California Republicans urge Trump to ‘focus deportations on criminals’
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
A LETTER AND A LAWSUIT
Just days after six Republican lawmakers sent a letter to President Donald Trump, asking him to focus immigration enforcement efforts on violent criminals, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Los Angeles over its sanctuary city policies.
In the letter sent Friday, lawmakers expressed support of efforts to deport violent criminals, but told Trump that raids targeting criminals have resulted in fear among non-criminal migrants.
“This fear is driving vital workers out of critical industries, taking California’s affordability crisis and making it even worse for our constituents,” they wrote.
The letter was signed by Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, state Sens. Suzette Valladares and Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, as well as Assemblymembers Heath Flora, Laurie Davies and Diane Dixon.
The lawmakers still backed Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles while urging him to direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security to avoid conducting more of the sweeping raids that have disrupted workplaces. In the same vein, the letter contained a request for Trump to authorize more legal guest workers through the expansion of the H-2A and H-2B visa programs.
“From construction to hospitality to food processing, California’s employers are struggling to fill positions,” the lawmakers said. “Legal, temporary labor should be easier to access and better tailored to support a strong California economy.”
The Republicans also asked for more broad immigration reform to provide a path to legal status for non-criminal undocumented immigrants with community ties. They said America’s immigration system should be modernized to reflect compassion and lawfulness.
In a seemingly unrelated move, the DOJ filed a lawsuit Monday against the city of Los Angeles over its sanctuary city policies. These policies aim to prevent some of the federal immigration enforcement efforts lawmakers cited in their letter.
Mayor Karen Bass, the Los Angeles City Council and its president Marqueece Harris-Dawson are all named as defendants.
According to the suit, the city’s laws and ordinances violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. constitution and discriminate against federal law enforcement. Federal prosecutors also said in their filing that the city’s lack of cooperation became more dire in early June and led to the deployment of the California National Guard and United States Marines.
An ordinance passed in 2024, which prohibits the use of city resources for federal immigration enforcement, is at the center of the lawsuit. The DOJ is arguing that the Supremacy Clause prohibits Los Angeles and its officials from obstructing the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law.
“Today’s lawsuit holds the City of Los Angeles accountable for deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration law,” said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California. “The United States Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prohibits the City from picking and choosing which federal laws will be enforced and which will not.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Does it really take an entire state agency and 24 months to figure out that taxes make things more expensive?”
— Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Bakersfield in a press release about gas prices
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