Quick Take
The Santa Cruz City Council voted this week to reaffirm its sanctuary city policy, a largely symbolic show of support to the local immigrant community, as reports swirl of U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents conducting deportation operations within city borders.
Two weeks after U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents deported at least one longtime Santa Cruz resident back to Mexico — the man lived down the street from Mayor Fred Keeley — local lawmakers unanimously voted Tuesday to recommit to Santa Cruz’s long-held status as a sanctuary city.
Santa Cruz first became a sanctuary city in the mid-1980s, amid the mass migration of Salvadoran refugees fleeing civil war. Since then, when Oval Office promises of deportations have grown — President George W. Bush in 2007 and Donald Trump in 2017 and now 2025 — the city’s elected leaders have voted to reaffirm their commitment to the sanctuary ordinance.
Similar to policies passed in Watsonville and by the county’s board of supervisors, Santa Cruz’s sanctuary directive deprioritizes assisting federal immigration enforcement with local resources or personnel. However, as Keeley outlined ahead of the vote Tuesday, the city would not work to obstruct ICE’s operations; if a court orders the Santa Cruz Police Department to share information or assist ICE, it will do so.
“The federal government does not have the legal right to federalize our local police,” Keeley said. “Santa Cruz sets its priorities and the federal government sets its priorities. … Where they don’t align, our priorities in the city are going to guide our policies. This is an area where we do not align our policies with the federal government.”
There has been some concern about sanctuary cities placing a target on their backs under the new Trump administration, as the president signed a Day 1 executive order that threatened to withhold federal resources from, and pursue civil and criminal penalties against, any local officials who obstructed ICE’s deportation directive. In January, the Santa Cruz City Council discussed the legal ramifications of reaffirming its sanctuary city policy, but held the conversation behind closed doors, away from public view.
Despite the city’s history of loudly pushing back against federal policies it disagreed with, some wondered whether Trump’s threats of withholding federal resources posed too great a risk, especially with the city staring down an $18 million repair of its wharf, which snapped during a December storm.
“In the previous Trump term, cities and counties were happy to have that fight over and over again,” one former elected official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told Lookout in January. “In this Trump term, I think it’s responsible to be more careful.”
Notably, the city council’s agenda made no mention of “sanctuary city.” Instead, the city framed the vote as “reaffirming Santa Cruz’s commitment to abide by the California Values Act.” That state law, passed during Trump’s first term in 2017, prohibits cities and counties from using their resources or local law enforcement to assist ICE in deportation operations, except where legally mandated.
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