I'm a mayor trying to follow law but California is making it impossible for cops

Last summer, a subordinate of the El Cajon City Council asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta a question: Can our constabulary officers behaviour payment checks connected unaccompanied children utilizing accusation provided by national authorities?

The reply should person been yes. Instead, the lawyer general's bureau warned that adjacent confirming a child's determination to national officials could interruption SB 54 — the authorities instrumentality that limits section practice with migration enforcement. In different words, checking connected a kid who mightiness beryllium successful information could enactment our officers connected the incorrect broadside of California law.

The metropolis of El Cajon is caught betwixt a authorities authorities gathering an extended ineligible partition betwixt section constabulary and national migration authorities, and an work to travel national transgression instrumentality that conflicts with those aforesaid authorities policies.

We are a metropolis of astir 106,000 radical trying to support our residents harmless and travel the instrumentality — each of the law.

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California authorities is making it a hard prime for constabulary whether to travel authorities oregon national law. (San Pablo Police Department)

That's wherefore today, we are asking Bonta to code a question the authorities has truthful acold avoided: Do California's sanctuary policies struggle with 8 U.S.C. § 1324, the national statute that makes it a felony to promote oregon induce idiosyncratic to reside successful the United States unlawfully? Our missive lays retired the lawsuit that California's sanctuary laws — restricting the quality of our constabulary to travel national instrumentality — bash precisely that.

It's not a caller question. We sent the lawyer general's bureau a missive successful December 2024 asking astir the boundaries of SB 54. The effect cited tribunal opinions but did not reply our halfway interest that struggle betwixt authorities and national instrumentality leaves cities similar our stuck successful the middle. Subsequently, successful February 2025, our City Council passed a solution that declared our intent to comply with national migration instrumentality to the ineligible grade permissible.

Consider this disorder from a patrol officer's perspective. SB 54 says our officers cannot inquire astir migration status, cannot grant ICE detainer requests without a judicial warrant and cannot usage metropolis resources to assistance with national migration enforcement. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has signaled that officials who obstruct national migration operations could look prosecution. Our officers didn't motion up to beryllium referees (or punching bags) successful a combat betwixt Sacramento and Washington.

The ambiguity has consequences beyond instrumentality enforcement. When the authorities tells america that a wellness cheque connected a kid — who whitethorn person been trafficked oregon abandoned — could interruption SB 54 due to the fact that it mightiness effect successful sharing accusation with national authorities, thing has gone wrong. Public information should trump a support gaffe from the lawyer general's office.

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The Ninth Circuit upheld SB 54 successful 2019 against a antithetic national situation that ne'er addressed Section 1324. The ineligible question we're raising is new, and it deserves a response.

When lawmakers passed SB 54 and related bills, they stated that the extremity was to guarantee residents could unrecorded and enactment "without fearfulness of deportation." And authorities officials repeatedly mention the economical contributions of undocumented workers arsenic a crushed to shield them from enforcement. But erstwhile a authorities openly pursues a strategy of helping radical stay successful the state unlawfully, it raises a superior question nether national law.

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El Cajon is 1 of the astir divers cities successful San Diego County; astir 30% of our residents are Hispanic and different 30% hint their roots to the Middle East. We are a metropolis built by immigrants, and nary of what we are asking for changes that. We are asking the authorities to archer us, clearly, however to travel the instrumentality erstwhile the instrumentality appears to contradict itself. Our officers, metropolis unit and residents merit that much.

We've asked nicely, much than once. We'd admit a existent answer.