Republican lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee are investigating the sanctuary policies in two major California cities, San Diego and San Francisco, that restrict those jurisdictions from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), joined by Reps. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent personalized letters to the police departments and sheriff’s offices in San Diego and San Francisco on Tuesday. The members of Congress demanded information on the cities’ respective sanctuary policies.
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In California, state law prohibits law enforcement from complying with ICE detainers to hand over illegal immigrants to federal authorities. San Diego’s government passed ordinances to further limit immigration enforcement in the city.
An ordinance approved in April required a judicial warrant for federal immigration officials to access “non-public city property,” and a separate ordinance in late 2024 prohibited county law enforcement from helping ICE with deporting immigrants.
The committee members argued the sanctuary policies endanger the local communities, citing an incident in which an illegal immigrant from Mexico allegedly killed an 11-year-old boy in a hit-and-run last November. The lawmakers pointedly criticized San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez for rejecting the ICE detainer lodged against the suspect.
“In just one year, California’s refusal to honor detainers ‘resulted in the release of 4,561 criminal illegal aliens,’ with crimes ranging from homicide to robbery to assault,” they wrote in one of the four letters.
Regarding San Francisco, the House Judiciary Committee panel is probing the city’s habit of prohibiting the use of “resources to assist in the enforcement of Federal immigration law.” ICE detainer requests are routinely ignored by San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, who once bragged that his office “only honored one” detainer “out of thousands of requests for detention” made by the immigration agency.
Jordan and McClintock accused Miyamoto’s office of preventing federal immigration officials from interviewing an illegal immigrant from Canada who attacked the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with a hammer at the couple’s home in October 2022. David Depape was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the state case. The federal case resulted in a 30-year sentence.
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Among the questions posed by the committee members relate to documents and communications pertaining to local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE and the number of ICE detainers that the respective offices have received and declined over the past few years.
Each recipient of a letter must provide responses by June 16.
