Orange County Sheriff's Department

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department serves as the lead agency for a law enforcement data-sharing consortium that covers more than 50 agencies across Orange County, California. The consortium operates through LexisNexis’s Accurint Virtual Crime Center (AVCC) and the Public Safety Data Exchange (PSDEX) — a national database that compiles law enforcement records from agencies across the country.

As consortium lead, OCSD holds the master contract with LexisNexis and other OC agencies join as sub-agencies under that agreement. Confirmed sub-agencies include the Santa Ana Police Department, CSU Fullerton Police, and UC Irvine Police, with more than 50 additional agencies listed in a 23-page Schedule A attached to the contract. The contract is administered through ILJAOC — the Integrated Law and Justice Agency of Orange County — which handles billing on behalf of member agencies.

The contract language includes two clauses worth noting. First, an irrevocable license clause: once an agency contributes data, that license cannot be revoked. Second, a third-party beneficiary clause stating that ‘other PSDEX customers are intended to be third-party beneficiaries’ of contributed data. This means that any agency or federal entity with access to PSDEX — including ICE — can query data that OC agencies have contributed.

Orange County includes some of California’s most immigrant-dense communities. Santa Ana, the county seat, is approximately 90% Latino. California’s statewide sanctuary law (SB54) limits how agencies share information with immigration enforcement — but researchers and advocates have documented that data flowing through LexisNexis reaches ICE through a private-sector intermediary that those laws don’t directly regulate.