Los Angeles leaders are considering a “sanctuary city” ordinance, as well as a measure for all public schools that would limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities who conduct deportations and arrests — voting on the two proposed policies a day after President-elect Donald Trump indicated he would use military means to fulfill his promise of a mass deportation.
Several immigrant rights groups were scheduled to gather outside Los Angeles City Hall Tuesday morning, when the City Council will vote on the “sanctuary city” ordinance, the creation of which was approved by a voice vote. more than a year ago. This month, efforts to officially implement and enforce it gained new momentum following the election of Trump, who has promised the greatest deportation in American history upon taking office.
On Monday, the incoming president confirmed a report that he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use military resources for federal enforcement efforts, which he confirmed via a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
As the city weighs its own policies, the LAUSD Board of Education will vote Tuesday on a preliminary measure outlining protections for immigrant students. It would prohibit LAUSD employees from voluntarily participating in immigration enforcement actions.
It passed in May 2017, but a new resolution would clarify how the school district would actually implement and enforce the policy and would require LAUSD Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho to develop and share – within 60 days – a plan for how to achieve it. would come about. “from the beginning of the next presidential administration.”
Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
This includes a ban on sharing information about the immigration status of students, or their families, with federal agents and agencies such as U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). Currently, local police and law enforcement are prohibited from sharing such data and information under California’s sanctuary state law.
SB 54, also known as the California Values Act, was proposed and passed by state lawmakers within the first year of Trump’s presidency signed into law by former Governor Jerry Brown. It limits the use of state and local resources for federal immigration enforcement efforts, prohibiting local police departments from making most immigration-related arrests, such as executing or assisting deportation orders.
It went into effect on January 1, 2018, sparking a bitter legal battle between the White House and the state.
The Trump administration threatened to cut off federal funding sued the state of Californiamentioning the then governor. Brown and former Attorney General Xavier Becerra as suspects. When former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the lawsuit, he vowed to fight what he described as “unjust, unfair and unconstitutional policies,” including SB 54 and two other similar state laws, AB 450 and AB 103. Gov. Brown fired back , said of the lawsuit, “It’s not about protecting our state. It’s about dividing America.”
At the time, ICE’s acting director was Tom Homan, a veteran U.S. immigration official was tapped by Trump to be “border czar” under his next government.
Homan also headed ICE’s deportation division under the Obama administration — when the agency carried out a record number of formal deportations — and was one of a handful of U.S. officials to sign a memo that led to the separation of migrant families during Trump’s administration. last presidency.
In October, Homan told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” how the White House would carry out large-scale deportations and say there would be no “mass cleanup of neighborhoods.” He rejected the alleged “concentration camp” allegations, calling them “ridiculous.”
However, he indicated he would resume the practice of large-scale immigration arrests at workplaces, a policy the Biden administration halted in 2021. “That will be necessary,” he said.
The proposed city ordinance being voted on Tuesday goes “a step further” than existing sanctuary policies, according to LA City Council Member Nithya Raman.
“In principle, the ordinance would prevent federal immigration enforcement from accessing city facilities or using city resources in the pursuit of immigration enforcement,” Raman saidadding that it also bans the sharing of data and information about immigrants living in the US illegally, which she said “has led to cases of real lack of security for residents in the past.”
LA has a decades-long history of limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents. In 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department passed Special Order No. 40, which prohibits officers from questioning people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. It was intended to help immigrants living in the U.S. illegally feel safer reporting crimes.
“The Department is sensitive to the principle that effective law enforcement depends on a high degree of cooperation between the Department and the public it serves,” the order reads. “Given these principles, it is the policy of the Los Angeles Police Department that undocumented alien status is not, in and of itself, a matter for police action.”
