A California state senator introduced a bill that would ban local law enforcement officers from assisting federal agents in operations that involve racial or identity profiling, criminalization of speech or use of unauthorized weapons.
Senate Bill 1105, also known as the Protect California Rights Act, was introduced in an ACLU California Action press conference on Monday by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Democrat from Pasadena.
“The federal government is trying to intimidate people, but being a legal observer is not illegal, documenting government activity is not illegal, protesting is not illegal and speaking out against your government is not illegal,” Pérez said at the press conference. “It is time to close the door on federal overreach in our state.”
The bill is cosponsored by ACLU California Action and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. Pérez said that the bill is in response to recent United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations that target minority communities regardless of immigration status.
“We know these operations are not about criminal activity,” Pérez said. “People are being targeted based on how they look, how they speak and what they believe.”
In 2017, California passed the California Values Act, which limits state and local involvement in immigration enforcement for non-violent offenses. Pérez said the bill did not anticipate the “extreme tactics” being employed by ICE.
“California’s law enforcement resources cannot be commandeered to undermine California law,” Pérez said. “We will not allow federal agencies to disguise immigration crackdowns as something else while targeting Latino and immigrant neighborhoods.”
David Trujillo, the executive director for ACLU California Action, said many law enforcement officers do not want to participate in federal operations and are only following their orders.
“This bill is important because it protects both law enforcement from having to do things that they don’t want to do, and protects citizens by making sure that their constitutional rights are not going to be violated by our state and local law enforcement,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo said the Protect California Rights Act protects citizens and their constitutional rights by ensuring that protesters and observers of ICE operations will not be followed or stopped by federal agents.
Chandra Bhatnagar, the executive director of ACLU Southern California, said this bill alone is not the single solution to the negative impacts of ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security operations on California communities.
“It is going to take so much more than just this,” Bhatnagar said. “It’s going to take an entire restructuring of how we approach immigration enforcement in this country, because, frankly, what we’ve seen has been [that] our immigration force can be weaponized as secret police, and it’s gone completely out of control.”
Pérez said the bill would empower California’s Attorney General to void task force agreements between federal and local authorities that would enable civil rights violations, and give individuals the right to seek legal recourse if law enforcement agencies violate the law.
“Californians deserve to feel safe,” Pérez said. “They deserve to trust that the officers sworn to protect them will not be used to intimidate them, and they deserve a state government that stands firmly on the side of civil rights and constitutional protections.”