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Huntington Beach leaders are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta in an effort to repeal sanctuary state laws that block local law enforcement from working with immigration officials.
It’s the city’s fourth lawsuit with the state in the last two years, part of a larger legal battle to determine how much power charter cities have under state law.
“To put a fine point, as a Charter City, Huntington Beach’s Police Department does not belong to the State. Rather, the Huntington Beach Police Department belongs to the City – and as such, the Police Department should be free from State interference and control,” reads the court filing.
To read the new lawsuit, click here.
It also comes as President-Elect Donald Trump has promised a renewed crackdown on border crossings.
The federal lawsuit is focused on a law dubbed the California Values Act, which was signed into law in 2017 and limits state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials except in special circumstances and requires local police departments to tell the public when they hand inmates over to immigration.
To read the law, click here.
Huntington Beach city leaders argue it’s illegal for the state to tell them not to work with federal law enforcement, and that it puts residents in jeopardy.
“When the stakes are currently so high, with reports of increases in human trafficking, increases in foreign gangs taking over apartment buildings in the U.S., killing, raping, and committing other violent crimes against our citizens, we need every possible resource available to fight crime, including federal resources,” said Mayor Pat Burns in a Tuesday morning statement.
“Huntington Beach will not sit idly by and allow the obstructionist Sanctuary State Law to put our 200,000 residents at risk of harm from those who seek to commit violent crimes on U.S. soil.”
A 2020 study from UC Irvine found no connection between the California Values Act and an increase in crime – but it also noted researchers had limited crime data to work off of because the law was still new.
“Very little research to date has evaluated the connection between sanctuary policies and crime,” said Professor Charis Kubrin, one of the study’s authors, at the time. “Our findings reveal that sanctuary status had a null effect and, more broadly, suggest that major reductions in crime in the U.S. are unlikely to follow from any proposed changes to immigration policy.”
City Attorney Michael Gates said state law forces cities to violate federal law, and that it also violates the US Constitution’s rules around federal laws superseding state rules.
“It is unfortunate that we have to fight the State of California in order to achieve sound and effective law enforcement policies,” Gates said in a Tuesday statement. “We will continue to fight for the safety of our community relentlessly and with vigor.”
In the suit, Gates argues that as a charter city, Huntington Beach leaders don’t have to comply with sanctuary laws.
“The independence and Home Rule authority the Constitution provides to Huntington Beach means that the City and its Police Department are … at liberty to conduct effective law enforcement practices, including fighting violent crime by all means available … ’free’ from state interference,” Gates wrote.
It’s an argument Gates has used repeatedly in the city’s other lawsuits against the state over housing and the implementation of voter ID to mixed results.
[Read: Will Huntington Beach’s Legal Argument of Limited Independence Hold up in Court?]
In 2018, the Orange County Board of Supervisors and over half a dozen other OC cities took stands against Values Act when the previous Trump administration sued California in an effort to remove it.
[Read: OC Cities Take Stands on State Sanctuary Laws]
Huntington Beach leaders also voted to sue over the law back in 2018, but did not succeed in overturning it.
Santa Ana and Anaheim passed resolutions in 2018 supporting the Sanctuary State law, with then-Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait pushing an ordinance to establish the city as a “welcoming city.”
[Read: Anaheim established as “Welcoming City”]
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
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