DSA-LA and Coalition Partners on Path to Make LA a Sanctuary City
DSA-LA members and friends pause for a group portrait after a town hall celebrating the news that the L.A. City Council will present an ordinance prohibiting the use of city resources in immigration enforcement.
LA City Council motion victory
On June 9th, 2023 the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a motion to draft an ordinance that would in effect make Los Angeles a sanctuary city. The motion presents clear policy proposals that would prohibit the use of government resources, property, or personnel from being used for any federal immigration enforcement and end the entanglement between local authorities and federal immigration agencies such as ICE. The City Attorney has promised that Los Angeles is to be presented with the draft ordinance in September. This is a moment for celebration and also recognition of DSA-LA’s organizing efforts since 2017.
Background 2017-2020
DSA-LA began its support for sanctuary policies when it coordinated a “Sanctuary City Working Group” focusing on activism, political education, and civil disobedience to combat anti-immigrant policies pushed by the Trump administration. DSA understood that sanctuary had existed since the 1980s when refugees fled from U.S.-funded civil wars in Central America. Forced migration is often the result of imperialism, war, and neoliberal economic policies. While many cities and counties throughout the U.S. had established sanctuary policies, Los Angeles—a city with immigrants comprising a third of its population—had no firm position on disentangling its resources from federal immigration enforcement.
2017 demonstration pressuring L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti to take a tougher stand against deportation
In March 2017, DSA-LA demonstrated outside of recently re-elected liberal Mayor Eric Garcetti’s election party, disrupted his victory speech, and demanded that the city take a tougher stand against deportation. Garcetti refused to affirm a stance on this policy. Instead, he diluted concrete demands with his reframed “A City of Sanctuary” slogan, suggesting that Los Angeles morally supports sanctuary, but would never intervene materially against the Trump Administration. When the LA city council failed to pass any immigration policy, activists pressured Garcetti to pass Executive Directive 20, which prevented the city from spending resources on immigration enforcement. DSA-LA participated in the “ICE out of Los Angeles” coalition, which used an inside-outside strategy to pressure the LA City Council, County of Los Angeles, and the state of California to pass sanctuary laws. The inside-outside strategy had several organizations working closely with officials, while others engaged in agitational and oppositional approaches to centrists and conservatives.
On May 18th, 2017, Claudia Rueda, a key organizer in the “ICE out of LA” coalition and member of the Immigrant Youth Coalition, was kidnapped by Border Patrol outside her home in Boyle Heights. She had led several campaigns in the past against ICE, including one to free her own mother, Teresa. The coalition saw this raid as political retaliation for organizing against anti-immigrant, white supremacist policies. DSA-LA responded and amplified the pressure demanding Claudia’s release. Despite Border Patrol transferring Claudia to San Diego, they eventually released her after a few days of significant statewide pressure.
From spring through the fall, DSA-LA supported SB 54, the California Values Act, which curtailed use of state and local resources in deportations and created spaces safe from ICE, including at schools, health facilities, and courthouses. On April 29, 2017, DSA-LA had held a teach-in at UCLA to present the policies required to establish a sanctuary campus and city, while also questioning California legislators regarding their weakening of SB 54 in order to appease Republicans and capitalists. Following the pressure of key Democratic leadership, DSA-LA shifted its strategy as then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell had begun to publicly oppose SB 54.
On July 13, 2017, DSA-LA held a demonstration at the County Sheriff’s East L.A. station to demand the Sheriff end his opposition to the bill and his alliance with rightwing forces. Fifty DSA-LA members and coalition partners demonstrated outside the Belvedere Park station while six DSA-LA members risked arrest inside the Sheriff's Office. In response, the sheriff deputies chained their offices shut, barricaded their own driveways with cars, and several put on riot gear.
The stalemate lasted about four hours before the sheriffs released those engaged in civil disobedience to the larger demonstration in the park. DSA-LA and the “ICE out of LA” coalition delivered a message to Sheriff McDonnell—Los Angeles would not tolerate any more collusion between ICE and law enforcement. SB 54 became law on October 5, 2017 and went into effect January 1, 2018.
Having won a first major victory, DSA-LA’s Sanctuary City Working Group restructured and became the chapter’s “Immigration Justice Committee.” DSA-LA broadened its sanctuary work by connecting the terrible conditions faced by refugees in their countries of origin and in transit to their conditions in the U.S. and seeking sanctuary.
DSA-LA coordinated unofficial delegations to Tijuana throughout 2018 including spending the 2018-2019 New Years week supporting Haitian, Central American, and African refugees preparing for their asylum interviews at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Refugees shared countless stories of living conditions at the detention centers, calling them “Hieleras” (iceboxes) for their cold temperatures and similarities to concentration camps for their lack of food, separation of kids from parents, terrible hygiene, and utter disregard of their humanity.
For nearly a year following these delegations, DSA-LA prepared for a “National Day of Action to Close the Camps.” DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez amplified these terrible conditions, and DSA chapters across the country began to coordinate marches and build relationships with key partners. On October 12, 2019, DSA-LA held its largest demonstration ever demanding the federal government close the camps in the Southern Border, with over 400 participants and 50 organizations. These centers continue to exist, though some of the conditions in them have marginally shifted.
After the pandemic arrived in March 2020, and the federal government failed to provide any assistance to undocumented workers, DSA-LA shifted its activities to supporting undocumented immigrants with financial aid. The chapter raised over $60,000 and distributed it to more than four hundred participants in our Stimulus Solidarity Campaign. Hundreds of mixed status immigrant working class families joined the chapter after a successful mutual aid program in Los Angeles. The chapter also supported various unemployed immigrants who were organizing tenant associations while providing workshops on sanctuary policies, knocking doors in tenant buildings, and encouraging rent strikes during the pandemic. Several unemployed DSA-LA immigrant members won their strikes and got their rents paid by the state.
DSA-LA Electoral Victories Amplify Democratic Socialist Policies
DSA-LA’s experience with immigrant organizing revealed that to win democratic socialist policies we need more than a strong organized base in our neighborhoods and workplaces; we also need socialists in office to pass and defend these policies. Without key elected officials moving to make Los Angeles a sanctuary city, we would not have been be able to disentangle ICE from local police.
In December 2019, DSA-LA endorsed immigrant and democratic socialist Nithya Raman for the District 4 City Council seat. In her general election victory in November 2020, Raman defeated the conservative incumbent by 52.87% to 47.13%.
In October 2021, DSA-LA endorsed the son of immigrants and democratic socialist Hugo Soto-Martínez in District 13. He won a runoff general election victory in November 2022, defeating the corporate Democrat incumbent by a 57.8% to 42.2% margin.
Finally in January 2022, DSA-LA endorsed the daughter of immigrants, abolitionist and democratic socialist Eunisses Hernandez, leading to her outright victory in the March 2022 primary election for District 1, where Hernadez defeated the liberal incumbent by a 53.9% to 45.8% margin.
Next Steps: The Democratic Socialist Program and Future Immigration Policy Demands
DSA-LA immigrant organizing activists played key roles in these campaigns for LA City Council. DSA-LA helped draft local immigration policy platforms and created communications, fundraisers, canvassing, tabling, and phone banking events for DSA candidates. The assessment, as presented by DSA-LA’s Democratic Socialist Program (DSP), was that by electing socialist representatives the chapter would advance policies benefiting working class immigrants. So far this has proven correct.
Councilmembers Raman, Soto-Martinez and Hernandez co-authored the Sanctuary Motion and championed its progress through City Council. This was not possible with the former liberal and neoliberal so-called “immigration supporters” on City Council. Los Angeles now enters a new phase in the immigrant rights struggle beyond passing the ordinance to defend it as part of the larger struggle against white supremacy and capitalism across the country.
We have taken a large step forward in advancing sanctuary city policy in the Los Angeles City Council. DSA-LA now has to assess and craft new policy proposals around immigrant justice within the DSP. We celebrate today, but we know the fight continues. La lucha sigue!