With questions swirling over immigration in President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, El Cajon’s city council is working on a measure looking to affirm its cooperation with federal immigration authorities as they seek clarity on the tension between state and federal policies.
At the city council meeting Tuesday, public comment on the measure grew emotional at times, with some residents saying they believed it would erode trust with local law enforcement and others saying they felt the policy was unfairly attacking the city’s Latino community.
The proposed resolution looked to affirm the city’s “intent to assist federal immigration authorities in their enforcement efforts to the maximum legal extent permissible.”
It also included a push for clarification, in the form of a letter sent to California Attorney General Rob Bonta last month, asking him to specify the scope of Senate Bill 54 – a state law passed in 2017 to limit state and local participation in deportations, with some exceptions for people convicted of crimes like assault or battery.
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The letter asked Bonta to enumerate any potential conflicts between that state law and federal immigration enforcement ahead of the second Trump administration, after he ran on a platform of unspecified “mass deportations.”
Bonta has not responded to that letter, nor did his office respond to request for comment Thursday. The resolution was ultimately tabled, with the city council sending it back to staff for amended language.
“I think there was a lot of misunderstanding in the original language that came out of the resolution,” Councilmember Steve Goble said Thursday. “Really, my focus is on protecting public safety. I will help the federal government. We should.”
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“What we need is clarification,” Goble continued. “We have an incoming administration that has a different view on enforcement than the outgoing administration, and the differences with the state too. We need the two of them to get together and resolve the differences and not put us in the middle.”
“How the language was written, it implied that migrants were people to be afraid of, people that were prone to criminality,” said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee, who spoke against the resolution at the council meeting.
“The city of El Cajon is very diverse,” Rios said. “There are many people from different parts of the world who then would feel targeted by councilmembers who would not be wanting to protect certain members of their constituency, primarily those that might be migrants and those who might be perceived as being migrants in the city.”
He noted that SB 54 limits local law enforcement’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“The incoming administration at the federal level wants to massively deport many people. It can't do that without the cooperation of local law enforcement authorities,” Rios said. “That’s where there’s a clash of interests where the state government is saying, ‘We can't do that. We don't want to do that,’ and where the federal government is saying, ‘Now you have to do that.’”
Like many others, Rios said he expected conflicts like this to result in litigation, anticipating Bonta’s office would sue the federal government. The resources and funding for exactly that are a central issue in an upcoming special legislative session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom following the November election.
El Cajon’s proposal came from Mayor Bill Wells, who indicated Tuesday that time was of the essence.
“We are in a precarious situation right now,” Wells said at the council meeting. “We've got two different government agencies, both of which are a higher level than we are, that are taking opposite sides, so we're asking for clarification.”
El Cajon plans to reintroduce the resolution with amended language at its next city council meeting on Jan. 28.
It's the latest in a patchwork of local policies, proposed just weeks after the San Diego County Board of Supervisors passed a measure ending all transfers into ICE custody without a judicial warrant — a step further than state law, and a step Sheriff Kelly Martinez said she won't take, refusing to enforce it.
After Supervisor Nora Vargas, who introduced that county policy, stepped down this month, its fate may become a key issue in the special election to replace her.
"My hope is that whoever takes her position and is representing her constituents well is minding to the concerns that are being made at this point about so much uncertainty that we're living through and facing in our communities," Rios said.
