5-things-you-need-to-know-about-trumps-efforts-to-overturn-californias-sanctuary-state-law

In the heart of the Oval Office, President Donald Trump is once again attempting to dismantle a policy that California Democrats adopted during his first term to shield certain undocumented immigrants from deportation. One of his initial executive orders targets the state’s sanctuary law, which typically restricts how local police interact with federal immigration officers. Trump’s proposal, titled “Protecting the American People from Invasion,” would deny federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide.

The implications of this potential move are far-reaching, especially for a state of 39 million residents that heavily relies on federal funding for its public programs and current wildfire recovery efforts. While the exact federal funds at stake remain unclear, withholding money could deliver a devastating blow to California. Notably, Trump previously attempted a similar action during his first term, resulting in a lawsuit from California and a court ruling in the state’s favor.

Even before assuming office, a non-profit organization led by his policy advisor, Stephen Miller, sent letters to hundreds of local elected officials nationwide, warning of potential “legal consequences” if their sanctuary policies obstructed immigration law enforcement. So, what exactly does the state sanctuary law entail and how does it impact Trump’s mass deportation plans? Here are five key aspects to understand about California’s Values Act.

### Policing in California
In October 2017, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54, also known as the California Values Act or sanctuary state law. This legislation prohibits state and local police from investigating, interrogating, or arresting individuals for immigration enforcement purposes. It also restricts, though not entirely prohibits, police cooperation with federal immigration officials. Kevin De Leon, the former State Senate leader who drafted the law, emphasized that it aimed to prevent federal authorities from enlisting local police in Trump’s deportation machinery.

The sanctuary movement traces back to the 1980s when Central American refugees fled civil war and sought protection against deportation in churches and other places of worship. Today, sanctuary law does not denote a specific protected place in California but instead delineates the actions that local and state authorities can or cannot take regarding immigration. For instance, the law prohibits local police from detaining individuals beyond 48 hours after their release solely for immigration officials to pick them up. Importantly, this law does not limit federal government actions within the state, meaning that ICE can still arrest and deport undocumented individuals in California and other sanctuary jurisdictions.

“Federal government has the right to enforce immigration law,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta during a press conference in San Diego last week. However, “it cannot recruit or compel city, county, or state law enforcement entities to do their job for them.”

### Exclusions from Sanctuary Law
President Trump and his supporters have frequently argued that sanctuary laws shield dangerous criminals. They have highlighted specific crimes committed by undocumented immigrants to assert that sanctuary laws endanger the general population. However, the law allows police to report to immigration authorities the impending release of an inmate if that individual has been convicted of a serious crime such as murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery, and arson.

Niels Frenzen, a law professor at USC’s Gould School of Law and co-director of the school’s immigration clinic, emphasized, “It is absurd to characterize SB 54 as a measure preventing non-U.S. citizens with serious criminal convictions from being handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, because it does not.” Nevertheless, these facts often get overshadowed in political discourse. Protected individuals under the sanctuary law are typically those arrested for less severe offenses like traffic violations or driving without a license or insurance.

### Legal Confirmation of California’s Sanctuary Law
After California enacted the Values Act, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice took the state to court, arguing that the state law “interferes with federal immigration authorities’ ability to carry out their responsibilities under federal law.” Nonetheless, immigration attorneys have noted that the state law seems to have minimal impact on ICE’s ability to perform its duties.

For instance, in 2017, ICE detained 20,201 individuals illegally present in California, accounting for approximately 14% of all ICE arrests nationwide that year. ICE was on track to surpass that figure the following year, with 8,588 arrests in California during the first two months of 2018. Despite the sanctuary law being in effect, this accounted for roughly 14% of all national arrests, as per a Department of Justice document presented in the lawsuit.

In 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s Values Act did not impede federal immigration law enforcement. When the Trump Administration appealed to the Supreme Court, the Court declined to review the case, leaving the law unchanged. In a separate legal battle, California sued the Trump Administration over its policy of withholding federal grants for law enforcement to sanctuary policy jurisdictions, with a federal judge ruling in California’s favor.

### Studies on Crime Impact
Critics of sanctuary laws have long argued that they compromise public safety. For instance, the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford, has linked the law to the fentanyl epidemic, correlating a rise in fentanyl-related deaths with the sanctuary policy’s implementation around 2018. However, there is limited official research to prove this causation.

To support such claims, researchers would need to isolate the specific impact of the state sanctuary law on crime rates. A 2020 analysis by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, examined California’s crime rates in 2018 and compared them to estimated crime rates if Governor Brown had not signed the sanctuary policy. The study concluded that the law did not significantly impact violent or property crime rates.

Charis Kubrin, the study’s author, pointed out that eliminating the sanctuary law would not likely lead to significant crime reductions. A separate study by researchers from Stanford and Princeton found that sanctuary policies nationwide reduced overall deportations by a third but did not decrease the number of deportations for individuals with violent criminal convictions. This study also indicated that these policies had minimal direct impact on crime rates.

### Anticipated Conflicts in Sensitive Areas
During the Biden Administration, a “sensitive locations” policy was in place to discourage immigration agents from making arrests in places like schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses. Recently, the Trump Administration overturned this policy, asserting that conducting civil immigration enforcement actions near or within courthouses could reduce public safety risks.

State sanctuary laws require officials in these same locations to adopt policies limiting public participation in immigration law enforcement, such as requiring ICE agents to obtain a judicial warrant before attempting an arrest. This could potentially create a conflict for local officials if the new administration’s immigration crackdown reaches their jurisdiction, noted Álvaro Huerta, litigation and defense director at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

With the recent policy reversal under Trump, Huerta remarked, “the federal government may seek to enforce some (immigration) law in those spaces, but the state government is asking those spaces to require judicial orders.”

In the ongoing tug of war between federal and state authorities over sanctuary policies, the impact on immigration enforcement, crime rates, and public safety continues to be a topic of intense debate and legal contention. As California grapples with the potential consequences of Trump’s efforts to overturn its sanctuary state law, the implications are not just legal but also social, economic, and ethical.