California’s sanctuary law upheld by Supreme Court. Here’s what it means
The former lawmaker who wrote California’s “sanctuary state” law declared an “unequivocal victory” Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from the Trump administration contesting its protections for undocumented immigrants.
The law, signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, prevents local law enforcement officials from assisting immigration enforcement agencies in detaining and transferring the custody of immigrants.
“We already have enough issues with law enforcement being weaponized against the communities that they were intended to protect,” said former Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles.
De León carried the law in the first year of President Donald Trump’s administration, setting up a contrast between California and the president who was elected on a campaign pledge to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Supporters say the law has made a difference in preventing undocumented immigrants in law enforcement custody from being handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
After the sanctuary law took effect, the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at local jails from January 2018 to May 2018 declined by 41%, according to a 2019 report released by civil rights organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus and the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology.
Trump has criticized the law from time to time, and conservatives have mocked it. In May, for instance, the city of Atwater in the San Joaquin Valley declared itself a “sanctuary city” for business as a rebuke to the stay-at-home orders Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom handed down to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump also called for the law’s repeal after the December 2018 death of Cpl. Ronil Singh, a Newman police officer who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. Singh’s alleged killer had a criminal record that likely would have made him exempt from the sanctuary law, meaning local police could have cooperated with immigration officers in removing him prior to Singh’s death.
In 2018, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions filed a lawsuit against California’s sanctuary policies, which was later dismissed by U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez.
The Trump administration argued California’s law interfered with federal immigration enforcement.
“When officers are unable to arrest aliens — often criminal aliens — who are in removal proceedings or have been ordered removed from the United States, those aliens instead return to the community, where criminal aliens are disproportionately likely to commit crimes,” according to an October 2019 petition filed by Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco. “That result undermines public safety, immigration enforcement, and the rule of law.”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra defended the sanctuary law, contending the White House “does not have the authority to commandeer state resources.”
A majority of the Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s petition to hear the case, effectively affirming the law.
Becerra said the sanctuary law encourages undocumented immigrants to trust law enforcement officers, reassuring them that they or their loved ones do not have to fear deportation when they cooperate with police.
“The last thing we need to do is erode that trust,” Becerra said in a statement.
Whether the Trump administration will seek other legal remedies to fight California’s sanctuary law, de León said, remains to be seen. He said it would also be difficult to predict how the Supreme Court’s denial could impact other immigrant-friendly policies in the state.
“We have to win the White House and the U.S. Senate to get immigration reform,” he said.
This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 4:52 PM with the headline "California’s sanctuary law upheld by Supreme Court. Here’s what it means."