Trump administration lifts courthouse raid ban, testing California's sanctuary law

California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero told reporters last week that she would not "pick a fight" with the new administration of President Donald Trump. But Trump may have just picked one with her.

On Wednesday, the administration lifted a ban on conducting immigration enforcement raids in courthouses, schools and other "sensitive areas" where they had been barred under President Joe Biden's administration. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials follow through and begin entering state courthouses, it would effectively cross a line Guerrero laid out during her annual sit-down meeting with reporters on Jan. 16.

"To the extent that there are any attempts to prevent people from accessing the court, to prevent or impair the court's ability to protect those rights, then we would take action," Guerrero said. "But again, we're not trying to pick a fight with anybody. We're not trying to get into debates politicizing issues but just doing what we always do. That's regardless of who is in the administration."

Through a spokesperson, Guerrero declined to comment when reached on Thursday.

The dispute neatly parallels a war of words between the first Trump administration and Guerrero's predecessor eight years ago. Then-Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye sent a letter to the administration reacting to "reports from some of our trial courts that immigration agents appear to be stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses to make arrests."

Her letter to then U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly also said such raids not only "compromise our core value of fairness but they undermine the judiciary's ability to provide equal access to justice." Cantil-Sakauye is now the president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California. She declined to comment on the latest administration's move.

That dispute never really ended while Trump was still in office. Cantil-Sakauye publicly left the Republican Party in 2018. In 2019, she was still calling on the administration to designate courthouses as sensitive areas off limits to raids.

Beyond a few anecdotal reports, often from attorneys representing people detained, it is unclear how many people in the U.S. illegally have been arrested inside California courthouses. But the new administration has signaled it could be more aggressive in Trump's second term.

Speaking to CNN last month, White House Border Czar Tom Homan said jurisdictions that resist raids at jails and other sensitive areas could make things worse for those who entered the country without legal permission. Homan, who assumed the advisory role when Trump took office on Monday, said authorities would cast a wider net if not allowed access.

"In sanctuary cities, we can't arrest a criminal in jail because they won't let us in the jail," Homan said. "So that forces us to go to the neighborhood, which means instead of one agent arresting a bad guy to jail, we got to send the whole team to the neighborhood. And what happens there? We're going to find others that are non-priority criminals, but guess what? They're going to be arrested, too, because immigration officers aren't going to be told to walk away from someone here illegally, like the Biden administration has done."

SB 54, California's sanctuary law, limits the cooperation local law enforcement can have with federal immigration authorities. It also instructs staff at public schools, hospitals and health facilities, courthouses, and libraries not to cooperate with immigration enforcement "to the fullest extent possible." The law withstood a challenge from Trump's federal Department of Justice.

"Under the Fourth Amendment, there is solid ground for protection against ICE entering non-public areas," said Blake Nordhal, a professor and supervising attorney of the Immigration Clinic at McGeorge School of Law. "The problem is that courts are generally open to the public and therefore ICE would generally be permitted access."

Nordhal pointed out that in 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill by then Sen. Ricardo Lara that would have explicitly barred civil arrests at courthouses. In a veto message, Brown wrote that he supported the "underlying intent" of SB 349 but worried it would create "unintended consequences."

Francisco E. Mundaca, a former assistant district attorney who practices both civil and criminal law in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, said the policy appears to show Trump is pushing to deport people who have not been convicted of serious crimes.

"The existing rules made it easier to locate and remove those people...With violent offenders, there's always a different course of how the criminal justice system keeps track of those individuals," Mundaca said. "Depending on the crime, if it's a sexual offense there's also registration."

He added that immigration raids in courthouses could be prone to abuses like racial profiling. They could also cast a wide net, he said, given the number of people who appear each day.

"If we're going into courthouses, presumably there is a proceeding ongoing," Mundaca said. "The individual may be charged with a violent crime, but they have not been found guilty."

In an email Thursday, Rob Oftring, a spokesman for the LA County Superior Court, pointed to his court's policies under that law. These rules bar staff from inquiring about anyone's immigration status or sharing that information with immigration officials. The policy also bars those federal officers' access to "nonpublic" areas of the court.

"The Superior Court of Los Angeles County is deeply committed to its mission of providing fair and equal access to justice for all and operates in alignment with Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act (2017)," Oftring wrote.

San Diego Superior Court Presiding Judge Maureen F. Hallahan responded in an email that the court "does not comment on federal immigration enforcement policies or actions."

"As a court, our priority is to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their circumstances, have access to justice and are treated fairly and impartially under the law. We support the statements Chief Justice Guerrero recently made on this issue," Hallahan wrote.

Dayna Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Fresno County Superior Court, said in an email, "As a court, our priority is to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their circumstances, have access to justice and are treated fairly and impartially under the law."

In a news release on Wednesday, Attorney General Rob Bonta addressed a memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice. The memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove stated that "federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests" and that the department could investigate "incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution."

"The U.S. Attorney's Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution," he added.

"This is a scare tactic, plain and simple," Bonta said. "The President is attempting to intimidate and bully state and local law enforcement into carrying out his mass deportation agenda for him."

He added, "The Trump Administration already tried to challenge SB 54, and lost. In 2019, the Ninth Circuit held that SB 54 did not conflict with federal law or violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution."