Los Angeles city and schools to make themselves migrant ‘sanctuaries’

Los Angeles, the second largest US city, is setting itself up for a standoff with President-elect Donald Trump over immigration.

On Tuesday, its city council is poised to pass a “sanctuary city” ordinance to bar using local resources to help federal immigration authorities.

LA’s public school system is also set to declare itself a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ students in a series of emergency resolutions.

Trump, who will be sworn in in two months, has promised mass deportations once he returns to the White House. His chosen “border czar”, Tim Homan, has urged sanctuary cities to “get the hell out of the way” of federal immigration crackdowns.

The term “sanctuary city” has been popular in the US for more than a decade to describe places that limit their assistance to federal immigration authorities. Since it is not a legal term, cities have taken a variety of approaches to becoming “sanctuaries”, such as setting policies in laws or simply changing local policing practices.

On the campaign trail, Trump often took aim at sanctuary cities and Homan, a former acting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan, has repeatedly said that “sanctuary” city designations would not prevent the administration from carrying out its immigration policy goals.

In an 11 November interview with Fox, Homan said “nothing will stop us from deporting migrant criminals.”

“We’re going to do the job with you, or without you,” he said.

Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass released a draft of a sanctuary city ordinance that was called for more than a year ago. The council has expedited voting on it.

Aimed at making a 2019 executive order into city law, it would “prevent federal immigration enforcement from being able to access city facilities or to use city resources in the pursuit of immigration enforcement”, council member Nithya Raman told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

It would also prohibit some data sharing.

Officials in a number of other cities, including Boston and New York City, have similarly promised that local resources would not be allocated to helping federal immigration enforcement issues.

Since Trump was elected the first time, dozens of school districts have declared themselves “sanctuaries” or “safe havens” to reassure students they will not be deported.

The Los Angeles school district – roughly 140 miles (225km) from the country’s southern border with Mexico – will vote on a series of emergency resolutions onexplicitly aimed at combatting what the board’s president, Jackie Goldberg, has described as an anti-immigrant and LGBTQ sentiment from the incoming president.

“We’re not going to be running in fear,” she said, according to the LA Times. “We’re going to fight you, every inch of the way.”

One resolution to reaffirm “our commitment to immigrant students, families and staff” describes this month’s presidential vote as “the election of the candidate who campaigned on an anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.”

The board is also proposing a new high school course aimed at educating students about current events and extending non-discrimination policies, which already apply to students, to their families, as well as employees and their relatives.

Under US federal law, public schools must enrol any student within their respective jurisdictions. But much of the oversight is left to the states and local districts.

In California, home to a sizeable population of mixed families with undocumented members, officials are forbidden from asking students about immigration status.