During an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of “The Issue Is,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said that California isn’t working with the federal government to deport criminals because “The federal government has the resources to do this.” And “it’s a very unremarkable proposition that the entity who’s responsible for immigration enforcement should do their job, and not that they take valuable, limited law enforcement resources away from law enforcement, holding criminals accountable, doing investigations, making arrests, doing prosecutions, to do their job for them. We want to focus on crime.”
Bonta stated that he’s “all in on holding criminals, regardless of their immigration status, accountable.” Host Elex Michaelson then asked, “But why not have California work with the federal government to get those people out of the country?”
Bonta responded, “Well, we have a sanctuary state law. It’s the law. It’s been in the law since 2017 — 2018, Trump 1.0. The federal government has the resources to do this. They have whole departments and agencies, including ICE, to do immigration enforcement. They can do their job. They should do their job, lawfully. That’s what the — it’s a very unremarkable proposition that the entity who’s responsible for immigration enforcement should do their job, and not that they take valuable, limited law enforcement resources away from law enforcement, holding criminals accountable, doing investigations, making arrests, doing prosecutions, to do their job for them. We want to focus on crime. And so, states have the right to decide what we should focus on, how we deploy our law enforcement resources. We seek to focus on crime, not on civil immigration enforcement.”
Earlier in the interview, Bonta said that California’s sanctuary state law is about “focusing on those who break the law and commit crimes and deploying resources towards that, not civil immigration enforcement. These deportation proceedings, they’re not criminal, they’re civil.”
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