgov.org slash act for all. Given that this committee has focused on the impacts of the current federal administration, I did want to pause and acknowledge that we continue to be in turbulent and challenging times for our community, both locally as well as globally. And just yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled to weaken the Voting Rights Act, making it easier for unfair maps to dilute the voices of communities of color and potentially leading to the disenfranchisement of black and brown voters. So this underscores the need for Congress to restore strong federal voting protections. In addition, the court is currently weighing a case that could allow the federal government to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, raising serious concerns about due process, stability for families, and the scope of executive power over immigration policy. So that's just a sliver of what we know is happening nationally. Some of this is due to budget, some of this is also due to changes in work requirements or eligibility criteria. We're also dealing with state impacts of Prop One. So I do want to call your attention to the fact that in a number of our board committees, we are dealing directly with these impacts. So I invite you to watch and participate in our board committees to track very closely the impacts of the federal as well as state impacts on our safety net services. And I wanted to point out that our next budget work session is May 19th, and our county administrator will present the proposed budget on May 28th because of our community advocacy as well as board advocacy for more transparency. That's actually two weeks sooner than it usually is to allow more time to digest that information and give feedback. And for folks who are really interested in digging into the budget and the potential impacts, my office did host a budget webinar that you can find on my YouTube channel, and we'll be hosting a second webinar on June 11th in the evening. And then finally, I wanted to share that here in Alameda County, we are very grateful to our community for really grounding in the solidarity, the strength that we have at the neighborhood level and with each other to organize to build power. In addition to the work that we are doing here in the uh in the board of on the board of supervisors, myself and Supervisor Marquez have been engaging our colleagues across the Bay Area. We have an opportunity to continue to build regional coordination to protect immigrants and refugees. And we also know that out in the community there is a very caring presence, whether it's foot patrols or adopt a spot, adopt a workplace. There's a just incredible love out there for everyone in our community, which is so important. I know May Day is going to show more of that solidarity. And in addition to that solidarity, there's also some bright spots I want to make sure that we point out. We did have a work session earlier this week where we talked about Measure Widst everything that's happening that might tear away our safety net and cause fear in our communities. Here at the county, we do have Measure W, which is supporting housing solutions as well as essential services, and some of that funding is supporting the things that we have talked about here in this committee. We also have Measure C, which is supporting early child care. And I was just at the first five commission board meeting where we heard 150 million has already been deployed into our community for early child care. So that's just a little bit of what's happening in the community, both in terms of continued threats as well as opportunities. And today we have a single agenda item, which is our Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs Implementation Study Presentation.