Department of Homeland Security removes list of sanctuary cities that included Huntington Beach

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

Huntington Beach was listed on a since-removed Department of Homeland Security list of sanctuary cities that were 'defying federal immigration law' late last week, something Mayor Pat Burns called either a misprint or a serious mistake.
The list was published on May 29, but removed from the DHS website on Sunday. It included California as a whole and listed a majority of the state's 58 counties, though Orange County was not included. There was also a list of cities deemed sanctuary cities, and Huntington Beach was the only city in O.C. to be named.
DHS officials said in a news release that the list included cities, counties and states that are deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws and endangering American citizens. President Trump signed an executive order on April 28 that directed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to identify and publicly highlight jurisdictions that won't cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
But Huntington Beach leaders say that description is flat-out wrong, given the city's policy.
In January, Huntington Beach declared itself a nonsanctuary city that was friendly to President Trump's immigration policies. Around the same time, the city filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California, arguing that the sanctuary state law that limits local police from working with federal immigration officials violated the Supremacy and Naturalization clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
In a news release issued by the city on Friday night, Burns said that city Resolution No. 2025-01, which applied to immigrants in the country illegally, remained intact and unchanged. He said he had already reached out to his federal contacts to have Huntington Beach taken off the list.
'We adopted a formal policy on this,' Burns said. 'It went before the council, and we unanimously agreed that Huntington Beach is not a sanctuary city. We took deliberate action to make our nonsanctuary stance clear.'
Burns added that he had heard that other jurisdictions on the list, including Shasta County in California, had also either declared themselves nonsanctuary jurisdictions or followed nonsanctuary policies.
The DHS sanctuary list itself was scrutinized over the weekend by both city political leaders and law enforcement. National Sheriffs' Assn. President Sheriff Kieran Donahue called the list 'arbitrary' and created without any input, criteria of compliance or method of objecting to the designation.
Noem said on the Fox News show 'Sunday Morning Futures' that she had heard anger from officials about the list, but defended it.
'Some of the cities have pushed back,' Noem said. 'They think because they don't have one law or another on the books that they don't qualify, but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals.'
Notably, Santa Ana, the only county city that has actually declared itself a sanctuary city, was not on the May 29 DHS list.