Los Angeles Passes Sanctuary City Ordinance

The 2024 presidential election earlier this month saw president-elect Donald Trump declared as the winner for after his initial turn as president in 2017. For many in the Latinx community, this has raised a lot of fears about what his win and upcoming administration will mean, especially for undocumented immigrants. In fact, in the past few weeks and even since the beginning of his re-election campaign, he has shared his intentions to declare immigration a national emergency, work with military forces to carry out mass deportations, and build more detention centers to hold people before they are flown back to their home countries. The president-elect has selected “border czar” Tom Homan, who is a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, who previously told Fox “nothing will stop us from deporting migrant criminals. We’re going to do the job with you, or without you.”

In response, many states and cities have taken action to stand up against Trump’s immigration policies. Earlier this week, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance declaring the city of Los Angeles a “sanctuary city,” which will prohibit city law enforcement from assisting federal immigration enforcement in the event that they are searching or planning to arrest undocumented immigrations, the Associated Press reported.

“Basically, the ordinance would prevent federal immigration enforcement from being able to access city facilities or to use city resources in the pursuit of immigration enforcement,” LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman said to CBS News.

The state of California and L.A. itself have a long history of protecting undocumented immigrants going as far back as 1979 when the LAPD made it illegal for officers to question people about their legal status and make reporting crimes safer for undocumented immigrants to do. Later in 2018, California declared itself a “sanctuary state,” prohibiting local law enforcement from arresting people on the basis of their legal status or obeying federal deportation orders. Yet, the reality is that police continued to criminalize undocumented immigrants, having banned and penalized street vendors until earlier this year, many of whom are undocumented.

This year’s ordinance was originally drafted in 2023 but after Trump was re-elected, the city council moved quickly to pass the ordinance before his inauguration in Washington D.C. officially takes place. A similar ordinance declaring L.A. a sanctuary city was previously passed in 2019, though it was criticized by advocates as being symbolic rather than genuine action. In this new version, L.A. will not only be declared a sanctuary city but it will also forbid city officials from collecting or sharing data and information about undocumented immigrants, such as their legal status, and prohibit city employees from contacting or notifying federal authorities, including ICE, about any undocumented immigrants being released or detained.

The same week, a similar ordinance was passed by L.A.’s Board of Education in order to prohibit school district employees from reporting undocumented immigrants, sharing a student or their family’s legal status, or cooperating with federal law enforcement in their searches or arrests.

According to a 2022 report from the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Equity Research Institute, over 3.6 million people in Los Angeles are immigrants, meaning over 1 in 3 Angelenos are immigrants. It is estimated that the county is home to 800,000 undocumented migrants, and over 1 million L.A. residents live with someone who is undocumented. President-elect Trump has yet to respond to these new laws but it’s clear that these ordinances to protect the undocumented are only the beginning.