California Sanctuary Policies Blocked Nearly 9,000 Federal ICE Detainer Requests, Report Finds

Major California cities significantly hampered federal efforts to detain immigrant offenders, blocking nearly 9,000 requests to hold individuals upon their release from local jails, according to a House Judiciary Committee report. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego are cited in the report for their low compliance rates with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer requests between January 2020 and June 2026.

In Los Angeles alone, officials cooperated with only 4 out of 4,177 federal requests, a compliance rate of less than 0.1%. The report highlights that many of the individuals whose detainers were ignored had records including offenses such as homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, weapons violations, burglary, and child abuse. This practice, according to the report's authors, prioritizes ideology over public safety by shielding individuals with criminal histories from federal custody and deportation.

The findings suggest a deliberate strategy by state and local officials to obstruct federal immigration policy. The report argues that if these cities complied with ICE detainers, federal agents would not need to conduct neighborhood sweeps to apprehend the same offenders, potentially reducing confrontations and the risk of collateral detentions of otherwise law-abiding immigrants.

The author of the report asserts that California's sanctuary policies are “smug, arrogant—and petulant,” and further, “dangerous.” The critique posits that these policies are responsible for the very ICE raids that local officials and advocates often protest. By not allowing federal agents to take custody of offenders at jail sites, the report contends, these cities inadvertently create the conditions that necessitate more extensive federal enforcement actions later.

The report criticizes Governor Gavin Newsom and leaders in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego for continuing these sanctuary policies, which it characterizes as shielding and freeing criminal offenders, thus potentially enabling further victimization. This approach is described as "disgusting sanctuary madness" by Anatoly Varfolomeev, a father whose daughter was allegedly killed by an immigrant offender.