SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - A policy announced Wednesday by President Donald Trump targeting immigrant-protecting sanctuary cities was blasted by state and local officials across California who threatened to go to court to block it from taking effect.
The mainly Democratic officials in cities from Santa Ana to San Francisco vowed to fight efforts by the new president to withdraw federal grants from cities that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement.
“We are resolved in our actions,” said Sal Tinajero, a councilman in heavily immigrant Santa Ana, which adopted a local sanctuary law earlier this month aimed at banning the use of city resources for immigration enforcement. “Cities cannot and should not be coerced into becoming the deportation arm of the federal government.”
It was not immediately clear precisely which cities could be affected by the action signed by Trump just days after taking office on promises to step up immigration enforcement and build a border wall. It referred to withholding funds from jurisdictions that bar officials from communicating with federal authorities about someone’s immigration status.
The debate over sanctuary cities reached a fevered pitch in 2015 after Kate Steinle, 32, was fatally shot in the back by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez during an evening stroll with her father along San Francisco’s waterfront. Lopez-Sanchez, who was in the country illegally after multiple deportations to his native Mexico, told police he found a gun wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench and that it fired accidentally when he picked it up.
Lopez-Sanchez had been released from a San Francisco jail despite a request from federal immigration authorities that local officials keep him in custody for possible deportation. Trump often cited the Steinle case during the campaign.
Many other cities and counties in California also refuse to detain immigrants for deportation agents out of legal concerns after a federal court ruled that immigrants can’t be held in jail beyond their scheduled release dates. Since then, federal agents have been asking local law enforcement agencies to provide information about immigrants they’re seeking for deportation, if not hold them.
On Wednesday, more than 100 immigrant rights activists gathered outside San Francisco City Hall for a news conference supporting the city’s long-held sanctuary status.
“When we know that there is a violation of human rights here, this is where we excel. This is where we lead the nation and we say, ’we will not back down and we will stand up for what we believe is right,’” Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer told a cheering crowd.
Some California Republicans welcomed Trump’s efforts to take on sanctuary cities and toughen immigration enforcement. On his Twitter page, U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert called the day’s actions “important first steps toward fixing our broken immigration system.”
In California’s state Senate, Democrats said they’ll fast-track legislation meant to hinder efforts to step up deportations by protecting immigrants’ information and providing lawyers to those facing deportation.
“It’s not the job of our local and county and state law enforcement to turn the cogs on President Trump’s deportation machine,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon said. “He cannot force us, and we will not hesitate to fight him in Congress and settle the matter in court.”
Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Temecula, said Democrats are being counterproductive and will only threaten the state’s share of federal funding if they “poke the president in the eye.”
“I think that the Legislature is acting very immature, and (Democrats) need to accept the fact that Donald Trump is going to be the president for the next four years and we need to do everything we can to work with him and his administration to improve the lives of all Californians,” he said.
In a statement, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his office “will protect the rights of all of (California’s) people from unwarranted intrusion from any source, including the federal government,” Becerra said.
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AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Sacramento, Janie Har in San Francisco and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.
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