The U.S. Justice Division on Thursday requested California counties to supply it with lists of all inmates of their jails who usually are not Americans, in addition to the crimes they’ve been accused or convicted of and their scheduled launch dates.
The Justice Division mentioned in a press release that its “information requests” to the counties — together with Los Angeles and San Francisco counties — had been “designed to help federal immigration authorities in prioritizing the elimination of unlawful aliens who dedicated crimes after illegally coming into the US.”
The requests add one other layer to the Trump administration’s already roiling turf warfare with California over immigration coverage and state and native sanctuary legal guidelines. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers have been swarming the area making hundreds of arrests as a part of President Trump’s name for mass deportations, and the Justice Division is already suing the town of Los Angeles over its sanctuary coverage.
State officers have lengthy defended California’s sanctuary insurance policies, which typically forbid native authorities from implementing civil immigration legal guidelines however present for exceptions in circumstances involving prison offenses. They’ve additionally criticized the administration and ICE brokers for his or her latest arrest ways in Southern California, together with by citing figures that present {that a} majority of these arrested had no prison convictions.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s workplace instantly referred to as the legality of the calls for into query, and mentioned it might evaluate the directive and monitoring its implementation “for compliance with the legislation.”
State legislation — specifically the California Values Act, or SB 54 — “permits county jails to switch a person into ICE custody if ICE presents a prison arrest warrant for a violation of a federal prison immigration legislation, however it doesn’t enable for the wholesale notification to DOJ of people housed in county jails, no matter whether or not or not they’ve even been discovered responsible of a criminal offense,” a spokesperson for Bonta’s workplace mentioned in a press release.
“President Trump and his Division of Justice can’t bully our native legislation enforcement into breaking the legislation.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division lately resumed transferring some jail inmates to ICE for the primary time in years, citing prison exceptions to state and native sanctuary legal guidelines.
A spokesperson for L.A. County referred questions in regards to the request to the Sheriff’s Division.
Requested in regards to the request throughout a Civilian Oversight Fee assembly Thursday morning, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna mentioned details about all county inmates is already publicly accessible on the division’s web site.
“The minute you get booked, processed and also you get Livescanned, that’s a nationwide system, so brokers of the federal authorities will know you’re in custody,” he mentioned. “So it’s not that we’re notifying them, it’s an automated notification primarily based in your fingerprints.”
The Justice Division mentioned that it hoped the counties would voluntarily adjust to its requests. But when they don’t, it mentioned, it might “pursue all accessible technique of acquiring the information, together with by subpoenas or different obligatory course of.”
It mentioned that whereas “each unlawful alien by definition violates federal legislation, those that go on to commit crimes after doing so present that they pose a heightened threat to our Nation’s security and safety.”
Not each noncitizen within the U.S. is within the nation illegally, on condition that there are noncitizen everlasting residents and different visa holders. Nonetheless, as a part of its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has given heightened scrutiny to individuals in these classes, as effectively.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, in her personal assertion in regards to the requests, mentioned that eradicating “prison unlawful aliens” from the nation was the administration’s “highest precedence.”
“I stay up for cooperating with California’s county sheriffs to perform our shared obligation of retaining Californians and all People secure and safe,” Bondi mentioned.
In Might, Luna’s division transferred inmates from its jails to ICE for the primary time since early 2020. Between Might and June, the division handed 20 inmates over to the federal company.
At Thursday’s oversight assembly, Luna mentioned the division obtained 995 civil detainer requests from ICE in 2024, and that it didn’t adjust to any of them, which it’s not legally required to do. However he mentioned that the division needed to flip over the 20 inmates as a result of it obtained federal judicial warrants from federal authorities for every of them.
He mentioned he anticipated such warrants to extend, which might enhance the variety of inmates turned over.
“These are authorized paperwork signed by a choose. We can’t deny these,” he mentioned.
Max Huntsman, the county’s inspector basic, and different specialists have mentioned the Sheriff’s Division is required by federal and state legislation to adjust to the warrants, and the method is authorized underneath state and native sanctuary insurance policies.
Occasions workers writers Rebecca Ellis and Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.
