California Democrats push to block ICE from schools, hospitals and shelters

Hospitals. Schools. Shelters.

Those are some of the places that California lawmakers want to shield from immigration arrests and raids. They advanced a package of bills this week as President Donald Trump’s administration continues its ramped-up deportation campaign around the country. 

The Democratic-dominated Legislature can’t block federal agents from entering places where someone has allowed them to be. They also can’t stop ICE from going where officers have the  legal authority to be, such as immigration courthouses. But the bills the state Senate passed Monday push local officials to limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to require agents to get a warrant to enter. 

One bill would bar immigration agents from entering “nonpublic” parts of schools without a warrant. Another would do the same in hospitals, and prohibit health care providers from sharing patients’ immigration status with federal authorities unless they have a warrant. Another would limit immigration agents from accessing homeless or domestic violence shelters. 

Other bills limit information sharing. One would require California health departments, when issuing birth certificates, to shield the parents’ countries of birth from the publicly viewable portion of the document. Another would require cities and counties that license street vendors — a business dominated by immigrants — from sharing information about licensees with federal authorities.

Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat who authored the schools bill, said she was responding to a recent string of highly publicized raids and other enforcement operations that have rattled immigrant communities and threaten to send workers, students and patients into hiding.

ICE last week raided two San Diego restaurants in a search for workers allegedly living in the country illegally, setting off a confrontation with protesters outside. Immigration agents in April showed up trying to speak with students at two Los Angeles elementary schools; school administrators turned them away. That month they also detained a group of day laborers in the parking lot of a Pomona Home Depot. 

The lawmakers’ proposals sailed through the Legislature so far, and passed the Senate this week with near-unanimous support from Democrats. They now head to the Assembly.

“Every student, regardless of their immigration status, should be given the right to a free and fair education,” Gonzalez said.

Sen. Jesse Arreguin, a Berkeley Democrat who authored the hospitals bill, said it was “about making sure that people can access health care in California without fear of being arrested or deported.”

Though Republicans generally opposed the bills, some acknowledged they were concerned about the widespread fear sown by the sight of federal agents. For Republicans, the politics of a flashy GOP-led immigration crackdown remain delicate in California, where more than one in four residents is foreign-born. 

Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, a Modesto Republican, criticized Democrats for what she called overblowing “a problem that is very real” and said she was worried school officials would be stuck between state law and complying with federal agents’ requests or orders.

“I definitely believe we have a problem in this state, and we exacerbate that problem by continuing to instill fear in young people,” she said during debate about Gonzalez’ schools bill. “When we talk about ICE agents in masks and instill fear that way, we are doing a disservice to the educational system.”

Her Republican colleague Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh joined Democrats in voting for the bill limiting law enforcement access to schools. She opposed the other bills, including one requiring school officials to notify parents, staff and community members if immigration agents come to campus.

“When someone enters the school we always want to make sure they’re official,” the Redlands lawmaker said. “Putting in statute knowing and asking whether or not someone has a warrant or has an official capacity to enter the school, is really a no-brainer.”

California resists Trump’s immigration crackdown

Kevin Johnson, an immigration law professor and former dean of the UC Davis School of Law, said he expects the legislation, if enacted, would have a limited effect on ICE operations, given that the state is already engaged in a yearslong back-and-forth with the federal government over whether to cooperate with immigration authorities. 

The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are both trying to withhold federal funding from California over its sanctuary law that prohibits state and local police from arresting immigrants on behalf of ICE, and limits their cooperation in transferring detainees to immigration custody. Federal courts upheld the law during the last Trump administration.

In his second term, Trump is further pushing the boundaries in an aggressive effort to curb both illegal and legal forms of immigration. That includes everything from rescinding a longstanding policy of avoiding arrests in “sensitive locations” such as churches, schools and hospitals, to arresting immigrants when they show up for required check-ins or immigration court hearings, to seeking to deny U.S. citizenship from immigrants’ American-born children.

The state may have the authority to shield babies’ parents’ birthplaces from public view, Johnson said, but he theorized that if the U.S. Supreme Court allows Trump to repeal birthright citizenship, the federal government could require people to show proof of their parents’ birthplace to become an American citizen. 

“They can only do so much to limit what the federal government can do,” Johnson said of the state. “We’re in the middle of a long, protracted skirmish between the state and federal governments on immigration.”

Still, he said, forcing federal agents to get warrants to search for or arrest someone could help immigrants feel safer going out in public. 

“We at least have to get the federal government to think about complying with the law, as opposed to just sending out hordes of ICE agents wherever,” he said.

Immigrant aid groups set to lose funding

The effort to protect vulnerable immigrants comes as California nonprofits are scrambling to respond to increased enforcement and competing for limited resources. 

California spends $60 million a year on immigration legal aid and in a special session in December gave that fund a one-time boost of $10 million. 

Some Democratic lawmakers this year have backed advocates’ requests to further increase that funding even as the state stares down a $12 billion budget deficit. Gov. Gavin Newsom has already proposed other cuts to immigrants’ social services to address the shortfall. 

One program that would run out of money without new funding is the Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project, a pilot program started in 2022 to provide lawyers and social workers for unaccompanied minors facing deportation.

Originally slated to last through summer 2024, the program has helped about 800 immigrants who arrived as children. The California Department of Social Services has kept it going with a one-time $4.2-million boost in money originally budgeted for other immigration legal services. That money will run out at the end of June.

This year, advocates and legal service providers say they’re not expecting there to be any extra money to go around. 

When California made $5 million of the legal aid funding available this year, organizations across the state applied for six times that amount, said Lisa Hoffman, co-executive director of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant in Berkeley. 

Hoffman said state funding helps her nonprofit pay caseworkers and attorneys to represent 50 young immigrants between ages 17 and 22. The clients, many of whom fled violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, get help with their cases and assistance enrolling in school, securing transportation and going to the doctor. 

“By investing in these services now, it prevents much more serious, longer-term problems,” she said. “Even if they are allowed to stay, but they drop out of school or don’t get the support they need, it’s going to create much bigger and more expensive problems down the road in terms of homelessness, mental health challenges.”