BERKELEY — After it was called out by the Trump administration as a sanctuary city for immigrants, Berkeley has opted to strengthen its stance by adding requirements for staff to document and disclose any contact made with federal agents.
Under a unanimously approved ordinance, staff will now be required to report any request for assistance of information from or to federal agents to the City Council and that information will be publicly shared during the next available council meeting. The police department will also be required to include all reported incidents in their annual report.
The ordinance clarifies that staff is not permitted to cooperate with federal agents regardless of whether requests are being made on city property or other public places like schools, places of worship or hospitals.
“This ordinance is a reflection of Berkeley’s values and it codifies the protections we have honored and followed by resolutions for decades,” Mayor Adena Ishii said Tuesday.
Berkeley has had some form of a sanctuary city resolution on the books since 1971, making the city one of the first in the nation to adopt such a policy. Councilmembers have reaffirmed the spirit of that resolution multiple times.
The ordinance adopted Tuesday will supersede previous sanctuary city resolutions if approved on second reading during a future council meeting.
The council vote came a day after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority lifted a restraining order issued by a lower court that prohibited federal agents conducting immigration sweeps from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location.
“The coincidental timeliness of this ordinance is not lost on me,” Ishiii said in reference to the court ruling. “You cannot use race for college or school admissions, but race and language are now tools for immigration harassment.”
Berkeley’s sanctuary city policy has drawn federal scrutiny under President Donald Trump, earning it a spot on a list of 35 jurisdictions the U.S. Department of Justice says have “policies, laws, or regulations that impede enforcement of federal immigration laws.” Trump has also threatened to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions with such policies in place.
But protecting the civil liberties of the city’s immigrant residents is personal, councilmembers said. Some are the children, spouses or parents of immigrants, have worked in fields supporting immigrants or are immigrants themselves.
The Trump administration’s more aggressive approach to immigration was blasted by councilmembers as “unconscionable,” “discriminate,” “racist,” “authoritarian” and “fascist.”
Councilmembers Mark Humbert and Igor Tregub likened the current federal policy to Nazi Germany with Humbert calling the parallels “clear and compelling and frightening,” and Tregub, an Ukrainian immigrant, asserting he’s glad his late grandfather, who fought against the Nazis during World War II, “did not have to bear witness to what he spent his entire lifetime fighting.”
Members of the public who spoke during Tuesday’s meeting implored the council to approve the stronger ordinance, including some immigrants and those speaking on behalf of immigrants who said they and their families are now living in fear.
“All of our communities are interconnected and folks deserve to feel safe in whatever city they are in regardless of their immigration status, especially at a time when immigrant rights are under attack by a wannabe authoritarian president,” said Danny Salaya, who identified himself as an undocumented immigrant and DACA recipient.
Brian Hofer, executive director of the privacy advocacy nonprofit Secure Justice, said the group was giving the ordinance a rare endorsement. Officer Jessica Perry, a spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department, said in an email statement that the “department stands in support of our city’s new sanctuary city ordinance.”
Mirna Cervantes, executive director of the Multicultural Institute, a nonprofit providing economic development services to immigrants, and Lisa Hoffman, executive director of the East Bay Sanctuary Convent, a legal aid organization, said the ordinance could be even stronger.
Cervantes and Hoffman specifically requested that the ordinance be further strengthened by detailing exactly what repercussions an employee would face if they disobeyed the ordinance and to allow for people to retain their right of action if harmed by an employee’s decision to break the policy.
As drafted and adopted, the ordinance specifically clarifies that the measure does not create a private right to action against the city or its personnel. Instead, it states that existing city policies and procedures for enforcement would apply and leaves the responsibility of creating new rules and regulations to the city manager.
“For our community members, many of whom are immigrants, day laborers and domestic workers, laws and policies on paper are not enough,” Cervantes said. “I urge you to strengthen this ordinance … so that our community can have real access to justice and truly be protected, because without enforcement, without recourse, rights can remain theoretical rather than real.”
Councilmembers did not directly address the request while on the dais.
They also postponed making a final decision on whether to approve a $310,000 contract with Flock Safety to install and service fixed surveillance cameras in the city.
Members of the public implored the council to deny the contract and forgo its relationship with Flock Safety altogether out of fear the data would be shared with federal agents. The company recently paused a pilot program with federal agencies after it was found that Customs and Border Protection had accessed data in Illinois.
“There’s too many legal obstacles here for you to cure and award this contract,” Hofer said, noting his organization plans to send the city a legal letter addressing the matter. “Save yourselves from a future headache and loss of taxpayer resources. Flock has revealed to you who they are, believe them.”
