Lea esta historia en Español

Those who physically attack doctors, nurses and other emergency department workers in California face harsher penalties in 2025 thanks to a new law.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 977, which increased penalties from six months to a year in jail for those convicted of assaulting California’s hospital emergency room workers.

The bill’s author was Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez, who spent 30 years as an emergency medical technician in the San Gabriel Valley. 

Rodriguez, a Democrat whose term ended in 2024, said he was compelled to introduce the legislation after seeing too many of his friends and former colleagues attacked on the job. He felt that there needed to be tougher penalties to discourage future attacks. 

As he made his case to lawmakers this year, he testified that his daughter, Desirae, a respiratory technician, was recently assaulted on the job. Other health care workers testified that they too had been attacked. 

Recent polling shows they’re hardly alone. A poll from the American College of Emergency Physicians found that more than 90% of ER doctors said they’d been attacked within the last year.

Though the bill ended up passing overwhelmingly, some progressive Democrats either voted against or didn’t vote for the proposal which counts the same as a “no” vote. They, along with prison reform advocates and the California Public Defenders Association, argued that increasing penalties doesn’t deter crime and that many of those assaulting ER workers are mentally ill. They noted that laws on the books already prohibited assault.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who faced a U.S. Supreme Court order to shrink the state’s prison population, had vetoed an identical bill from Rodriguez in 2015.

The California Medical Association, the lobbying group for California’s physicians, was glad Newsom didn’t do the same.

“Thank you Governor Newsom, Assemblymember Rodriguez, and the Legislature for having the backs of health care workers across the state,” the association’s president, Dr. Tanya Spirtos, said in a statement after Newsom signed the bill.

Read More on the legislative process

Gambling companies spent big to defeat three California lawmakers. ‘We want to be respected’

December 10, 2024December 10, 2024

5,000 bills is too many. California Legislature sets new max on legislation

December 2, 2024December 4, 2024

Lea esta historia en Español

California’s southern border, long ‘ground zero’ in the fight between federal and local officials over immigration policy, is now at the center of renewed controversy over how far local leaders can go to protect people from deportation. 

After San Diego County took steps earlier this month to strengthen safeguards for undocumented residents, an organization led by President-elect Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller sent a letter warning that elected leaders and employees of “sanctuary” jurisdictions could be “criminally liable” if they impede federal immigration enforcement.

In the Dec. 23 letter, America First Legal Foundation wrote: “We have identified San Diego County as a sanctuary jurisdiction that is violating federal law.” 

The conservative legal nonprofit that day announced that it had identified 249 elected officials in sanctuary jurisdictions who it said could face “legal consequences” over immigration policies. The California Attorney General’s office and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were sent similar letters.  

The letter also suggests sanctuary city officials could be civilly liable under federal anti-racketeering laws. 

With Trump pledging to carry out the “largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history,” San Diego’s board of supervisors enacted a policy on Dec. 12 prohibiting local law enforcement from communicating with immigration authorities about undocumented people in local jails without a judicial warrant. 

San Diego’s newly enacted ordinance goes a step further than California’s existing state “sanctuary” law, which only limits cooperation between local law enforcement and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The law prevents jailers from notifying ICE about non-citizen inmates who are about to be released from local criminal custody unless they committed one of about 800 serious crimes. State prison officials regularly communicate with ICE about people in their custody, including U.S. citizens, public records show. 

San Diego County’s action faced immediate pushback, with the county’s top law enforcement official, Sheriff Kelly Martinez, saying she would not follow the new policy and would continue allowing immigration authorities access to the jail inmates.

American First Legal Foundation sent its letter to the chair of San Diego County’s Board of Supervisors, Nora Vargas, who stepped down from her position on Friday citing security concerns just weeks after being elected to a second term.  

“Federal law is clear: aliens unlawfully present in the United States are subject to removal from the country, and it is a crime to conceal, harbor, or shield them. It is also a crime to prevent federal officials from enforcing immigration law,” states the letter, dated three days after the resignation. 

Vargas, who was born in Tijuana, has long championed rights for asylum seekers and immigrants. She was the first immigrant and Latina to serve on San Diego’s board of supervisors. She was elected to the board in 2020, flipping the seat from Republican to Democrat for the first time in decades.

Vargas said the new board policy was developed through “rigorous legal review and stands in full compliance with federal, state and local laws.” 

“This nation’s foundation was built on the strength and contributions of immigrants,” she posted on social media. “Now it’s time to turn our focus to honoring the humanity of those who help make this country the beacon of hope it continues to be.”  

Spokespersons for Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to inquiries about whether the administration plans to prosecute local officials in sanctuary cities. Trump has named Miller to be his deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor.

California preparing legal battles with Trump administration

State officials have asked the Legislature, in a special session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, for $25 million for legal fights with the incoming administration on issues including immigration.

“This is a scare tactic, plain and simple,” read a statement from the Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, in response to the America First letter. “While we are unable to comment on the specifics of the letter, we want to be clear: SB 54 was upheld by the courts during the first Trump administration, and it prevents the use of state and local resources for federal immigration enforcement with certain narrow exceptions. SB 54 does nothing, however, to block federal agencies from conducting immigration enforcement themselves. California will continue to comply with all applicable state and federal laws, and we expect all local law enforcement agencies to do the same.” 

Democratic state Senate leader Mike McGuire, of Healdsburg, in response to the letters called the incoming administration’s proposed immigration policies “draconian” and damaging to California’s economy. 

“The previous Trump administration came at California before on a variety of legal fronts and the majority of the time, lost,” said McGuire, whose office did not receive a letter. “Mark my word, we’ll be prepared again.”

The state is home to several major cities with policies limiting cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities. Proponents say such policies make immigrants less fearful of deportation when reporting crimes to or cooperating with the police. Los Angeles adopted a sanctuary city ordinance in November, fast-tracking the policy after Trump’s election.  

Asked for comment on the America First letter, Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, called it “wrong on public safety and wrong on the law.”

“Sanctuary policies are against the law, make a mockery of America’s democratic principles, and demonstrate a shocking disrespect for our Constitution and our citizens. The officials in charge of sanctuary jurisdictions have no excuse and must be held accountable,” read a statement from James Rogers, a senior counsel with America First Legal. 

Trump targeted California sanctuary cities before

The state’s own sanctuary law, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, curbs local sheriffs’ transfers of detainees to federal immigration custody and also prohibits police from asking people about their immigration status. That law, Senate Bill 54, contains an exception for state prisons, which regularly transfer ex-inmates who have completed their sentences to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings. 

Trump advisers, including Miller, have been considering using federal pressure, such as withholding federal funds, against jurisdictions that won’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The last Trump administration tried to get the California sanctuary law overturned in federal court, but the Supreme Court in 2020 declined to hear its petition. And in 2018, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security floated criminal charges against politicians of cities that enact sanctuary policies. It did not file charges.

“So-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions that forbid compliance with federal immigration law and cooperation with the officials who enforce it are, therefore, breaking the law. Moreover, sanctuary jurisdictions are strictly prohibited from requiring their employees to violate federal immigration law,” the America First letter states. 

But Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, said the letter’s reasoning that sanctuary policies amount to “harboring” or concealing federal fugitives is flawed. 

“Not inquiring about someone’s status is not harboring. Neither is declining to share such information,” Arulanantham said in a text message Friday. “I’m not aware of any criminal protections based on such conduct, and the letter fails to cite any.”

To carry out his plan to deport more people than any other president, Trump will need the cooperation of local officials. Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit that provides legal training and does pro-immigrant policy work in California and Texas, estimates 70 to 75% of ICE arrests in the interior of the U.S. are handoffs from another law enforcement agency, such as local jails or state or federal prisons. Since 2019, California’s state prison system has delivered more than 5,700 formerly incarcerated immigrants to ICE, federal data shows. 

San Diego was the epicenter of a surge of unauthorized crossings earlier this year, straining local resources. In April, 37,370 people crossed between ports of entry in the San Diego sector, with the majority surrendering to Border Patrol to claim asylum. This made it the top spot for crossings in the country for a few weeks in 2024, according to federal data. The number of unauthorized crossings dropped sharply after the Biden administration implemented new asylum restrictions in June. 

Lea esta historia en Español

Californians accused of certain drug and retail theft crimes may already be facing stiffer penalties under an initiative voters passed this year, alongside related bills Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law. 

Voters this November overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, which both modifies and adds key changes to California law.  

That includes prosecutors being able to charge people convicted of various third-time drug offenses with a so-called treatment-mandated felony, which would direct them to substance use disorder or mental health treatment in lieu of up to three years in jail or prison.

Under the new law, courts are also obligated to warn people convicted of selling or providing certain drugs, such as fentanyl, that they could face murder charges for later distributing illegal drugs that kill someone. 

And heavier consequences may also extend to petty theft and shoplifting offenses, including the possibility of up to three years in jail or prison if a person has already been twice convicted for certain theft offenses. 

Several district attorneys and police departments announced arrests this month that they planned to charge under the new law, including in San Francisco, Solano and Shasta counties.

The measure partially reversed a different initiative voters approved a decade ago, which reduced penalties for certain lower-level drug and petty theft offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. The initiative, Proposition 47, was intended to develop new public safety strategies and reduce incarceration after the state’s prison population exploded due to tough-on-crime policies dating back to the 1980s. 

But prosecutors, law enforcement and large retailers who rallied in favor of Prop. 36 said those sentencing reforms went too far and created a revolving door for people to repeatedly commit crimes without being held accountable. 

“It’s a clear mandate from the public that we need to take a new approach on public safety issues, specifically hard drugs, retail theft and fentanyl,” said Jeff Reisig, Yolo County District Attorney. 

Those who opposed the measure warned that it will worsen homelessness, drug use and crime by cutting funding for treatment programs, and increasing court and prison costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Behavioral health experts across the state have voiced concern over the efficacy of a treatment-mandated felony, given that most California counties lack the resources needed to provide ‘mass treatment’ that has been promised by the measure’s proponents. 

“I believe that (proponents) have also received a mandate to embrace problem solving and supportive services for people who are struggling,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of the Prosecutors Alliance of California, a nonprofit organization that opposed Prop. 36. 

“I don’t believe the mandate was (to) put more people in prison. It was not what people believed they were voting for. I hope that people with the discretion to enforce this law will think very carefully about the communities they serve and what they were asking for in this moment,” she said. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to keep Prop. 36 off of the fall ballot and for a time considered putting a competing crime measure before voters. Instead, he signed a package of 10 bills in August that will make it easier to prosecute retail and vehicle theft. Those laws go into effect on Jan. 1. 

Although Gov. Newsom didn’t put any money into fighting Prop. 36, he referred to the initiative as an “unfunded mandate” that will take California back to the War on Drugs. Indeed, the measure included no new funding streams. But supporters like Reisig voiced optimism that funding opportunities already exist in the law, pointing to a $6.4 billion from the mental health bond voters approved in March.

“I hope that lawmakers and the governor embrace the mandate and work collaboratively to make sure that we’re successful in delivering the promise of Prop. 36,” Reisig said. 

Lea esta historia en Español

According to Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, California doesn’t have a crisis in its jails, where record numbers of people have died even as the state’s jail population shrank. 

“Saying people died in jails is a little bit of a misnomer,” said Barnes, who is also the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association. “People who are dying in our care, and I can’t say this any other way, they’re not dying because they’re in jail. They are dying from things that are life choices, narcotics issues, poor health, cancer, other things. 

“It’s not that the numbers are going up because they’re just dying from issues that are related to the jail.” 

So Barnes said he’s not concerned that Proposition 36, a newly passed crime measure, is expected to reverse the trend of declining jail populations and put more people in jail, and he does not believe that the increase in headcount will lead to more in-custody deaths. 

Outside observers, academics and the families of people who died in jail argue the opposite: that California is about to witness a wave of jail deaths even worse than the last four years. 

Prop. 36, passed overwhelmingly by voters in November, will likely increase county jail populations by stiffening penalties for certain crimes and allowing district attorneys to charge some misdemeanors as felonies, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. 

Yusef Miller, who leads a group of families whose relatives died in San Diego jails, said more incarcerated people will put pressure on jail systems that are already ill-equipped to handle more inmates. 

“We’ve been claiming that Prop. 36 is going to increase the jail population, of course, but they’re increasing it into an already failed and broken system where people’s lives are lost from neglect. If you put more pressure and more activity on this, it’s gonna fail even more,” Miller said. 

According to Justice Department statistics, a surge in overdoses drove the trend of increasing jail deaths. The other leading causes were suicide and the catch-all term “natural causes.” 

Jails are responsible for inmates’ health care, but former jail medical staff have complained of overwork and burnout, especially since the pandemic. Many jail prisoners require complex care. More than half of them have mental health needs, according to a 2023 study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

In 2019, when 156 people died in the custody of California jails, Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged that the state would take a stronger hand to prevent deaths in the 57 jail systems run by California county sheriffs.

In each of the following four years, more people died in California jails than when Newsom made that pledge — hitting a high of 215 in 2022. Tulare, San Diego, Kern, Riverside and San Bernardino counties’ jails set records. 

As of July, 68 people had died in California jails this year, according to the most recent data available from the Justice Department, which declined to provide CalMatters with updated numbers. 

Californians for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that seeks to reduce prison and jail spending, estimated that Prop. 36 will add 130,000 more people to California jails each year, about 100,000 of them held in jail before trial and about 30,000 serving one-year sentences after their convictions. 

Not all of those people would be held at the same time. In June 2024, the average daily jail population statewide was 56,795 people. 

Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, said it’s likely, if not a certainty, that more people will die in jails as jail populations grow. And, she said, there will be cumulative effects to counties as the expenses pile up from additional inmates. 

“Having more people means a more overcrowded situation, which means that the dynamics inside change,” Deitch said. “It could lead to more deaths. And the counties are going to very quickly realize how expensive it is to keep that number of people in jail. They’re going to have to develop strategies like (pre-trial diversion programs) to keep overcrowding down.” 

Why voters backed Prop. 36

Prop. 36 was a rightward swing of the California political pendulum – a decade ago, voters eased criminal penalties for certain crimes under 2014’s Proposition 47, which was pitched as both a cost-saving measure and a more effective way to combat crime by focusing dollars on treatment instead of incarceration.

Then, during the pandemic, the rate of shoplifting and commercial burglaries skyrocketed, especially in Los Angeles, Alameda, San Mateo and Sacramento counties. Statewide, reported shoplifting of merchandise worth up to $950 soared 28% over the past five years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. That’s the highest observed level since 2000. 

Combining shoplifting with commercial burglaries, the institute’s researchers found that total reported thefts were 18% higher than in 2019. 

Prosecutors, law enforcement and big-box retailers blamed Prop. 47 and successfully urged the public to vote for Prop. 36. 

Barnes’ jail system in Orange County had a record 18 people die inside in 2021. In 2023, that number was down to six. This year, so far, eight people have died in Orange County jails. 

“In Orange County, we have several thousand available (jail) beds,” Barnes said. “Other counties may be impacted because they may not have capacity. They may just have to release people earlier because they don’t have the space for an incoming population to change. 

“So it’s not as simple as saying that populations go up and, I guess (given) the law of averages, that more people will die, I don’t think that’s true.” 

California gradually increases jail oversight

In 2011, California — as it thinned severely overcrowded state prisons by sending tens of thousands of recently convicted offenders to county-run jails — created an oversight board for prisons and jails. This 13-member Board of State and Community Corrections is composed mostly of people with law enforcement and probation experience. 

CalMatters reported earlier this year that a civilian member of the oversight board felt that their work amounted to little more than a rubber stamp sanctioning the actions of sheriffs and their deputies when people died in their custody. 

The board has responded to public and legislative pressure by conducting more unannounced jail inspections, a change from past practice when it would visit jails just once every two years and tell jail authorities in advance when inspectors were coming.

A new law that went into effect this year adds a staff position to review in-custody deaths. That staffer is hosting listening sessions with the public in at least two cities. 

A spokesperson for the oversight board said the board had not talked to local law enforcement about a potential increase in county jail populations as a result of Prop. 36 nor has it done a “formal analysis for impact.” But the board will make in-custody death data statewide available to the public next year, the spokesperson said.

Miller, who works with the San Diego families whose relatives died in jails, doubts that the state oversight board or the counties will raise the alarm if people continue to die in jails at the rate they have been since the pandemic. 

“As it’s rolling out in their big promises that it’s not gonna be as terrible as we know it’s going to be, we still have to hold them accountable and make sure that a microscopic eye is on what they do,” Miller said. “That’s the only hope I see.”

Lea esta historia en Español

After nearly three years of historically high numbers of deaths in California jails large and small, the state board that oversees them is hosting a listening session on Saturday in San Diego County, home to one of the state’s deadliest jail systems. 

Allison Ganter, the new director of in-custody death reviews at the Board of State and Community Corrections, will host the sessions. A second one is planned for Sacramento in January. Ganter’s office has so far declined interview requests from CalMatters. 

Until last year, the board was not even notified about every death inside the county-run lockups, and a 2021 State Auditor’s report criticized the board for failing to enforce its own rules and standards on mental health checks and in-cell wellness checks of inmates.

The state has begun to take a somewhat stronger role in investigating deaths. The oversight board has pledged to conduct more surprise investigations of jails, and Ganter’s position was created through legislation last year. 

Jail deaths peaked in 2022, when 215 people died in California jails, nearly all of them awaiting trial. Tulare, San Diego, Kern, Riverside and San Bernardino counties’ jails had a record number of deaths that year. 

Jail deaths have been a particular area of concern in San Diego, where the head of the jail’s civilian review board quit in frustration earlier this year. 

Since then, the county board of supervisors voted to give its civilian review board more power to investigate jail deaths, and mandated that the sheriff’s office prioritize those death investigations. 

The first listening session is scheduled to take place in Escondido at 4 p.m. on Saturday at the North Inland Live Well Center, 649 West Mission Ave. No. 1.

The second is scheduled to take place in Sacramento at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 15 at the Board of State and Community Corrections, 2590 Venture Oaks Way.

More information on the listening sessions, including how to watch them online, is available at https://www.bscc.ca.gov/in-custody-death-review-division/.

California judges make a good living. They earn at least $240,000 and can count on a raise just about every year, a requirement that’s written into state law. 

So why do they feel shortchanged by the state?

A coalition of them argues the state has been stiffing them for years by mishandling the formula it uses to calculate their wage increases. In a new lawsuit, one such judge is demanding that the state redo the math going back almost a decade to include information that likely would have resulted in bigger raises.

“There’s a reason why our latest pay increases have been so puny and falling far short of the rate of inflation. The state didn’t tinker with the statutory formula, but it seems to have played with the inputs,” said a statement announcing the lawsuit by a group called the Alliance of California Judges.

A lot of money is on the line. An appeals court justice filed a similar lawsuit a decade ago, and the state had to cough up $40 million after losing the case.

The formula at the heart of the lawsuit sounds simple. State law requires that judges receive annual raises based on the “average percentage salary increase” given to other California state employees. This year, judges received a 2.6% wage increase, down from 3.2% in the previous year. 

But the state has fouled up the math before. The earlier case filed by a retired appeals court justice, Robert Mallano, turned on a mistake the state made during the Great Recession when it had withheld judges’ raises even though certain civil servants had received small pay increases. The state, ordered to recalculate judges’ wages, handed them $15,000 checks for missed pay. 

This time, the complaint by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Maryanne Gilliard draws attention to one way Govs. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom raised pay for public employees without giving them substantial general salary increases. It alleges the state illegally shorted the judges by not counting some of the pay-raising perks that went into recent contracts. 

Both governors signed contracts that included general salary increases of up to 4% that benefited all workers represented by a given union, plus more generous targeted raises for specific groups of employees. 

The judges allege the state has been counting only the general salary increases in the formula it uses to set judicial raises — while excluding the more targeted salary adjustments.

“Defendant CalHR has intentionally modified the inputs to the calculation such that active judges and justices are paid less than the salaries to which they are entitled,” reads the complaint, filed in September in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Gilliard’s attorney, Jack DiCanio, declined to answer questions for this story. Camille Travis, spokeswoman for the California Human Resources Department wouldn’t discuss the lawsuit.. 

Gilliard’s lawyers and attorneys for the state appeared before a judge last month. The state’s attorneys said the department “has properly calculated state employee average salary increases” and that state law “does not require the inclusion of ‘all categories of increases’ when calculating state employee average salary increases,’” according to a summary of the hearing.

Gilliard’s lawsuit names the State Controller’s Office and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System as additional defendants. The controller’s office manages the state payroll and would have to make adjustments to judges’ checks if the lawsuit succeeds. Similarly, Gilliard’s lawsuit asks CalPERS to recalculate the pensions it provides to judges. 

The base pay for California judges is the third highest in the nation, according to the National Center for State Courts. But when the cost of living is factored in, California is in the middle of the pack at 25th. 

From furloughs to real raises

Three key dates stand out in Gilliard’s complaint, with each reflecting a milestone in state labor negotiations:

• In 2006, the lawsuit contends, the state included the special pay raises when calculating the judges’ raises. That was the last year that happened. That’s also when state finances began to nosedive in the recession, leading to the prolonged budget crisis that defined former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s second term. Schwarzenegger ordered unpaid furloughs for state workers beginning in 2009. 
• In 2016,  then-Gov. Brown signed a contract with the largest union in the state workforce that made heavy use of so-called special salary adjustments. The deal gave an 11.5% raise over three years to all workers represented by Service Employees International Local 1000, but about a fifth of them received targeted wage increases that brought up their pay an additional 2% to 15%. Gilliard wants the state to recalculate judicial raises back to that year.
• In August 2023, Gilliard began to question the raises judges had been receiving. Newsom that month reached a deal with the enormous Local 1000 that included even more special salary adjustments than the Brown-era agreement. More than 50,000 workers — half of the civil servants represented by the union — received the kind of pay increases that the judges want included in their raise formula. Those incentives are worth about $200 million a year.

Local 1000 is not the only public employee union to make use of special salary adjustments and other kinds of pay-raising mechanisms.

A 2019 contract for the union that represents Caltrans engineers, for instance, added substantial incentives for longevity. The newest contract for the union that represents state scientists doesn’t have a general salary increase at all. Instead, it lifts pay through the targeted raises for specific groups of workers that are at the center of Gilliard’s lawsuit and by changing pay ranges, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

One-time retention perks are now routine

Eight years ago, union leaders characterized special salary adjustments as essential in keeping salaries competitive for certain high-demand workers. The biggest raises in the 2016 Local 1000 contract, for instance, went to highly trained actuaries. 

Now, they are much more common. Last year, the legislative analyst who studies public employee contracts noted the Newsom administration did not explain why certain workers received extra money and others didn’t when it negotiated the most recent Local 1000 contract.

That “reduces transparency and increases complexity of the agreement with only days to review,” wrote analyst Nick Schroeder. “This limits the ability for both the Legislature and the public to understand why some state employee should receive higher pay increases than others.” 

Lea esta historia en Español

Federal immigration authorities are looking for a potential new detention center in Northern California, an effort that alarms advocates and some Democratic state lawmakers as President-elect Donald Trump gears up to unleash his mass deportation plan. 

In August, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a request for information to identify additional detention bed space in the state as other federal agencies intensified border enforcement. The effort began in the wake of the Biden administration’s sweeping asylum ban, implemented in June, for migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border outside designated entry points. Under the ban, border agents can deport such migrants within hours or days without considering their asylum claims.

Advocates say an expansion of detention space would give Trump a runway to carry out more mass deportations in California. Immigrants in counties with more detention space are more likely to be arrested and detained, according to research by advocacy groups. 

Unlike in Texas, where state officials are offering up land to the Trump administration to facilitate mass deportations, California tried to ban new federal immigrant detention centers from opening during the first Trump administration. The court blocked that, ruling that the state was unconstitutionally overstepping on federal immigration enforcement.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CalMatters that the state may be powerless to stop the possibility of a new facility.

ICE’s expansion plans 

Federal documents show ICE issued the request for information on Aug. 14. Such requests can pave the way for federal contracts, in this case to obtain “available detention facilities for single adult populations (male and female)” in Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, and California. Its request says the facilities should each have from 850 to 950 detention beds and “may be publicly or privately owned and publicly or privately operated.”

One of the facilities should be within a two-hour drive of the San Francisco field office, the documents state. The request also seeks facilities near field offices in Phoenix, El Paso, and Seattle.

“ICE has identified a need for immigration detention services within the Western U.S. area of responsibility,” ICE spokesman Richard Beam wrote in an email to CalMatters. “The proposed services are part of ICE’s effort to continually review its detention requirements and explore options that will afford ICE the operational flexibility needed to house the full range of detainees in the agency’s custody.”

Currently, ICE detains roughly 38,000 people every day in about 120 immigration jails across the country. In California, that number is just under 3,000 detainees each day, held in six facilities, according to the most recently available immigration data maintained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

That’s the third-largest population of detained immigrants in the country. 

While ICE, the federal agency responsible for immigration enforcement, owns and operates a very small number of facilities nationwide, it mostly contracts with private prison operators such as CoreCivic, GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp. Their detention facilities house 80% of ICE’s detainees. Stock for CoreCivic and GEO Group soared upon Trump’s win last month. 

In California, private, for-profit prison companies run all six ICE detention facilities – the Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde detention facilities in Kern County; the Adelanto Detention Facility and Desert View Annex, both in San Bernardino County; the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County; and the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Imperial County. 

Across all six, the federal government has the capacity to detain up to 7,188 people statewide. 

State Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, said she was concerned about the potential economic impacts of ICE having an increased capacity for detention and, therefore, deportations. 

“The expansion of detention in California concerns everyone in our state. Expanding detention correlates with increased ICE raids and family separation, all of which has devastating social and economic impacts for California,” she said. “In addition, these facilities are run by private for-profit companies that consistently place their bottom-line profit above the health and safety of those who work in or are detained in these facilities.”

Advocates argue that detention expansions lead to human rights abuses and undermine community safety. 

“An expansion of ICE detention operations within the Bay Area and Northern California is going to be part of a reign of terror on our communities the Trump administration is threatening,” said Bree Bernwanger, a senior staff attorney on the Immigrants’ Rights team at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. “We already know from existing facilities within California that ICE does not and cannot maintain safe and or healthy standards of confinement for people inside.”

The ACLU is suing to learn more about the federal agency’s expanded detention plans. 

Bernwanger was referring to issues like complaints of sexually abusive patdowns. Also, in 2023, ICE allegedly retaliated against hunger strikers by storming into their cells, violently dragging them, threatening them with forced feedings, and then providing food that was not appropriate for breaking a 21-day fast, prompting a medical condition in at least one inmate, according to a claim filed by the inmate, who was represented by two advocacy groups. 

In August, the civil liberties organization released a 34-page report detailing 485 grievances filed by detainees across six immigration detention facilities in California between 2023 and June 2024. Those grievances included allegations of hazardous facilities, inhumane treatment, medical neglect, and retaliation. 

ICE declined to comment on the report. 

California failed to ban for-profit federal detention centers

In December 2019, California passed a law that would have banned private immigration detention centers. It was part of a wave of resistance by California Democrats to the first Trump administration. It also prohibited the state from using for-profit prisons for any inmates starting in 2028. The for-profit facilities “contribute to over-incarceration” and “do not reflect our values,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement when signing the bill. 

Days before the law was set to go into effect, ICE signed new contracts for its facilities in California. The federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned the state’s ban on private prisons. 

Bonta, who wrote the unsuccessful ban as an Oakland assemblymember, told CalMatters in November that the state might not be able to stop ICE from opening another detention facility outside of San Francisco. 

“It’s a matter of federal jurisdiction,” Bonta said. “It’s federal. I disagree, but my office’s disagreement was considered, and the court determined that it was a federal issue.” 

Lea esta historia en Español

California prisons are no longer withholding money they are supposed to give people at the time of their release, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation memo obtained by CalMatters. 

The policy change is meant to ensure that thousands of people leaving California prisons will receive their full $200 “gate money” allowance that they are entitled to under a 51-year-old state law. The stipend is intended to help people cover basic necessities in their initial days of freedom.

The new directive follows the filing of a class-action lawsuit and a recent legislative order mandating the department to stop withholding cash from formerly incarcerated people. 

The corrections department didn’t hide the fact that it deducted money from release allowances. According to its regulations, the agency did so if someone did not have dress-out clothes or arrangements for transportation. 

“We’re frustrated and disappointed that it took a lawsuit being filed to change an unlawful Department of Corrections’ policy, which should have been in compliance with the law from the very beginning,” said Chesa Boudin, one of the lead attorneys of the class-action lawsuit. 

The class-action lawsuit filed in September by UC Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center and the law firm Edelson PC alleged that the agency illegally docked fees from over a million people since 1994. According to the lawsuit, the department “routinely withholds some or all of the funds based on eligibility criteria of its own making, criteria that violate the plain language of the law.”

At the urging of criminal justice advocacy groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a government funding bill on Sept. 30 that gave the department an additional $1.8 million for clothing and transportation costs for the next year.

According to corrections spokesperson Mary Xjimenez, the department changed its policy to comply with the new budget appropriation.

“Effective immediately,” stated a memo to top prison officials on the day Newsom signed the bill, “cost for clothing and transportation vouchers provided at the time of release will no longer be deducted from the release allowance.”

Xjimenez wrote in an email to CalMatters that it is “a lasting policy that will be funded by future budget appropriations.” The department is in the process of revising its regulations to reflect the change.

“CDCR understands how critical the first few days of a person’s release are for a successful reentry,” she wrote. 

According to a 2008 report by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, the first 72 hours after someone is released from prison are paramount to the success of their long-term reentry. The lawsuit describes the release funds as a “critical lifeline” and “small but vital aid.”

Boudin said the change in policy is an achievement for the class-action lawsuit, which aims to ensure that the corrections department ends its withholding of allowances and follows state law. But it falls short of addressing the other component of the lawsuit, which seeks retroactive payments for those who had gate money funds deducted — or were denied entirely. 

That includes people like John Vaesau, one of the lawsuit’s lead plaintiffs, who didn’t receive any of his gate money when he was released from Folsom State Prison in June 2023.

“Right now, (the corrections department is) just trying to throw bits and pieces at it, thinking they can fix a crumbling house,” Vaesau said. “We don’t want them to think they got away with anything. We want them to at least pay for what they got coming, not only for us but for everybody who came before us and after us.”

In an attempt to limit the size of the class-action lawsuit, attorneys representing the corrections department pushed back in Alameda County Superior Court filings, stating that “(the agency) has an affirmative defense under the statute of limitations.” Claims that the agency “failed to pay the appropriate amount of gate money” prior to July 14, 2021, they argued, “is untimely.” 

But those who filed the lawsuit remain optimistic that the court will side with them. 

“We are absolutely confident that our core legal claims about the illegality of the Department of Corrections’ long-standing policy will prevail,” Boudin said. 

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

Lea esta historia en Español

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed 31 felony charges of wage theft and tax evasion against a construction company that he said cost the state and the company’s workers $2.6 million, he announced today.

Bonta filed the criminal complaint on Aug. 26 alleging that US Framing West dodged more than $2.5 million in state payroll taxes and underpaid workers on a public housing project in Cathedral City, in Riverside County. The company, which builds wood framing for such projects as hotels, apartments and housing developments, shorted workers at least $40,000 when it failed to pay the prevailing wage, Bonta said.

“For some reason US Framing West seems to think it can operate outside the prevailing wage laws of California,” Bonta said in a press conference in Los Angeles today. “I’m here with a simple message: They cannot. No company can.”

Cal Matters contacted officials with US Framing West named on its website but did not receive a response.

Bonta charged the company and two of its officials, Thomas Gregory English and Amelia Frazier Krebs, with wage and tax violations in Riverside, San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties.

Political observers expect Bonta to announce a run for governor, so publicizing a high-profile labor case may help him build support from unions. Most wage theft cases brought by the state are handled administratively or in civil court. 

Between 2018 and 2022, US Framing West hired unlicensed subcontractors and underreported its payroll to the state Employment Development Department, Bonta said. He accused the company of grand theft, payroll tax evasion, prevailing wage theft, and filing false documents with the state.

US Framing West also skipped personal income tax withholding and premiums for state unemployment and disability insurance, Bonta said, and it filed false payroll records for workers on Veterans Village, the Cathedral City project. The facility opened in 2022, offering 60 housing units and services for veterans. 

The complaint says the company stole wages from 19 workers in Riverside County in 2021 and 2022. Under California’s penal code, employers can face grand theft charges for stealing more than $950 in wages or tips from one employee or a total of $2,350 from two or more employees within a year. 

The Northern California Carpenters Regional Council tipped off the state Department of Justice to potential wage theft violations at an Oakland construction project in 2019, Bonta said. The department subsequently looked into US Framing West’s other projects across the state. 

The office filed charges in August, and the two named defendants surrendered and were arraigned this month.

Subsidizing crime

California’s prevailing wage requirements apply to most projects built with public funding, said  Matthew Miller, senior field representative for labor compliance for Nor Cal Carpenters Union. He said US Framing West was working on at least four housing projects financed with tax credits.

“California taxpayers are subsidizing criminal activity in the affordable housing industry,” Miller said.

He added that developers should avoid doing business with companies that skirt employment and tax laws. 

Wage theft can take various forms — employers don’t pay employees for all hours worked, don’t pay the minimum wage, skip overtime pay or don’t allow legally required breaks. In California, workers lose about $2 billion a year to wage theft, Bonta’s office said, and workers in low-wage industries are the most affected. In 2020 and 2021, workers filed claims for more than $300 million in stolen wages each year.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, called wage theft “the number one crime” in the burglary and theft category and said businesses should not be able to pay their way out of wage theft violations. 

This story was made possible in part by a grant from the CIELO Fund of the Inland Empire Community Foundation.

California’s two best known “progressive” prosecutors were doing what they promised the voters who elected them. 

Pamela Price, elected as Alameda County District Attorney in 2022, implemented a policy to guard against racial biases in sentencing enhancements and exposed the exclusion of Black and Jewish people from death penalty juries. A court-order to review those biases is currently underway. 

George Gascón, a former San Francisco police chief first elected as Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, established policies that prohibited his prosecutors from pursuing exorbitant sentencing enhancements, transferring juvenile cases into adult courts, and advocating against offender reentry at parole board hearings. 

But their movement suffered a serious setback in this month’s election when Price failed to defeat a recall, and Gascón lost his bid for reelection in a landslide to Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor who ran for attorney general as a Republican two years ago. Those defeats followed on the heels of San Francisco’s former progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who was recalled in 2022.

The ousting of the two district attorneys  punctuates a change in statewide views on law enforcement and public safety approaches. California voters this election overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure that stiffened penalties for some drug and theft crimes. 

“You can’t just burn the system down,” said Anne Marie Schubert, former Sacramento County District Attorney, who battled former Gov. Jerry Brown over his criminal justice policies. “They get elected and then all of a sudden, they implement policies that are so far removed from being a real prosecutor who is seeking balance and accountability.”

It’s a sobering moment for criminal justice advocates who backed progressive prosecutors around the nation over the past decade.

“All successful movements experience setbacks, and the movement to course correct the criminal justice system is no different,” said Anne Irwin, founder and director of the criminal justice advocacy group Smart Justice California. “We will regroup and continue to fight for the values that animate our work.” 

Roots of the progressive prosecutor movement 

Nearly a decade ago, criminal justice advocates looked to who they saw as the most important decision makers in the state’s criminal justice ecosystem – prosecutors. 

In an attempt to counteract the over-incarceration of Black and brown people that resulted from decades of tough-on-crime prosecution, leaders of the movement encouraged prosecutors to use tools that weren’t entirely dependent on incarceration as a way to address harm in a community. 

According to Cynthia Chandler, policy director for Price, that has meant addressing the root causes of violence and giving prosecutors flexibility in how they respond to crime, such as sending more people to diversion programs as an alternative to incarceration. 

“Ultimately, what’s behind the vision of a progressive prosecutor is a prosecutor who is committed to the ethical mandate placed on prosecutors to search for truth and justice,” Chandler said. “And the search for truth is not furthered by seeking out a pound of flesh.”

The movement picked up in 2016 with funding from Democratic mega-donor George Soros. For the most part, progressive prosecutors have  been on the rise since then, with candidates finding success in places such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Brooklyn. 

This election, two progressive prosecutors won their races in Orlando, Florida and Austin, Texas. But UC Berkeley political science professor Eric Schickler says progressive defeats in California suggest the need for recalibration. 

“Social movements often come onto the scene with a very big, bold kind of vision,” Schickler said. “And to the extent that they’re successful and then get involved in actual governance, there tend to be forces that push back. It’s hard to change everything all at once. There’s built-in resistance both bureaucratically and also in public opinion.”

In California, these district attorneys faced an additional hurdle because the state allows voters to recall prosecutors before their term is up. Price lost her office just two years into a six-year term. 

“Some of these prosecutors have been put in really tricky positions, and particularly with the ones who faced a recall, (they) were barely able to implement anything in office before wealthy interests had mobilized to gather enough signatures to try to drive them out,” said Becca Goldstein, assistant professor of Law at UC Berkeley.

Dan Schnur, a political analyst and professor at the University of Southern California attributes the defeat of Price and Gascón to ideological and management factors. When voters expressed growing concern over what they viewed as a lenient response to public safety and criminal justice, Schnur said the DAs failed to recognize them.  

“The best politicians are those who are able to adjust to and address those changes in public opinion,” Schnur said. “Those who aren’t able to adjust become former elected officials.” 

What’s next in L.A., Alameda County?

In the wake of their defeats, criminal justice reform advocates are taking a closer look at their strategy.

Boudin, now executive director of UC Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, said criminal justice reform advocates have to do a better job of messaging the vision for their policies. 

“You can’t expect elected prosecutors to do the work of solving homelessness and substance use. They don’t have the tools (or) the mandate…so how can we, as a movement, make sure that we’re not just electing progressive prosecutors, but we’re electing mayors and boards of supervisors and city councils who are willing to do the policy work of solving these problems?” he said. “Because if we keep dumping them on the criminal justice system, it’s not going to work.”

District attorneys, he said, cannot and should not be expected to solve all of the world’s problems.

“To think that it is the DA’s job to clean up Skid Row, it’s absurd,” said Garrett Miller, president of the Los Angeles Public Defenders’ union. “That is a societal failure…it’s not just the DA, nor is it really his responsibility — even though he may claim it is.”

It’s unclear who will succeed Price. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will appoint an interim replacement to lead the office until 2026. In Los Angeles County, the choice is definitive, with Hochman expected to make sweeping changes as soon as he replaces Gascon on Dec. 2.

“We’re definitely afraid for our clients,” Miller said. “It’s a drastic change. Many more will do significantly more time. That’s the reality of it.”

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles, said “everyone’s really excited” to see Hochman take over.

“We’re immediately going to see the highly trained professionals of this office use their experience and knowledge to make decisions about the best outcomes for cases based upon the facts — rather than on blanket policies,” she said. “Which is the best thing for the defendants, for the victims, and for public safety.”

Alameda County Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods said district attorneys in the mold of Gascón and Price “moved prosecution in the right direction, but it really is the direction it should have been moving in all along.”

“I think there’s a space for prosecutors to do the right thing, independent of your label,” he continued.

What do voters want?

In Alameda County, Price was recalled with roughly 65% of votes. Nathan Hochman defeated Gascón with roughly 60% of votes. 

“To be truthful, I would like to believe it’s the end of (the progressive prosecutor movement),” Schubert said. “Any mainstream career prosecutor is going to tell you, yes – we support reforms. But at the end of it all, it cannot be extreme. It must be driven by the facts in the law. Every case is unique.” 

Those concerns were echoed by Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley, who backed Prop. 36.

“There seems to be this sort of sentiment that everyone, if they just took a class, would get better and engage in no more criminal activities. That kind of naivete is harmful,” Haley said. “That can be true for many of the people we see through the criminal justice system. But we’ve done too good of a job of sanitizing what we do, because I believe that there exists cruelty.”

Groups that supported Gascón and Price say their defeats don’t necessarily signal a far departure from voters’ investment in criminal justice reform. Proponents of Prop. 36, for example, talked about steering more people convicted of drug crimes to treatment. 

Hochman changed his political affiliation from a lifelong Republican to an independent before his run for district attorney. During his candidacy, he cited the need for more rehabilitation opportunities for incarcerated people and more community service programs for first-time, non-violent offenders.  

That tells some who supported progressive prosecutors that voters have not walked away from those values, but they’ve expressed frustration that things aren’t changing quickly enough, said Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of a nationwide organization that supports reform-oriented approaches to public safety. 

“I think there is a need and an eagerness from voters and residents in California to see a justice system that actually works – that’s not just a revolving door or a dungeon – and that we can find ways to problem solve, that we can find ways to rehabilitate people, that we can find better ways to help victims heal,” said Soto DeBerry.

Irwin said California prosecutors who are “repudiating” their tough-on-crime identity signals a shift. 

“That’s really the story of the progressive prosecution’s evolution in California – that now, it’s become mainstream for candidates in prosecutor races up and down the state to actually embrace reform,” Irwin said. “They know that the approach they have taken for the last 30 years is no longer palpable for Californians. I really hope that they genuinely do the work of reform-minded prosecution rather than just paying it lip service at election time.”

This story was updated to correct the spelling of Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods’ name.

CalMatters reporter Joe Garcia contributed to this report.

Cayla Mihalovich and Joe Garcia are California Local News fellows.