This state bill would stop local law enforcement from helping ICE carry out its agenda

A state lawmaker from Los Angeles County has introduced legislation meant to prevent local law enforcement officers from being “commandeered” into helping federal immigration officials carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program.

The Protect California Rights Act, introduced by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Alhambra, would clarify that state and local law enforcement agencies cannot aid federal agents during operations involving what she described as racial or identity profiling, the criminalization of protected free speech or the use of “unauthorized military weapons” against Californians.

Not only has the Trump administration targeted people based on how they look or speak; it has gone after U.S. citizens for criticizing U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents, Pérez said Monday, Feb. 16, during a news conference at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum near downtown Los Angeles to announce SB 1105.

Her bill aims to protect individuals who exercise their right to monitor or record law enforcement activities.

California’s sanctuary law was enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term to limit state and local law enforcement agencies’ involvement in federal immigration enforcement operations involving people without a violent criminal record.

Nevertheless, Pérez said, ICE has called on local law enforcement agencies to keep members of the public who have a right to monitor or document ICE activities from doing so.

The senator described one incident in which she said officers from the Los Angeles Police Department formed a perimeter around a factory during an ICE operation last June to prevent observers from documenting what was taking place.

While they may not have technically violated existing state law because they weren’t directly involved in arresting protesters, LAPD officers provided back-up during that ICE operation, Pérez said. Her bill, she said, would close a loophole in the law.

“California’s law enforcement resources cannot be commandeered to undermine California law,” Pérez said.

“We will not allow local officers to be used to silence lawful observers,” she added. “And we will not allow constitutional rights to be chipped away under the guise of public safety. It is time to close the door on federal overreach in our state.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials, while speaking about protecting federal immigration personnel, have in the past said ICE agents have increasingly encountered violence while doing their jobs.

“The men and women of ICE put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin has said.

But those who oppose the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda say they don’t want state and local law enforcement agencies to play a role in carrying out that agenda.

Representatives for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, known as CHIRLA, and the American Civil Liberties Union California Action, which are co-sponsors of SB 1105, said during Monday’s news conference that when local law enforcement is called on to come to the assistance of federal immigration officers, it erodes the community’s trust in those local agencies and make community members less likely to report crimes when they occur.

David Trujillo, executive director of ACLU California Action, said the bill would protect local law enforcement “from being forced to serve as foot soldiers for the federal government.”

According to Perez’s office, SB 1105 is co-authored by Sens. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, and Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, as well as Assemblymembers Sade Elhawary, Mike Fong and Mark González, all of whom represent L.A. County.

It is one of a number of immigration-related bills that have been introduced this year in the California Legislature.