Huntington Beach City Council declares city nonsanctuary, friendly to Trump immigration policies
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The all-MAGA Huntington Beach City Council continues to battle the state of California over its policies.
If that wasn’t clear enough on Tuesday night, a small white bust of newly sworn-in President Donald Trump sat on the dais between Mayor Pat Burns and Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark to really drive the message home.
Burns and his council colleagues unanimously passed Resolution No. 2025-01, declaring Huntington Beach a nonsanctuary city for immigrants in the country illegally.
California’s sanctuary state law, also known as SB 54 or the California Values Act, holds that state and local resources cannot be used to assist federal immigration enforcement. But Huntington Beach is challenging that law, both with Tuesday’s vote and also a federal lawsuit filed by the city in the Central District earlier this month.
Burns, a retired longtime police officer, drew on that experience when introducing the item.
“It was very often that we had to call upon each other to fill in gaps that other [law enforcement agencies] didn’t have,” Burns said. “Sometimes [it was] to facilitate the expediency of the investigation or just to provide manpower and support. There’s all kinds of reasons that we worked together.”
The vote came as Trump seeks to ramp up immigration policies in several ways. The Justice Department is directing federal prosecutors to investigate state or local jurisdictions who stand in the way for potential criminal charges, according to a memo penned by acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Emil Bowe that was obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday.
California Atty. General Rob Bonta responded to the memo in a statement, calling it a simple scare tactic.
“The President is attempting to intimidate and bully state and local law enforcement into carrying out his mass deportation agenda for him,” Bonta said. “My team is reviewing the U.S. Department of Justice’s memo, and we’ll be prepared to take legal action if the Trump administration’s vague threats turn to illegal action.
“California law is clear — SB 54 prohibits state and local law enforcement from using taxpayer funds to enforce federal immigration law, subject to several narrow exceptions. SB 54 does not prevent state and local law enforcement from investigating and prosecuting crimes. Nor does it prevent federal agencies from conducting immigration enforcement themselves; what it says is that they cannot make us do their jobs for them.”
Previous attempts by both Huntington Beach and the first Trump administration to overturn SB 54 were unsuccessful.
The resolution in Huntington Beach instructs the local police department to work with federal law enforcement and honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers. It notes that violent crime in California has increased by double digits since 2018, according to the state Justice Department.
Burns compared the cooperation of different law enforcement agencies to a chain.
“If we take one of those links out, for our society, for our city or whomever else, it weakens that chain,” he said. “Our ultimate, primary job as a council is to make our city as safe as possible ... It’s Huntington Beach first.”
Public speakers during Tuesday’s Huntington Beach Council meeting argued both sides. Merlyn Gonzalez cited studies that found that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, commit crimes at lower rates than United States-born citizens.
A 2022 National Institute of Justice study, examining arrests from 2012 to 2018, found that immigrants generally exhibit lower rates of serious violent crime than native-born individuals in both California and Texas.
“If crimes have increased, we must look at the real [causes] — poverty, lack of mental health and economic downturns,” Gonzalez said. “Immigrants are an asset, not a threat ... By declaring ourselves a nonsanctuary city we are sending a dangerous message that some members of our community are not welcome, unworthy of our protection. This policy does not make us safer, it makes us less safe by dividing our city, encouraging racial profiling and wasting police resources on immigration enforcement instead of tackling real crimes.”
Resident Maria Piccolo applauded the resolution, saying “I am so glad we’re not a woke city.”
“We do not want woke policies, we want equal protections under the law,” Piccolo said. “Once the border is secured, the front door can become wider and easier to get through.”
A press release issued by Huntington Beach after Tuesday’s vote stated that city officials have a duty to follow all laws, including federal immigration laws, and neither the governor nor the state itself can interfere with that. It also encouraged other California cities to join Huntington Beach and pass their own resolutions.
Should the state challenge the resolution via legal action, the resolution calls for the city attorney’s office to defend the city’s position.
Among other immigration actions, earlier this week Trump signed an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. California, a coalition of other states and San Francisco responded Tuesday by suing the federal government on the grounds that the order is unconstitutional.
Bonta said Tuesday that Trump’s order would affect more than 20,000 babies born in the state each year.
California is home to about 11 million immigrants. The Pew Research Center estimated that in 2022, 1.8 million immigrants in the state were undocumented, down from 2.8 million in 2007.
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