Los Angeles finalizes sanctuary city policy — with a few changes made in new plan

Nearly two weeks after  adopting a sanctuary city ordinance, the Los Angeles City Council approved a revised version of the new policy Wednesday - one with exceptions made for cases involving individuals convicted of serious felony crimes.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation in U.S. history upon entering office, a driving force behind the citywide ordinance prohibiting city staff and resources from being used for federal immigration enforcement efforts. It bars the collection or sharing of information on a person's immigration status in the process of carrying out immigration-related arrests or deportations and bans local law enforcement from assisting federal immigration officials in such efforts. 

"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 a few days before the Nov. 19 passage of the ordinance. "This moment demands urgency."

But that initial policy, which the city council passed through a unanimous 13-0 vote, has since been revised. 

The new version makes exceptions for the investigation, arrest and detention of immigrants in the U.S. illegally when they have been previously deported due to convictions for aggravated felonies — an exception outlined in California Government Code Section 7284.6(b)(1). It also now includes an urgency clause, allowing the policy to take effect within 10 days of Bass signing it.

LA passed a resolution in 2019 declaring itself a sanctuary city, a move immigrants rights advocates have said was more of a symbolic measure and didn't go far enough in protecting local undocumented immigrants from federal arrests and deportations. The new ordinance will amend the city code to bar city employees or resources from assisting enforcement by U.S. immigration authorities.

"We cannot use any of our staff to enforce federal immigration law, or their time," said LA City Council member Eunisses Hernandez, who sponsored the measure. "So that means we are not going to be doing the bidding or the work of federal immigration departments and agencies to separate families."  

California became a sanctuary state in 2018 with the passage of SB 54, also known as the California Values Act, which prohibits local law enforcement from sharing the immigration status of state residents with federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Patrol. Local police also cannot notify federal immigration agents about the release and detention of immigrants living in the country illegally, with the exception of cases involving most felony convictions.

As it went into effect during Trump's first presidency, the state law led to a bitter legal battle with the White House. Trump threatened to withhold federal funding and his administration sued the state of California, naming former Gov. Jerry Brown and then-state Attorney General Xavier Becerra as defendants. 

 "California is using every power it has, powers it doesn't have, to frustrate federal law enforcement," Jeff Sessions, U.S. Attorney General at the time, said as he announced the White House's lawsuit against the state. 

Last month, as LA passed the sanctuary city policy it first moved to create last year, Trump again threatened to withhold federal funding if state and local authorities do not cooperate with his deportation plans, The Washington Post reported. Tom Homan, tapped by the incoming president to act as so-called "border czar," has warned cities and states against such efforts.

"When people say they're going to get in our way... I've said 100 times in the last week: don't cross that line," Homan said during a visit to the border in Texas in late November. "Don't test us."

The veteran immigration official was acting director of ICE during Trump's first term and was one of a handful of U.S. officials who signed off the memo leading to the separation of migrant families detained at the border. He also served as head of the deportation branch of ICE during Barack Obama's presidency, when the agency carried out a record number of formal deportations. 

Los Angeles County is home to about 950,000 undocumented immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Immigration rights advocates have sounded the alarm over concerns surrounding the expected policies of Trump, who has signaled he would enlist the U.S. military in carrying out deportations and other federal immigration enforcement efforts. 

"I expect Donald Trump, as president in his second term...they're going to double down on cruelty," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in LA County (CHIRLA) told CBS News last month. 

Before Trump's election, Homan outlined his deportation plans in an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes" in October.

"Let me tell you what it's not going to be first," Homan said. "It's not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It's not going to be building concentration camps. I've read it all. It's ridiculous."

However, Homan said he would restart a policy that ended in 2021 under Biden's presidency — large-scale immigration arrests at workplaces. "That's gonna be necessary," he said of such enforcement efforts. 

LA has long limited local law enforcement's involvement in immigration-related arrests and deportations, with the Los Angeles Police Department establishing Special Order No. 40 in 1979. The policy prohibits officers from questioning people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. 

This year, the American Immigration Council published a study that said the deportation of more than 11 million people, the estimated population of people living in the U.S. illegally, would lead to the country's losses of about $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion — hitting key industries of construction, hospitality and agriculture.