The Los Angeles City Council passed a so-called sanctuary ordinance on Tuesday that would prohibit city resources from being used to carry out federal immigration enforcement, the first deportation-related move by a major U.S. city since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election two weeks ago.
Though Los Angeles had already declared itself a “city of sanctuary” during Mr. Trump’s first term, it had done so only through a resolution and an executive directive rather than by establishing a new city ordinance. The ordinance passed on Tuesday would enshrine protections in city law and give them more legal weight, officials said.
The unanimous vote came a week after Mayor Karen Bass called for “swift action” to protect immigrants in Los Angeles, and it required the expediting of a draft ordinance that was introduced last year. The ordinance will now go to Ms. Bass for her signature and would take effect 10 days after she signs it.
The leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system, were also poised to enact their own immigrant protections later on Tuesday.
The prompt actions by Los Angeles leaders signaled a sense of urgency to protect the city’s large immigrant population ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Trump, who has promised to pursue mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country.
The ordinance would prohibit the use of city resources — including city workers and city property — to arrest or detain someone as part of a federal immigration enforcement effort. It would also bar city employees from asking about someone’s citizenship or immigration status.
The ordinance largely codified the immigrant-friendly policies the city already had in place and built on an executive directive signed in 2017 by Mayor Eric Garcetti that was aimed a protecting immigrants in Los Angeles.
The council vote came one day after Mr. Trump confirmed that he planned to declare a national emergency on immigration and use the military to help deport undocumented immigrants.
Hugo Soto-Martínez, a council member who introduced the ordinance last year along with two other members, Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez, said in a statement on Tuesday that the new law was about “ensuring that all of our residents can interact with our government without the fear that Donald Trump’s deportation squad is around the corner.”
“By passing this law today,” Mr. Soto-Martínez added, “we’re making sure that no city resources or staff will be used to deport our friends, family, neighbors and co-workers.”
Ms. Raman, the City Council member who introduced the ordinance, said in an interview on Tuesday that quickly approving the ordinance had made an important statement assuring residents that they could make use of city services without worrying that they were risking deportation.
During the meeting, more than a dozen speakers called on the council to approve the ordinance to protect immigrants across Los Angeles. Many of those speakers, who addressed the council in English and Spanish, were met with applause from others attending the meeting.
Karla Aguayo, the director of legal programs of Chirla, a Los Angeles-based immigrant rights group, noted at the meeting on Tuesday that immigrants make up a large portion of the population of the Los Angeles region — roughly 4.3 million people, of whom 800,000 are undocumented.
“Immigrant Angelenos are facing their gravest attacks from the upcoming administration with the clear threat of mass arrests and deportations from President-elect Trump,” Ms. Aguayo said. “The city cannot be seen as being in support of family separations, of mass arrests, of mass deportations.”
Opponents, however, said the city ordinance would serve to protect criminals in Southern California. The Los Angeles County Republican Party said in a statement on Tuesday that “so-called sanctuary cities and states sound warm and fuzzy, but the protections they offer aren’t for abuelas getting ice cream, they’re for people who’ve entered the country illegally and committed additional crimes.”
“Whether drunk driving, robbery, sexual violence, assault or murder, none of those should go unpunished,” the local Republican Party added. “Perpetrators should definitely not be protected by the largess taken from hard-working taxpayers.”
The Los Angeles ordinance bars immigration agents from city property, including city jails, unless they have a warrant or a judicial order.
To maintain protections for immigrant students, the school district was voting on a resolution reaffirming that the district would be a “safe zone.” It would prohibit district workers from “voluntarily cooperating” with any immigration enforcement in Los Angeles Unified, which has more than 520,000 students.
Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer and the president and executive director of the Consular Accountability Project, said in an interview that an ordinance like the one passed by the Los Angeles City Council might not block the Trump administration from pursuing mass deportations locally.
“A city ordinance is not going to stop that,” Mr. Lee said. “It’s going to be, at the very most, a minor inconvenience on Trump’s path to eviscerate democratic rights.”
Mr. Lee said efforts by residents, schools and workplaces to resist deportation efforts might be more effective. In 2017, Mr. Lee represented a parent in Los Angeles who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when he was dropping off his daughter at school.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that his daughter videotaped it and the video went viral, that we were able to mobilize a significant section of the city to come to his defense that we were able to secure his release,” Mr. Lee said.
Before voting at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Soto-Martínez along with other members said the city can do more to protect immigrants across the city.
“This is not the end,” he said. “This is the beginning.”
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