Photo: Councilman Steve Goble is the likely swing vote when the El Cajon City Council reconsiders an amended version of a controversial immigration measure on Feb. 11.
By Miriam Raftery
February 10, 2025 (El Cajon) - A controversial measure to allow El Cajon Police officers to cooperate with federal immigration authorities is back on tomorrow’s agenda. The newly revised version includes changes from an earlier version that was voted down 3-2 after a five-hour hearing with emotional testimony on both sides. View revised draft.
The immigration matter is scheduled at the end of a 3 p.m. meeting tomorrow. However, there is an earlier 2 p.m. special meeting on unrelated issues. Activists on both sides have been advising the public to arrive early, since seats may fill up for the first meeting with people planning to stay for both meetings.
The original measure was introduced by Mayor Bill Wells and Councilman Phil Ortiz, who voted in favor. Councilmembers Gary Kendrick, Michelle Metschel and Steve Goble voted no, after several attempts at compromise measures failed. The newest reversion includes amended language proposed by Councilmember Goble.
A state law, SB 54, prohibits local police from turning over individuals to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unless they have been convicted of certain serious felonies, such as murder or rape. California’s law was upheld on appeal and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, allowing the law to stand. Yet the Trump administration has threatened to prosecute local officials if they don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities, putting local cities in a difficult situation.
"Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands or requests," a Justice Dept. memo states, raising the possibility of charges for harboring immigrants without legal status or for failing to share information with immigration authorities, NPR reports.
The Justice Dept. is setting up a Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group to identify state and local policies or laws that are "inconsistent" with the Trump administration's enforcement efforts, and "where appropriate, to take legal action to challenge such laws." Whether courts would continue to uphold California’s SB 54, or whether a conservative-leaning Supreme Court might overturn it, is unknown.
El Cajon’s latest revision to its proposed measure now states the city’s intent to “comply with federal immigration law to the legal extent permissible for the sole purpose of removing violent criminals from our community.”.
But the city’s language leaves room to cooperate on deportation of people merely accused, but not convicted, of crimes. It notes that the Trump administration says there are “over 647,000 non-detained individuals living in the United States illegally who have pending charges or have been convicted of or charged with violent crimes, including robbery, assault, sexual assault, homicide, and and human trafficking.”
That raises serious concerns about the prospect for innocent people to be deported without a trial. There are many examples of individuals falsely accused of crimes and later proven innocent, such as when DNA tests prove another person committed the crime, or bystander videos emerge to disprove charges. A prime example occurred in La Mesa in 2020, when a police officer accused a young man at a trolley stop of assaulting the officer. A bystander’s video proved that the assault did not occur; the officer was fired for filing a false report, but his actions triggered a riot and accusations of racial profiling.
ECM spoke with Councilman Steve Goble, the likely swing vote on El Cajon’s immigration issue. He proposed another amendment included in the revised draft.
“If you want police officers to work for ICE under SB 54 which is not allowed, and then the feds and the state are at such odds with each other, I want indemnification for our officers, in case anybody comes after their credentials because they are licensed by the state,” Goble told ECM.
His amendment states ,”The City will seek assistance from the United States Attorney General’s office to indemnify the City and its employees for any assistance or
cooperation with federal immigration authorities as permitted by law.” The city also faces potential enforcement actions from the state, however, since Attorney General Rob Bonta has indicated he will hold cities accountable if they violate SB 54.
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that any powers not given to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people. Goble notes. California’s SB 54 does not stop the federal authorities from doing their work, he points out, adding that the state doesn’t want to assist in those efforts. (SB 54 does allow cities to turn over undocumented immigrants to ICE if they have been convicted of serious felonies.)
Mayor Wells, who has announced his intent to seek reelection in 2026 and also run for supervisor in 2028, has said his goal is to protect public safety. On X, he recently posted, “I’m bringing back a resolution to support our law enforcement officers working with ICE to remove illegal immigrant criminals from our communities. We all want safer neighborhoods, and I will continue fighting to protect our families from those who break our laws and threaten our safety. Law enforcement must have every tool available to uphold the law and keep criminals off our streets.”
Goble states, “What Bill is saying aspirationally is if we know there is a convicted criminal living in El Cajon illegally, we want the option of contacting ICE.” That might include, for example, a parolee who served time for a serious felony but was not handed over to ICE elsewhere.
However, Goble indicated he has concerns about deporting people who have merely been accused, but not convicted of serious crimes, suggesting he might be open to an amendment limiting ECPD cooperation only to undocumented immigrations who have been convicted in court.
Goble spoke of a San Diego Police officer’s search for an accused serial rapist, who turned out to be in a Border Patrol vehicle, so Border Patrol handed him over to the police instead of deporting him immediately. In Goble’s view, that was the right decision.
“The reason is that it’s better to go through the justice system and be deported as convicted criminal,” Goble explained, noting that if merely deported without a criminal conviction, the suspect could potentially reenter the U.S. again and again.
There is also the potential for the Trump administration to order deportation of any undocumented immigrant, even those living in the U.S. for decades without committing crimes here, since some Trump administration officials including White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt have said they consider everyone who crossed the border illegally to be criminals. Trump, on the campaign trail, frequently spoke of wanting to deport all undocumented immigrants, an estimated 11 million people.Trump has also revoked special protection status for some legal immigrants, including Afghan translators who helped our military.
If a future court were to overturn SB 54, does El Cajon wants its police officers cooperating if the “crime” was merely crossing the border, or overstaying a legal protected status order later revoked, as in the case of Afghans who helped our military?
The Mayor's immigration measure has sparked heated public debate, wtih over 80 people speaking out at the last Council meeting. Elected officials on both sides are facing serious threats, including death threats against a councilmember who voted against the resolution and a recall effort gearing up against at least one Councilmember who voted for the resolution, ECM has learned.
Latinos en Acción has announced a press conference at noon tomorrow in front of City Council chambers at 200 Civic Center Way, El Cajon, in opposition to the resolution, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. A flyer announcing the event states that California law already allows police to transfer violent criminals to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and expanding local police cooperation would mostly affect non-violent offenders and could lead to racial profiling.
At an earlier hearing on this issue, Violet Lombera with Latinos en Accion testified that moving to El Cajon from Brawley, she was stopped by police in what she views as “racial profiling. I don’t want that to happen again...Doing this is really going to separate and divide us. It’s going to attack my community, Mexican Americans...I’ve been attacked. I’ve been segregated. I’ve been racially profiled. You guys need to reconsider this,” she said, voicing fears of people being stopped and asked for proof of citizenship. ”To do this is really going to hurt everybody in our community.”
While backers of the resolution have voiced concerns over the city being caught in the legal crosshairs between conflicting state and federal laws, El Cajon could also face lawsuits from immigrant rights’ groups over its immigrant policies.
Salvador Salmiento with the National Day Labor Network told the Council on January 14, “Our organization has litigated a bunch of these policies over the years,” adding that he has over the years repeatedly seen ICE detainers issued without probable cause. If immigrants suffer actual damages due to actions of the City Council or its officers, he warned, ”We will sue.”
He added that in lawsuits filed by the organization elsewhere over immigration issues, , “ICE doesn’t pay. The city pays,"adding, "El Cajon can be a better example than this.”
View ECM’s prior coverage:
https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/packed-hearing-el-cajon-council-votes-3-2-against-contentious-immigration-resolution
https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/el-cajon-council-will-vote-today-controversial-immigration-resolution
https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/latino-leaders-give-earful-el-cajon-city-council-over-proposed-immigration-resolution
