By Pedro RiosCalMatters
This commentary was initially printed by CalMatters. Enroll for his or her newsletters.
A few of the strongest folks in San Diego County haven’t been shy about their distaste for California’s chief “sanctuary” legislation and are difficult it each means they will, utilizing fear-mongering rhetoric that has little foundation in actuality.
In one of many space’s largest cities, the El Cajon Metropolis Council just lately handed a controversial decision in an try to sanitize its mayor’s contempt for sanctuary insurance policies that shield migrants from overzealous enforcement by couching it as a public security measure. The decision barely handed with a 3-2 vote on its third journey to the council in February.
The main drawer Invoice Wells instructed inewsource in December he can be keen to violate the California Values Actthe 2017 legislation which prohibits state and native sources from getting used to implement federal immigration legal guidelines, with some exceptions. Legislation enforcement can nonetheless collaborate with federal immigration businesses by means of joint process forces and when concentrating on an individual who has dedicated sure critical crimes.
Eva Pacheco, a 34-year resident of El Cajon and member of the grassroots group Latinos En Acción, which has introduced out dozens of neighborhood members to metropolis conferences, believes the rationale for this measure is to assist President Trump’s mass deportation plans and endanger El Cajon residents, she instructed me in Spanish.
After the decision handed, Pacheco mentioned that day many individuals most popular to remain dwelling. “People we know who are undocumented stopped going to workand they expressed a lot of fear when seeing El Cajon police officers.”
Wells, the principle proponent of the decision, used a public security narrative to mislead the general public in regards to the state sanctuary legislation, suggesting that it constrains cops from doing their jobs. He instructed right-wing media outlet One American Information that the legislation doesn’t permit any cooperation with the federal authorities concerning immigration, which is fake. He has additionally vowed on social media to “fight the State of California tooth and nail.”
Different statements Wells has made about immigrants recommend that he subscribes to the white supremacist “great replacement theory,” which asserts that Democrats are purposefully bringing immigrants of coloration to the U.S. to switch white populations in white-majority voting counties. The El Paso shooter who murdered 23 folks in a Walmart in 2019 espoused the identical ideology.
An interview posted in December with a nonprofit explicitly selling the speculation revealed the depth of Wells’ perception in it.
“I think it’s to take over the country from a power base,” he mentioned. “You send these people to the big blue cities like Chicago and New York knowing that those people are going to vote Democrat and then they get reapportioned in the congressional roles, so they get extra congressional seats.”
Tom Homen, the Trump administration’s border czar, has additionally endorsed the once-fringe substitute principle — as have many extra aspiring and actively serving public officers.
Wells and El Cajon Metropolis Councilmember Steve Goble met with Homen in December 2024, and Wells apparently met with him once more in January. In an electronic mail assertion, Goble denied that his dialog with Homen included any prior settlement about utilizing the El Cajon decision as a solution to problem California’s sanctuary legislation in court docket. But there’s concern amongst immigrant rights advocates that could be the technique.
Wells didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
El Cajon officers, once more on a 3-2 vote, voted in March to ship a assist letter to U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans of Colorado, who has launched a invoice in Congress that might amend a federal legislation to allow challenges to state legal guidelines like California’s Values Act.
Learn Extra: A California sheriff is planning to interrupt the state’s sanctuary legislation. Right here’s how
California Legal professional Basic Rob Bonta has been taking discover. His workplace responded to El Cajon’s letter about its authorized obligations below the state sanctuary legislation. Together with a strong record of sources, state officers reminded El Cajon that “California law enforcement agencies are focused on criminal enforcement, rather than immigration enforcement.”
A 2020 UC Irvine research demonstrated that sanctuary insurance policies don’t enhance violent or property crime charges. A Utah State College research from the identical 12 months even suggests sanctuary insurance policies may lower property crimes. Los Angeles, for instance, has additionally lengthy understood that public cooperation is significant for police work and barred officers from asking about citizenship standing a long time in the past to make sure that belief stays.
Nonetheless, El Cajon is much from an outlier. Some California legislators have used an identical public security rationale to push for harsher immigration enforcement laws. State Sen. Brian Jonesthe Senate minority chief, launched a invoice to “overhaul” the legislation. At a press convention asserting the proposal — with Wells flanking him — Jones mentioned “the Safety Before Criminal Sanctuary Act is a commonsense measure, a simple reform, to tighten up California’s sanctuary state policy, in favor of better public safety.”
Assemblymember Kate Sancheza Rancho Santa Margarita Republican, has launched Meeting Invoice 324 that might add exceptions to the Values Act by allowing legislation enforcement officers to detain somebody who’s “alleged to have violated … specified provisions relating to sex trafficking,” even when they haven’t been convicted. In an interview with Fox InformationSanchez described how her invoice match with Trump’s plans to deport thousands and thousands of individuals by interesting to the identical public security argument.
“We want safe communities; we want to be able to uphold the rule of law,” she mentioned.
One other invoice, AB 85makes an attempt to outright intestine the protecting nature of the state’s sanctuary legislation. However the creator, Invoice Essayliresigned from the Meeting final week to change into a federal prosecutor for the Trump administration, leaving the destiny of the invoice in query.
Salvador Sarmiento, marketing campaign director with the Nationwide Day Laborer Organizing Community and a member of the ICE Out of California Coalition, a bunch that advocates to finish entanglements between California legislation enforcement businesses and ICE, famous that anti-sanctuary methods failed in Orange County throughout Trump’s first time period.
“The racist political stunt sparked a huge backlash,” he instructed me. “The nativist council members were ousted, GOP members of Congress were outraged and the community prevailed.”
The methods have notably modified initially of Trump’s second time period, and MAGA Republicans in California are eagerly doing his bidding. Trump has already signed an govt order concentrating on jurisdictions with insurance policies that restrict their cooperation with federal immigration forces and has threatened to chop federal funding, with out offering particulars about what funds can be lower.
Nonetheless, the neighborhood in El Cajon stays resilient as these insurance policies creep nearer. Pacheco instructed me that “even though these are anti-immigrant policies we are resisting, and this resolution is causing us to keep participating and to not be afraid. We are here and we will remain here.”
This text was initially printed on CalMatters and was republished below the Artistic Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
