LOS ANGELES – The new chief of the Los Angeles police force said his department is working with consulate offices for Mexico and other Central American countries to draft a plan to protect immigrants ahead of the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Jim McDonnell said his tenure as police chief will be marked by high engagement with the community, adding that all of society must participate in the criminal justice system to create a safe place to live. A veteran police officer and former sheriff, McDonnell was selected by Mayor Karen Bass in October and sworn in last month.
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The LAPD does not stop people or take action for any reason related to immigration status, and it doesn’t enforce immigration laws, a practice that has been in place for 45 years, said McDonnell, referring to a department policy known as Special Order 40 enacted in 1979.
Any immigration enforcement would be “undercutting our primary mission, which is to be able to build public trust to work with every member of all of our communities, to be able to have hope that people will come forward if they were a victim of crime, a witness to a crime,” McDonnell said.
The department plans to work with the consulates to create and circulate a video explaining their policies to the immigrant community and alleviating their concerns.
During the last Trump administration, the U.S. Justice Department attempted to withhold funding from sanctuary cities and favor cities that pledged to cooperate with immigration enforcement for federal grants.
McDonnell said the department is “cognizant of what’s at stake” –- with a majority of the LAPD budget going toward personnel, the police force often relies on grants to provide for equipment and tools. He will be working with national police groups like the Major Cities Chiefs Association to advocate for law enforcement needs with the Trump administration, McDonnell said.
At the state level, Attorney General Rob Bonta is also preparing to protect immigrants from Trump’s mass deportation plans. The Democrat announced guidance Wednesday for schools, libraries, hospitals and other institutions on how to honor the privacy of immigrants without legal status and limit assistance to federal immigration enforcement.
He said safeguarding immigrants’ rights is personal to him as someone whose family migrated from the Philippines to the United States when Bonta was an infant to escape the rise of martial law and dictatorship in their native country.
“Here in California, we’re not going to spend our time, our money or our resources going backward,” Bonta said at a news conference in San Francisco. “Immigrants are the backbone of our nation. Immigrants make America great.”
Along with engaging the immigrant community, McDonnell said he hopes to seek a greater level of engagement from communities that traditionally haven’t felt comfortable doing so, “just human-to-human, going out and asking for help.”
He also vows to build back the police force from currently just under 9,000 sworn officers to a baseline of 10,000, ideally even exceeding that number. While recent recruitment class size numbers have been in the mid-30s, he hopes to double that to 60, McDonnell said.
The additional officers will be crucial as Los Angeles prepares to play host to a number of events that will draw visitors from all over the world, including the FIFA World Cup in 2026, Super Bowl in 2027 and the Olympics in 2028.
One additional tool in the law enforcement arsenal is the recent passage of Proposition 36, which reverted to a previous law making some shoplifting and drug offenses felonies again.
While it will mainly affect prosecutors, McDonnell said it will make arrests for those types of crimes “more meaningful” and give local businesses more safety and comfort, preventing them from having to shut down their stores and leave the community.
“As we move forward, we do so judiciously so that we use the tools that are available to us,” McDonnell said.
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Associated Press writer Sophie Austin contributed from Sacramento, California.