The Indio City Council Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution to clarify the city’s policies regarding local cooperation with federal immigration agencies and reaffirm its commitment to public safety and community trust.
“This was a council-initiated item at the last meeting,” City Attorney Steven Graham Pacifico said at the February 18 meeting. “It reaffirms the city’s commitments to comply with state law and to pursue local priorities with local funding.”
The adopted resolution reaffirms the city’s commitment to comply with the California Values Act, which prohibits city departments from using local funds, facilities, property, equipment and personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect or arrest people for civil immigration enforcement purposes.
The city also reiterated in the resolution that its employees, acting in their official capacity, were prohibited from looking into a person’s immigration status unless it was required by state or federal law to determine eligibility for a specific public benefit or service or was necessary for the investigation of a criminal offense.
The resolution, however, does not prohibit city law enforcement personnel from cooperating with federal authorities involving serious or violent felonies, criminal investigations, task forces or threats to public safety.
Police Chief Brian Tully told the council that his department was solely concerned with ensuring the city was safe for everyone, calling the impacts of federal immigration enforcement activities “complex and concerning.”
“I want to reassure, not only you, but our community that we definitely do not and cannot be involved in the immigration enforcement process,” he said. “When you call 911, we will respond, we will assess the situation, we will address any crime, we will address the needs of our victims, and we will arrest suspects. It doesn’t matter whether they are documented, undocumented.”
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Tully said his department cares about the community and would be there for all members of the community, regardless of their immigration status.
“I think that’s important to reinforce,” Mayor Elaine Holmes, who worked on the language of the resolution with Councilmember Oscar Ortiz, said. “I think we can’t say that enough.”
The resolution also affirmed the council’s commitment to ensuring the city remained a place for all residents to safely access municipal services, something Ortiz felt was important to make clear.
“They can always come to our police, to our code code enforcement, to our staff, to our city hall, and they don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “They’ll get the right services, just like everybody else, they’ll get treated with respect, with dignity, and we’re going to be here for them.”
Ortiz also pointed out the city’s commitment to transparency included in the resolution that the city would provide any city-owned record — including body-worn camera footage, security or surveillance footage from city facilities and written reports — documenting federal civil immigration enforcement activities happening within the city upon request under the California Public Records Act (CPRA).
“Making that publicly accessible in cases where there may be questionable enforcement possibly unlawful or unconstitutional immigration enforcement throughout the city, and folks being able to access that camera footage, and being able to use that for any court cases or anything like that, I think that’s going to be extremely valuable as well,” he said.
The resolution also stated that the city would prioritize the “prompt processing and release of such records,” though it noted that records could be withheld or redacted if disclosure would “directly endanger the safety or an individual,” or compromise an active criminal investigation.
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