Bill Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, California, claimed in a Monday post on X that the State of California “is threatening to take pensions and charge police officers with felonies if they comply with federal deportation laws. While the Trump administration is working to enforce immigration laws, California seems intent on blocking these efforts.”
Wells makes it clear that El Cajon, a city of approximately 100,000 people located 17 miles east of San Diego, is not a sanctuary city and that his police officers “are being put in an impossible position.” He wrote:
If they comply with federal immigration authorities, they risk felony charges and losing their hard-earned pensions.This is unacceptable. No officer should have to choose between doing their duty and jeopardizing their future.As Mayor of El Cajon, I’m doing everything in my power to protect our officers and stand against these dangerous policies.
If these disturbing claims are true, then the battle lines are already drawn for the first major showdown between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and sanctuary state/city leaders. Defiance of this magnitude from the government of the largest sanctuary state in the country would have sweeping implications for President-elect Donald Trump’s planned mass deportation agenda.
For obvious reasons, there are no references on the internet to this reported ultimatum (or perhaps more appropriately, this reported shakedown). However, in 2017, SB 54, now known as the California Values Act, was signed into law. The law “prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from using money or personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest people for immigration enforcement purposes.” According to the group “ICE out of California,” this law specifically prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies (excluding prisons) from engaging in the following actions:
Unsurprisingly, the page conspicuously states, “In all cases, local law enforcement agencies can adopt policies that provide more protections.” [Emphasis added.]
I am not a lawyer, but the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution essentially tells us that federal law supersedes state and local law. Article VI, Clause 2 states:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
And 8 U.S.C. § 1324 – (Unannotated Title 8. Aliens and Nationality § 1324) clearly states there are criminal penalties for bringing in and harboring aliens.
Again, if this story is true, then the State of California is engaging in financial blackmail against police officers, as one commenter notes below.
Wells has courageously sounded the alarm and, by now, Trump’s new border czar Tom Homan has likely been apprised of this alleged new threat.
The no-nonsense Homan has already indicated he won’t hesitate to jail officials who break federal law to protect illegal immigrants.
During a Tuesday morning interview with Fox News, Homan responded to questions about Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who has been extremely vocal about his opposition to the planned mass deportations. (I posted about Johnston’s remarks here.)
[Johnston recently told a local media outlet, not only are we “gonna continue to be a welcoming, open, big-hearted city that’s gonna stand by our values,” but “more than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there. … It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right?,” he defiantly added.]
Homan told Fox, “Look, me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing. He’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail.”
And jail isn’t the only weapon in his arsenal. During an interview with Homan, which aired on Sunday night, Fox News’s Mark Levin pointed out that Homan has another “very, very powerful weapon that the Democrats, when they’re in power, use against Republican administrations, state and local, all the time: federal funding.”
California’s alleged willingness to use police officers as pawns in this fight is despicable. Any attempts to threaten local and state law enforcement officers with felony charges and the confiscation of their pensions will not work out well for the virtue-signaling California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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