Following newly elected President Donald Trump’s pledge of mass deportations, Los Angeles is working to officially become a “sanctuary city” — by enacting an ordinance that would restrict the use of city funds and resources to support federal immigration-related investigations and arrests prohibit.
Mayor Karen Bass met with immigrant rights groups over the weekend before City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto drafted the ordinance, the draft of which was approved in a City Council vote more than a year ago. It prohibits municipal resources, property, or personnel from being used for federal immigration enforcement efforts, including collecting information about an individual’s immigration status and reporting to federal authorities about the illegal release or detention of immigrants in the U.S.
The draft of the new ordinance was released late Tuesday and has yet to be voted on at a future date.
During his campaign Trump promised it the largest deportation in US history when he entered the Oval Office, and for the border czar under his incoming administration he has tapped the former head of the deportation division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Obama administration, Tom Homan when ICE made record numbers of formal deportations.
Homan also served as acting director of ICE under the Trump administration was one of the few American officials who signed the policy allowing migrant children to be separated from their families.
Since Trump was last in power, more democratic politicians has called for tighter border security a bipartisan border security treaty which was achieved earlier this year and touted at the Democratic National Convention. Earlier this year, a CBS News poll showed Americans are increasingly concerned about the situation at the US-Mexico border, with almost half calling it a “crisis.”
But some politicians and immigrant rights groups in California have sounded the alarm over concerns about Trump’s potential new policies. And some Democratic state policymakers who have called for tighter border security have done just that also called for comprehensive immigration reformswhich would create a path to citizenship for people like farmworkers and Dreamers, who enter the U.S. illegally as children.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Bass addressed the situation in a statement issued Tuesday.
“Especially in light of the growing threats to immigrant communities here in Los Angeles, I stand with the people of this city,” Bass said in the statement. “This moment requires urgency.”
“Protecting immigrants makes our communities stronger and our cities better,” her statement continued. “Solidarity is an action, not a rhetoric. Los Angeles stands together.”
The new ordinance would codify the city of LA’s prohibition on cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. When Trump was last elected, California responded with its own “sanctuary state” law, known as the California Values Act (SB 54), which ensures that state resources are not used for federal immigration enforcement. It came into effect on January 1, 2018.
It led to a bitter back-and-forth between the White House and the state, culminating in the U.S. Department of Justice suing the state of California and appointing then-Gov. Jerry Brown and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as defendants, while the Trump administration threatened to cut off federal funding to the state.
At the time, in March 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited California and spoke with law enforcement officials from the California Peace Officers Association, promising that the White House would continue to enforce California’s “sanctuary state” law, as well as AB 450 and AB challenge. 103, two other state laws relating to federal immigration enforcement.
“The Department of Justice and the Trump Administration will fight these unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional policies imposed on you,” Sessions said.
Jerry Brown, then California’s governor, fired back later that day, along with several other Democratic state lawmakers.
“It’s not about the truth. It’s not about protecting our state. It’s about dividing America,” Brown said from the Capitol. “There has been a lot of concern about people, foreign people, sowing division and discord. Now it’s the attorney general who is doing just that. This is a time to build bridges, not walls; to bring Americans together, not to drive us apart. .”
Nearly a year later, when Governor Gavin Newsom took office in January 2019, he gave a speech pledging to ensure California is a “haven for all who seek it.”
During an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, Homan said deportations under the Trump administration would consist of “targeted arrests” following federal investigations.
‘It’s not about a massive cleanup of neighborhoods. It’s not about building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous,” he said.
A study published this year by the American Immigration Council found that deporting more than 11 million people, the estimated population living in the U.S. illegally, would result in an estimated loss of 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion dollars – which would hit key sectors of agriculture, hospitality. and construction.
