Los Angeles adopts sanctuary city ordinance as Trump mass deportation plan takes shape

The Los Angeles City Council has adopted a "sanctuary city" ordinance prohibiting the use of city resources and staff for federal immigration enforcement efforts, a day after President-elect Donald Trump signaled he would use military assets to carry out his campaign promise of mass deportations. 

The ordinance passed through a 13-0 vote Tuesday afternoon after its drafting was approved by the council more than a year ago. This month, efforts to officially establish and enforce the new ordinance gained renewed momentum following the election of Trump, who has promised the largest deportation in U.S. history upon taking office.

On Monday, the incoming president confirmed a report that he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use military assets for federal enforcement efforts, making the confirmation through a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.   

Last week, city leaders said they were working to fast-track a vote on the sanctuary policy.

"Especially in the face of growing threats to the immigrant communities here in Los Angeles, I stand with the people of this city," Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement Nov. 12. "This moment demands urgency."

Some immigrants rights advocates have criticized a prior resolution, which formally declared Los Angeles a sanctuary city in 2019, as more of a symbolic action than an enforceable safeguard for residents in the city. The newly passed city ordinance bans the city's collection of information on an individual's immigration status and bars city employees from notifying federal authorities about the release or detention of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.  

A sanctuary school policy up for vote

While city councilmembers voted Tuesday, the LA Unified School District's Board of Education was set to vote on a "sanctuary" measure of its own — one that would prohibit school district employees from voluntarily cooperating in any immigration enforcement actions. 

The school board passed a prior such measure, in May 2017, but the new resolution going up for a vote Tuesday would clarify how the district would actually implement and enforce that policy. It would require Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho to develop and share a plan within 60 days for how it would be established "from the beginning of the next Presidential administration."

This includes a ban on the sharing of information about the immigration status of any student, or their families, with federal agents and agencies such as U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). Currently, local police and law enforcement are barred from sharing such data and information under California's "sanctuary state" law.

California becomes a sanctuary state

SB 54, also known as the California Values Act, was proposed by state lawmakers within the first year of Trump's presidency and signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown. It limits the use of state and local resources for federal immigration enforcement efforts, prohibiting local police agencies from making most immigration-related arrests such as carrying out or assisting deportation orders.

It went into effect on Jan. 1, 2018, leading to a bitter legal battle between the White House and the state.

The Trump Administration threatened to cut off federal funding and sued the state of California, naming then-Gov. Brown and former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra as defendants. As 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, saying of the lawsuit, "It's not about protecting our state. It's about dividing America."   

Sessions made a visit to Sacramento in March 2018 as he announced the litigation, condemning the legislation as below the authority of the federal government. "California is using every power it has, powers it doesn't have, to frustrate federal law enforcement," he said. 

Then-U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said California "has chosen to purposefully contradict the will and responsibility of Congress to protect our homeland." 

Before SB 54 officially became law, Kevin de Léon, who authored the legislation, defended it as he spoke before the Senate's Public Safety Committee in 2017. He wrote the law while serving as president pro tempore of the California State Senate and responded to Trump's threat to withhold federal funding as he spoke.

"Half of my family would be eligible for deportation under the executive order, because they got a false social security card, they got a false identification, they got a false driver's license prior to us passing AB 60, they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification."

"That's what you need to survive, to work," De Léon said. "They are eligible for massive deportation."

Trump's incoming "border czar" on arrests, deportations 

When the Trump Administration sued California in 2018, the acting director of ICE was Tom Homan, a veteran U.S. immigration who was recently tapped by Trump to be "border czar" under his coming administration.   

Homan was also head of the deportation branch of ICE under the Obama administration — when the agency conducted a record number of formal deportations — and he was one of a handful of U.S. officials who signed off a memo leading to the separation of migrant families during Trump's last presidency.

In October, Homan told CBS News' "60 Minutes" how the White House would conduct wide-scale deportations, saying there would be no "mass sweep of neighborhoods." He dismissed supposed allegations of "concentration camps," calling them "ridiculous." He said deportations would start with federal investigations leading to "targeted arrests."

However, he indicated he would restart the practice of large-scale immigration arrests at workplaces, a policy the Biden administration stopped in 2021. "That's gonna be necessary," he said.

A study this year published by the American Immigration Council found the deportation of more than 11 million people, the estimated population living in the country illegally, would lead to an estimated loss of between $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the U.S. — impacting key industries of agriculture, hospitality and construction.

In Los Angeles, some city leaders have said the new ordinance is necessary as Trump soon takes office, saying it goes further than existing policies in protecting LA residents living in the U.S. without the legal paperwork. 

"Basically, the ordinance would prevent federal immigration enforcement from being able to access city facilities or to use city resources in the pursuit of immigration enforcement," LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman said, adding that it also bans data and information-sharing on undocumented immigrants, which she said "has led to cases of real lack of safety for residents in the past."  

LA has a long history of limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents. 

In 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department adopted Special Order No. 40, which prohibits officers from questioning people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. It was intended to help undocumented immigrants 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 LAPD order reads. "In view of those principles, it is the policy of the Los Angeles Police Department that undocumented alien status in itself is not a matter for police action."