A two-decade-old program the feds want to expand -- which delegates immigration enforcement authority to some local officers -- has all but disappeared from California. And Senate Bill 54, if passed, could not only stamp the program out for good in the state but also further restrict cooperation between cops and immigration agencies, particularly at county jails.
"If the feds come to us and say we'd like to speak with person X, it would preclude that," said Cory Salzillo, legislative director for the California State Sheriffs' Association, which opposes the measure because it believes such cooperation promotes public safety.
The immigration controversies erupting in the early days of the Trump presidency provide a window into the delicate dance between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement officers in California, where "sanctuary" policies are common.
That relationship reached a breaking point this week in the sanctuary city of Santa Cruz. On Thursday, the city's police chief, Kevin Vogel, held a news conference to announce that his department had been duped into participating in a series of Feb. 13 immigration raids by immigration agents.
Vogel said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, falsely claimed the raids were part of a gang-related investigation. As a result, he said, police brass in Santa Cruz won't be dealing with ICE anymore.
"We can't cooperate with a law enforcement agency we cannot trust," Vogel told reporters.
ICE, however, vehemently denied that the agency had misled police and accused Santa Cruz police officials of playing politics. "The operation was the culmination of a five-year investigation which resulted in the arrest of 10 criminal organization members on federal criminal charges in Santa Cruz, Daly City and Watsonville," said James Schwab, ICE spokesman for the San Francisco field office.
Several days before the operation, he said, ICE had notified Vogel that any "non-targeted" illegal immigrants during the raids "would be held briefly until determinations could be made about their identities and case histories." According to Schwab, 11 illegal immigrants were initially detained and all but one was released "due to his criminal history and possible ties to the ongoing investigation."
Experts say that even if they're not in the business of enforcing immigration policy -- as local police chiefs and sheriffs almost invariably say -- local officers may possess key information about the whereabouts and release dates of defendants and convicted criminals -- details that make it easier for federal agents to find and deport people.
Trump's threat to withhold funds from sanctuary cities and this week's memo about working more closely with local officers seem to point to the same issue: that "the federal government is at a significant information deficit," said Pratheepan Gulasekaram, who teaches immigration law at Santa Clara University School of Law.
"The fact is, local law enforcement is much more likely to encounter people (and) know where they are," he said. "To be able to leverage that information is very important in immigration enforcement."
Gulasekaram said the state has a strong argument in asserting it has the authority to restrict the use of state resources to cooperate with ICE, even as the feds try to make inroads with local agencies.
The program known as 287(g), which Congress passed in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, is now in place at just a single agency in California: the Orange County Sheriff's Office, according to the Department of Homeland Security's roster.
In 2013, California passed the Trust Act, which prevents jails from keeping someone in custody for immigration authorities after they are eligible for release. The proposed new measures in SB 54, authored by Senate leader Kevin de León, would go further, preventing agencies from collecting information on people's legal status or from responding to certain requests from federal agents for information such as phone numbers, work addresses or release dates.
Even before Homeland Security released draft memos on Tuesday indicating it would expand its pool of undocumented immigrants targeted for deportation, California Democrats began introducing a raft of bills to complicate that effort, from providing state-funded defense attorneys to training public defenders on immigration law to blocking entry of ICE into schools without authorization from the principal or superintendent.
"It's putting up those defenses and circling around our immigrants and saying, 'In order to get to our immigrants you're going to have to go through us,'" said Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland.
But the proposal to limit communication could face challenges -- even with a Democratic supermajority in both houses of the Legislature -- in its current form. One of its most vocal opponents is Sen. Joel Anderson, a Republican from El Cajon, northeast of San Diego.
"SB 54 is a huge departure from what we've done in the past," Anderson said. The bill, he said, "makes no distinction between Dreamers who are here to improve their lives and people who are here to prey on others." (Young immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children are often called "Dreamers.")
The California College & University Police Chiefs Association supports the measure, saying they think it will build trust and encourage victims to come forward. But two prominent police groups -- the Sheriffs' Association and the California Peace Officers Association -- are opposed. The California Police Chiefs Association has yet to take a position.
"It would not allow our federal law enforcement partners to call into the jail and simply ask if somebody had been picked up on a fresh crime," said Sacramento Police Capt. Marc Coopwood, speaking on behalf of the Peace Officers Association, which represents 12,000 California police officers and sheriff's deputies.
Noting that the bill was in its early stages, Coopwood added that he hoped his association could eventually get behind it if its sponsors agree to some keys changes.
"As a practice and as an industry, we just don't enforce immigration at all," he said.
Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern, who did not offer a personal position on the bill, put it this way: "I don't work with the IRS on whether or not you paid your taxes. I don't work with U.S. Customs to know if you have a passport or not. We don't do front-line immigration work whatsoever -- never have since I have been sheriff and we have no plans to do so in the future."
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