This comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Attorney General Rob Bonta have taken a defensive posture over the state’s immigrant population. Trump’s plan to deport would begin with criminally convicted illegal immigrants and then focus on immigrants who already have deportation orders. Still, Newsom and Bonta pledged to protect immigrants.
McDonnell told the Associated Press that his department does not enforce immigration laws according to Special Order 40, a department policy prohibiting action related to immigration status established in 1979. Instead, he is working with Mexican and Central American consulate offices to protect the immigrant population.
To follow through with Trump’s policies would be “undercutting our primary mission, which is to be able to build public trust to work with every member of all of our communities, to be able to have hope that people will come forward if they were a victim of crime, a witness to a crime,” according to McDonnell.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
McDonnell was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and took over the department last month. Bass expressed last year that she was “fearful that any day, planes could start coming” because “we live in a city that welcomes immigrants.”
The “sanctuary city” status has made Los Angeles, California, the target of Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) campaign to offload illegal immigrants found at the Texas border. Since June of last year, Abbott sent 1,500 immigrants.
