federal immigration authority

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass and City Council members Monday, calling L.A.’s sanctuary city law “illegal” and asking that it be blocked from being enforced.

The lawsuit, filed in California’s Central District federal court by the Trump Administration, said the country is “facing a crisis of illegal immigration” and that its efforts to address it “are hindered by Sanctuary Cities such as the City of Los Angeles, which refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities.”

Over the last month, immigration agents have descended on Southern California, arresting more than 1,600 immigrants and prompting furious protests in downtown Los Angeles, Paramount and other communities. According to the lawsuit, L.A.’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities since June 6 has resulted in “lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism.”

“The situation became so dire that the Federal Government deployed the California National Guard and United States Marines to quell the chaos,” the lawsuit states. “A direct confrontation with federal immigration authorities was the inevitable outcome of the Sanctuary City law.”

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi called the city’s sanctuary policies “the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles.”

“Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level — it ends under President Trump,” Bondi said in a statement Monday.

Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In recent weeks, she has pushed back against the Trump Administration’s portrayal of L.A. as a city enveloped in violence, saying that immigration agents are the ones sowing chaos, terrorizing families and harming the city’s economy.

“To characterize what is going on in our city as a city of mayhem is just an outright lie,” Bass said earlier this month. “I’m not going to call it an untruth. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I’m going to call it for what it is, which is a lie.”

L.A.’s sanctuary city law was proposed in early 2023, long before Trump’s election, but finalized in the wake of his victory in November.

Under the ordinance, city employees and city property may not be used to “investigate, cite, arrest, hold, transfer or detain any person” for the purpose of immigration enforcement. An exception is made for law enforcement investigating serious offenses.

The ordinance bars city employees from seeking out information about an individual’s citizenship or immigration status unless it is needed to provide a city service. They also must treat data or information that can be used to trace a person’s citizenship or immigration status as confidential.

In the lawsuit, federal prosecutors allege that the city’s ordinance and other policies intentionally discriminate against the federal government by “treating federal immigration authorities differently than other law enforcement agents,” by restricting access to property and to individual detainees, by prohibiting contractors and sub-contractors from providing information, and by “disfavoring federal criminal laws that the City of Los Angeles has decided not to comply with.”

“The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment—as the challenged law and policies do—thereby discriminating against the Federal Government,” the lawsuit says. “Accordingly, the law and policies challenged here are invalid and should be enjoined.”

Trump’s Department of Justice contends that L.A.’s Sanctuary City ordinance goes much further than similar laws in other jurisdictions, by “seeking to undermine the Federal Government’s immigration enforcement efforts.”

The lawsuit also cites a June 10 meeting in which council members grilled Police Chief Jim McDonnell about his department’s handling of the immigration raids. During that session, Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who represents a heavily Latino district in the San Fernando Valley, asked McDonnell if the LAPD would consider warning warn council members about impending raids.

“Chief McDonnell correctly identified that request for what it was: ‘obstruction of justice,’” the lawsuit states.

The federal filing comes as the city’s elected officials are weighing their own lawsuit against the Trump administration, one aimed at barring immigration agents from violating the constitutional rights of their constituents.

The City Council is scheduled to meet Tuesday to ask City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to prioritize “immediate legal action” to protect L.A. residents from being racially profiled or unlawfully searched or detained.

Bass has been outspoken about the harm she says the immigration raids have been inflicting on her city, saying they have torn families apart and created a climate of fear at parks, churches, shopping areas and other locations. The city was peaceful, she said, until federal agents began showing up at Home Depots, parking lots and other locations.

“I want to tell him to stop the raids,” she said earlier this month. “I want to tell him that this is a city of immigrants. I want to tell him that if you want to devastate the economy of the city of Los Angeles, then attack the immigrant population.”

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

While publicly chastising groups protesting immigration raids, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell has offered support to officers in his Latino-majority department who may have mixed feelings about the Trump administration‘s crackdown.

In a department-wide missive sent out earlier this week as protests ramped up, McDonnell acknowledged some officers were “facing criticism from the community or wrestling with the personal impact,” of recent events and needed support.

“When federal immigration enforcement actions take place in communities that may reflect your own heritage, neighborhoods, or even your family’s story, it can create a deep and painful conflict,” he wrote. “You may be wearing the uniform and fulfilling your duty, but inside, you’re asked to hold a complex mix of emotions.”

It was an unusual display of solidarity for a chief who has rarely waded into the contentious immigration debate. McDonnell has bristled over criticism about his relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while serving as Los Angeles County Sheriff during Trump’s first term.

In interviews and public comments since becoming chief McDonnell has sought to distance himself from a policy as sheriff that allowed federal immigration authorities to operate freely, targeting people for deportation in the nation’s largest jail system.

Both McDonnell and current L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna have stressed that their departments do not cooperate with federal authorities solely for immigration purposes — polices adopted long ago to help build trust within the city’s diverse communities.

In his own message to his department this week, Luna thanked deputies for their “professionalism, resolve, and unwavering dedication” — but only briefly alluded to the immigration debate.

“Despite the complexity of this situation — made even more challenging by the heightened political environment — I trust and fully expect that you will continue to demonstrate the same level of excellence, thoughtfulness, and integrity that have brought us this far,” Luna said.

Critics of local law enforcement actions in recent days note that racial bias also remains a contentious issue, with LAPD officers pulling over and shooting Latino Angelenos at a higher rate than their share of the overall population.

Jim McDonnell was introduced by Mayor Karen Bass to serve as the new Chief LAPD during a press conference at City Hall on Oct. 4, 2024.

(Ringo Chiu/For The Times)

When asked about how he is working to keep the city’s immigrant population safe, McDonnell often cites Special Order 40, the landmark policy adopted in 1979 that forbids LAPD officers from stopping people to inquire about their citizenship status.

But Trump’s actions have put the chief and other local leaders in the awkward position of having to defend federal officers and property — while also trying to communicate that they are not on the side of immigration agents.

In his recent message to department employees, McDonnell said he recognized they “may feel loyalty, frustration, fear, or sometimes even shame as the community mistakenly views you as part of something that you are not.” The public may not “see the nuance,” of the LAPD’s postion, he said, because “simply being present can make it seem like you support an action you may not agree with, or that you’re complicit in pain affecting your own community.”

Publicly, though, the chief has struck a different, sometimes defensive tone, often focusing his remarks on destruction caused by some protesters.

At a City Council hearing Tuesday, he sparred with city leaders who challenged the department’s relationship with federal authorities.

In one exchange, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he disagreed with the chief on referring to agencies such as ICE as “law enforcement partners.”

“I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners,” Harris-Dawson said.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, who sits on the Council’s public safety committee and represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, said in a statement to The Times that he wasn’t surprised that Latino police officers may be feeling conflicted.

“Families are being ripped apart, and I’d bet nearly every one of them has a parent or relative who’s undocumented, or were even undocumented themselves at some point,” said Soto-Martinez.

Art Placencia, a retired LAPD detective, recalled being a young cop on the job in the years when cops would arrest Latinos simply because they believed that they might be in the country illegally and deliver them into federal custody.

The LAPD of today is vastly different than when he was on the job, he said. Prodded by lawsuits and consent decrees, the once-mostly white department has grown to become more than half Latino, which more or less mirrors the city’s demographics. And while Latino officials are under-represented in the LAPD’s upper echelons, they wield more political clout than ever, Placencia said.

Placencia, the former president of an prominent association for Latino officers that once sued the LAPD for discrimination in promotion decisions, said McDonnell is caught in a bind of having to navigate the city’s left-leaning politics while also backing up his rank-and-file officers on the front lines against hostile crowds.

“He’s gotta show that he’s concerned about the officers and their feelings,” said Placencia. “They’re the ones that are out there, they’re the ones that are getting rocks thrown at them.”

In past interviews, McDonnell has spoken proudly about his immigrant upbringing — both of his parents moved to Boston from Ireland a year before he was born — saying that he understands the struggle of trying to make a better life in America. But as sheriff he also came under fire by breaking ranks with many other area politicians by opposing a “sanctuary state” bill that sought to prevent federal immigration agents from taking custody of people being released from California jails.

The selection of McDonnell last November came as a disappointment among some within the department, who had hoped Bass would pick Robert Arcos, a third-generation Mexican American, who had the backing of some powerful Latino civic leaders and would have been the first Latino chief of a city that is more than 50% Latino.

Ruben Lopez, a retired LAPD SWAT lieutenant, said he appreciated that McDonnell decided to address the internal moral dilemma that some officers face.

Lopez remembers wrestling with similar feelings when, as a young cop, he was on the front lines of a massive protest over Proposition 187, a controversial law — later struck down by a federal court — that barred undocumented immigrants from receiving public school educations and a range of other state- and county-funded benefits.

“I remember some of the command staff wanted to be more aggressive, and I felt these were just families and kids wanting to exercise their right to protest,” he said. “Because if we don’t have that trust in the community, including immigrant communities then we’re not going to get that collaborative approach to police a city of this size.”

Times staff writer Connor Sheets contributed reporting.