A sanctuary law aimed to ‘Trump-proof’ California on immigration. What has it accomplished?
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- The California Values Act limits cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration agents.
- The first Trump administration failed to overturn the law in court.
- Immigrant advocates worry his new administration will encourage local governments to defy the law and that many residents remain at risk without more stringent protections.
WASHINGTON — Two days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, California state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León canceled a flight to Germany and called his executive staff for a meeting.
They began to dissect the myriad ways Trump could “seriously hurt Californians” through policies and actions on the environment, freedom of choice and immigration.
The framework for landmark legislation on immigration — Senate Bill 54 — was born a few weeks later.
“We knew that we needed to do something to protect immigrants, and it wasn’t just something on a social media platform or a hashtag,” De León recalled. “We needed something with real teeth.”
Immigration agents rely on state and local law enforcement to help them identify and arrest deportable immigrants. When SB 54 took effect in 2018, California became the first state to substantially divorce its law enforcement resources from federal immigration enforcement use. There were so-called sanctuary cities, but no sanctuary states.
Given the Trump administration’s stated desire to ratchet up immigration enforcement and deportations, officials say it’s vital for business owners to prepare and know their rights.
Formally called the California Values Act, SB 54 is critical to California leaders’ efforts to “Trump-proof” the state. In Trump’s first term, he tried and failed to overturn the law in court, but advocates worry that his new administration will encourage local governments to defy the law and that many residents remain at risk without more stringent protections.
The law is also held up by both supporters and opponents as an example of why sanctuary policies work, or don’t. Its advocates say SB 54 stands out as the single law that has prevented the most deportations anywhere across the country.
Angela Chan, a lawyer who helped write SB 54, said the proliferation of sanctuary policies during Trump’s first term ensured cities and states could shield immigrant residents against deportation.
“This time around he’s going to try even harder to pressure, threaten and coerce sanctuary cities, because that was the wall we built to help protect immigrants,” she said.
Two laws set the stage for SB 54. The TRUST Act, implemented in 2014, prevented local law enforcement from holding someone in jail for immigration agents beyond the time they were scheduled to be released, unless they had committed certain crimes.
Then in 2017 with the TRUTH Act, the state became the first to require that immigrants be alerted of their right to an attorney before being interviewed in custody by immigration agents and their right to decline such interviews.
SB 54 built on those laws. Among its many provisions: Local police cannot arrest someone just for having a deportation order; cannot hold someone in jail for extra time solely for immigration agents to pick them up; cannot let immigration agents interview someone without that person’s written consent.
Local law enforcement can, however, notify immigration agents of someone’s impending release. It also can transfer them to immigration custody if the person has certain convictions, including felonies that resulted in state prison time, most other felonies within the last 15 years, and higher-level misdemeanors within the last five years.
State prison officials have no limits regarding whom they can transfer to immigration custody, but they do have to give the person a written heads-up.
Effects of sanctuary laws
SB 54 and its predecessors clearly have influenced how many people Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested for being in the country illegally.
A 2018 report from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute found that California’s share of ICE arrests nationally fell to 14% in fiscal year 2017 from 23% in fiscal year 2013.
Data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation show transfers of state prison inmates to ICE custody have trended down since California began disentangling local and federal law enforcement. In 2013, just over 2,800 inmates were picked up by ICE; last year that number fell to just over 1,300.
Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at UC Irvine, found that SB 54 did not cause an increase in crime. She compared California’s violent and property crime rates with an approximation of the state’s rates if the law had not been enacted, and found no significant difference.
The attacks on sanctuary policies assume that immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than the native-born population, said Kubrin, co-author of a 2023 book, “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” Many studies have found the opposite is true.
“All of the policies take as a cornerstone these fundamental assumptions, and the problem is — and I’ve been studying this for 20 years so I can say this pretty definitively — those assumptions are flawed,” Kubrin said.
Attempts to expand SB 54 protections
SB 54 does allow local and federal law enforcement to coordinate in some instances. Such coordination is allowed not just for violent crimes, but also other offenses, such as vandalism. In fact, roughly 800 crimes are listed as exceptions to SB 54.
The result, some advocates say, is confusion and poor implementation.
Some cities and counties, such as Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, have enacted laws that go beyond SB 54, getting rid of the exceptions to provide more protections for immigrants.
Efforts to do the same on the statewide level have failed. Lawmakers advanced a bill that would have restricted the state prison system’s ability to coordinate with immigration authorities. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it, and his office recently said he’d veto such a measure again.
That bill would have helped people such as Kao Saelee, an incarcerated firefighter who was released in 2020 from a California prison after serving 22 years for an armed robbery. But instead of going home to his family, Saelee was transferred to an immigrant detention facility where he faced deportation. Saelee, who was born in Laos and moved to the U.S. as a refugee, was eventually released from detention and pardoned by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Since Trump took office, Newsom has repeatedly explained that California law does not protect criminals in the prison system from deportation.
Los Angeles Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez is calling on the city to create clearer protocols regarding its immigrant sanctuary laws after Los Angeles police officers were spotted during a local enforcement operation.
Chan, now an attorney with the San Francisco public defender’s office, said she thinks there could still be room to get rid of the exceptions in SB 54 that allow local and federal cooperation.
“As Trump continues to roll out his horror show targeting immigrants, I think that will change the political landscape and what Democrats are willing to do,” she said. “It will be very hard for the Democrats to turn a blind eye.”
Quashing sanctuary policies
Meanwhile, pressure is building from the Trump administration and other Republicans against policies such as SB 54.
For example, Trump recently signed an executive order to stop funding jurisdictions that “facilitate the subsidization or promotion of illegal immigration” or “sanctuary policies.” It’s unclear exactly what funds the order would target.
On her first day as attorney general, Pam Bondi ordered a 60-day pause on federal funding for sanctuary jurisdictions and encouraged the Department of Justice to go after places that don’t comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Even before SB 54 had made its way through the Legislature, Trump threatened to stop the flow of federal funding. He followed through, withholding millions of dollars in public safety grants from local law enforcement and prompting California leaders to sue.
Anyone can meet with an immigration expert, by phone or in person, at half a dozen Los Angeles Public Library locations from Wilmington to Pacoima, through a long-running, city-funded program called the New Americans Initiative.
The question of whether the federal government can withhold grants to punish sanctuary jurisdictions was left open after President Biden took office, and lawsuits were dismissed before the Supreme Court could take up the issue.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have introduced legislation to defund sanctuary localities.
Among them is a bill by Rep. Nick LaLota (R-New York) and condemned by immigrant advocates that would cut off a variety of federal funds benefiting immigrants without legal status, such as school nutrition, public transit and emergency response, if the local government does not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
One state measure takes direct aim at SB 54.
The bill, by state Sen. Brian W. Jones (R-Santee), would stop local jurisdictions such as San Diego from further restricting cooperation with federal authorities beyond what SB 54 already prescribes. It would also require local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration agents in cases where SB 54 simply allows it.
“It’s not undoing the sanctuary law, it is mildly reforming,” he said. “We have violent felons being released from jail that should be in custody. That’s a problem.”
Critics of SB 54 point to cases such as that of Gustavo Garcia, who in 2018 embarked on what local officials described as a “reign of terror,” killing at least one person, injuring at least six others, robbing a convenience store and then leading a wrong-way chase down a highway in a stolen truck before crashing and dying.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux blamed the sanctuary law because Garcia had been deported previously after an armed robbery and was arrested days before the rampage on suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance.
Looming legal battles
SB 54 is sparking legal battles on a local level too. In January, leaders of Huntington Beach filed a federal lawsuit against the state over SB 54, arguing it is unconstitutional. It’s the second time the city has done so; the first attempt failed.
Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael Gates told the Daily Pilot that SB 54 “runs complete interference for good law enforcement practices.” Gates announced last month that he was resigning to become deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the Department of Justice.
San Francisco also filed a federal lawsuit last month, challenging Trump administration directives that essentially run counter to SB 54. The administration has threatened to prosecute local officials who impede deportation efforts.
Immigrant rights groups raise alarms over plan to make all immigrants who do not have legal status, including children, provide personal information and fingerprints.
Other states have enacted laws that go even further than California’s. Among those is Illinois, where state and local governments are prohibited from engaging in federal immigration enforcement. Bondi filed a lawsuit last month against the state, Chicago and Cook County, alleging that their policies are an “intentional effort to obstruct” the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws.
But that argument mirrors those made during the first Trump administration against SB 54. A panel of three 9th Circuit judges in 2019 shot down the notion that sanctuary policies impede federal law, and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
“The federal government was free to expect as much as it wanted, but it could not require California’s cooperation without running afoul of the Tenth Amendment,” the judges wrote.
Times staff writer Rachel Uranga in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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