On Feb. 11, the El Cajon City Council voted 3-2 to pass Mayor Bill Wells and Councilmember Steve Gobles’ new resolution, which affirms El Cajon’s status as a non-sanctuary city and grants local police officers protection if they cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Two weeks prior, the El Cajon City Council voted on a similar resolution proposed by Wells, which, if adopted, would allow police officers to work with immigration enforcement as much as existing state law SB 54 would allow.
Resolutions are formal expressions of opinion and intent rather than legislative policy, which can be reversed or amended with another vote from the City Council.
SB 54 however, is a state sanctuary policy, which prohibits local police from directly cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. In a 3-2 vote, the Council voted to withhold action and ask state Attorney General Rob Bonta for more clarification on what to do.
Wells defended the old and new resolutions, citing the safety of El Cajon residents from dangerous criminals as the priority. Resolutions are less formal than ordinances, which describe legislative changes.
However, protestors were present for both meetings, some taking public comments and saying that the proposed resolutions would only invoke more fear and endanger those in the community. They urged the council to vote in a manner representative of the citizens of El Cajon, which is heavily immigrant.
Tensions were high during the meeting on Feb. 11. Shouts from those in attendance resulted in multiple breaks. Councilmember Gary Kendrick read quotes from voicemails he and other council members received after the vote on Jan. 28, which included threats to him and other council members who voted against the resolution.
El Cajon has been the only city in San Diego County to vote on the inconsistencies between state and federal law.
According to Councilmember Michelle Metschel, there shouldn’t have been a vote at all – Metschel called out the mayor’s resolution as a consequential political stunt to bolster his political career.
Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien, a political science professor at SDSU who focuses on U.S. immigration policy, agreed with Metschel, calling the resolution “symbolic politics.” He elaborated, stating that such resolutions are ways to sell safety to the community with the facade of “being tough on crime and tough on immigration.”
“They’re sold as something that makes communities safer when there’s no evidence that they do so, and so they can pay political dividends for certain politicians,” O’Brien said. “The narrative that was put out there by the mayor of El Cajon was that this is only going to target violent offenders. But the problem is that the local community doesn’t know that.”
O’Brien pointed out ICE and the federal resources they already have in terms of finding violent criminals and arresting them.
“ICE can do that on their own, without the cooperation of local law enforcement,” O’Brien said.
During the meeting, Councilmember Kendrick mentioned a chilling effect on the immigrant community that the resolution would incur, which O’Brien described as a way to silence immigrant voices.
“The increased enforcement is having a chilling effect on the willingness of immigrants to report crimes,” O’Brien said. “The likelihood that an undocumented individual will report violence to them or someone else drops, either because of their own legal status because they are a member of a mixed-status household.”
Councilmember Phil Ortiz was the swing vote during both council meetings. He first voted against the resolution on Jan. 28, then affirmed the new resolution on Feb. 11, citing the clause about police indemnification in cooperating with ICE as a major reason.
Ortiz pointed out flaws in the argument of those who wanted to uphold SB 54 and limit police cooperation with ICE.
“This resolution is to get violent criminals off the street, and nothing else,” Ortiz said. “If people want to fabricate, they can do that all they want. The generalization that every immigrant is a criminal is 100% not true. The generalization that I hate Mexicans is not true. So I am not convinced of the arguments that I have heard because a lot of them are conjecture and intellectually dishonest.”
