In El Cajon, California, just 25 miles from the Mexican border, a city councilman recently made a simple request. Federal agents had alerted local officials about more than 50 unaccompanied children who might be living in unsafe conditions alongside illegal immigrants. Could El Cajon’s local police conduct a wellness check?
The answer, unbelievably, was no because doing so might violate California’s sanctuary law, Senate Bill 54.
There is no greater fundamental duty of government than protecting the vulnerable. In a reasonable world, El Cajon police would have acted immediately. Instead, officers were forced to hesitate. California’s sanctuary statute creates legal risk for local authorities who coordinate too closely with federal immigration officials, even in urgent situations like those in El Cajon.
ONE IN FIVE FAIRFAX COUNTY RESIDENTS IS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT OR LIVES WITH ONE, EXPERT TESTIFIES
When criminal illegal immigrants are prioritized over children, we have “a legal and moral emergency.” Those are the words my organization, the America First Policy Institute, used when we filed a suit last month against California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Although the suit is on behalf of the City of El Cajon, the issue extends far beyond a single city. As former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf recently said in a Senate testimony, “Some on the Left will not stop until we have become a Sanctuary Nation — largely free from all border security and immigration enforcement.”
The Constitution anticipated conflicts between states and the federal government. That is precisely why the supremacy clause exists. Immigration enforcement, foreign policy, and border control cannot operate under 50 separate legal standards. When state and federal laws conflict, federal law must take precedence.
President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024 because millions of people realized our country had lost control of its borders. His administration understands that public safety depends on aggressive immigration enforcement. Those efforts extend well beyond securing the border. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies are actively removing traffickers, gang members, and cartel operatives who have established footholds in countless communities — and taken far too many innocent lives. Sanctuary laws undermine those efforts and make it harder for the administration to fulfill its mission to dismantle the criminal networks preying on American communities.
California enacted SB 54 as part of a concerted effort to resist federal immigration enforcement. Supporters argued that limiting cooperation with ICE would strengthen trust between so-called “immigrant” communities — meaning illegal immigrants — and local law enforcement. It has placed officers in an untenable position, forced to weigh legal risk before acting on federal intelligence, even in urgent situations, and left too many innocent people without timely protection.
New York has taken a similar path. Less than two years ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) declared that she would be “the first one to call ICE” on immigrants who commit crimes. Her position later changed. The Empire State has since adopted policies that significantly restrict cooperation between local agencies and ICE when illegal immigrants are released from custody. In both New York and California, sanctuary policies have made routine coordination between local police and federal officials difficult, if not impossible.
Those bearing the consequences are not the politicians who wrote these laws. They are instead borne by the American citizens whom those officials were elected to protect, especially the most vulnerable. The El Cajon lawsuit presents a simple, constitutional question: Do states have the right to prohibit, or willfully obstruct, essential cooperation with federal authorities? More broadly, it raises two unavoidable questions: Is ideological opposition to federal immigration policy sufficient grounds to dismantle long-standing coordination between local and federal law enforcement? And can that opposition justify policies that risk undermining public safety?
HOW FAIRFAX COUNTY’S SANCTUARY POLICIES LED TO AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT MURDERING AN INNOCENT WOMAN
The modern sanctuary movement dates to 1979, when the Los Angeles City Council ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to stop inquiring about immigration status during arrests. Since then, sanctuary jurisdictions have grown exponentially from barely a dozen in the 1990s to more than 1,000 by 2025. These policies are often dismissed as impotent virtue-signaling. In practice, however, laws like the one challenged by El Cajon can constrain law enforcement and impede efforts to respond to serious crimes.
America First policies are committed to protecting every American citizen, including those children in El Cajon. AFPI’s lawsuit challenges a statute that, in practice, obstructs responsibility. It now falls to the courts to uphold the Constitution and enforce the duty California lawmakers have set aside.
Cooper Smith serves as director of Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute. He previously served as policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.