Mayors and council members, sheriffs and county supervisors – from small towns and big ones – went to the White House Wednesday to thank President Trump for his tough stance on immigration and to ask for additional support in fighting Californias sanctuary policies.
“We need help,” Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre from San Bernardino County told the president.
She was one of 15 California leaders invited to Washington D.C. after their communities took action against a new state law that limits cooperation between federal immigration agents and local law enforcement.
“There is a revolution going on in California,” Trump told them.
The president, calling immigration laws “the dumbest laws,” said he welcomes immigrants based on merit. His language to describe some criminal immigrants – which drew national criticism – didnt draw a comment from anybody in the room: “You wouldnt believe how bad these people are,” Trump said. “These arent people. These are animals.”
The meeting served a couple of different goals, said Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, a Republican from Lake Elsinore who attended the meeting.
“The president needed to hear directly from the boots on the ground,” she said. (The group included the mayors of Los Alamitos, Barstow, Lake Elsinore, Laguna Niguel, San Jacinto and Escondido.)
“Its also good for the nation to see that everybody is not on the same page as the liberal legislators who work in the (California) capital,” Melendez, who represents the 67th State Assembly district in Western Riverside County, said after the meeting.
Los Alamitos Councilman Warren Kusumoto got a round of applause when he told the group that Orange Countys second-smallest city was the first, and so far only, community to pass an ordinance to exempt itself from the state law.
“Anyone with common sense knows this California Values Act was put in place to protect those that are here breaking the law,” Kusumoto said.
The Los Alamitos councils 4-1 vote was followed by moves from more than 35 cities and counties with either resolutions or legal action against the state law.
But “coming out first has a price to pay,” Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar told Trump. Edgar asked for federal assistance against a lawsuit brought on by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Trump told Edgar, who wrote the president in May for assistance, that such help may be possible.
After the discussion, Edgar said he met with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was also at the event. Options include possibly having someone from Sessions office assigned to help Los Alamitos or have the citys attorney, who is hired as outside counsel, contract with the attorney generals office, Edgar said after the meeting.
Some officials used the face time with Trump to raise non immigration issues. San Juan Capistrano Councilwoman Pam Patterson asked the president to look into the safety record of the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station, which she feared could become a terrorist target. “Well check it out,” Trump told her. “It doesnt sound too good.”
Laguna Niguel Mayor Elaine Gennawey told Trump that California needs his help in addressing problems arising from sober living homes in residential neighborhoods. Orange County has become known as the “Rehab Riviera,” she noted.
But the topic at hand was illegal immigration and, specifically, those who are living in the country illegally and have committed crimes but might not be deported because of Californias new law.
The California Values Act, or Senate Bill 54, prohibits local agencies from holding potentially deportable immigrants, who are already incarcerated, for immigration agents. The new law does allow for the transfer of inmates connected to hundreds of violent crimes and other serious offenses, but not lesser crimes.
California Sen. Kevin de León, who wrote the law, called the meeting “a cynical, political play on the part of Donald Trump” to stoke divisiveness and fear.
The elected officials who met with Trump “are turning their backs on California and the people they represent to become useless props in Trumps dangerous divisive political game,” de Leon said before the meeting.
“Hes pulling them in with the false promise that his message of hate and division will play in their favor. But theyre wasting their time because California has outgrown this brand of tired worn-out racist rhetoric. Thats why the Republican Party here keeps shrinking.”
Gov. Jerry Brown wrote on Twitter that the president is “lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA…”
@realDonaldTrump is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA. Flying in a dozen Republican politicians to flatter him and praise his reckless policies changes nothing. We, the citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world, are not impressed.
— Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) May 16, 2018
Trump said during the meeting that crime was going down across the nation but increasing in California. Actually, California and the U.S. as a whole had similar crime trends in the latest year reported and over the past decade, figures from the FBI and the state Justice Department show. Property crime has been dropping steadily over the past decade. And while violent crime rose from 2015 to 2016 (the most recent year reported), its down from 2007 in both the state and the nation.
Law enforcement officials meeting with the president, however, focused on echoing their associations official position on the law: they dont like it because it limits cooperation with immigration agents.
“We need to be able to talk,” said Ray Grangroff, an Orange County Sheriffs Department spokesman who was at the meeting with sheriffs from Fresno and Stanislaus County.
In previous years, he said, deputies could screen inmates and “put them on ICEs radar.”
Grangroff thanked Trump for filing a lawsuit in March against California for three laws that protect unauthorized immigrants, including the California Values Act.
The afternoon sit-down in the White House also included Department of Justice Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Thomas Homan, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Lake Elsinore Mayor Natasha Johnson, San Jacinto Mayor Crystal Ruiz and Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel.
More about this issue
- Trump asks anti-sanctuary Los Alamitos, Orange County officials to White House to talk immigration
- ACLU sues Los Alamitos over citys move to exempt itself from California sanctuary laws
- Sanctuary opponents travel from town to town, screaming an agenda
- Report: Trump deporting more; CA and other states resisting harder
- California sanctuary law is on the books, and hot topic on campaign trail
Staff writer Jeff Collins contributed to this report.
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