Editor’s note: This column was coauthored by Charles “Cully” Stimson.

Sanctuary cities’ runaround of the law may have finally come to an end, thanks to a creative program called Operation Guardian Angel.

Launched by Bill Essayli, the new U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, this commonsense approach to force scofflaw sanctuary cities to cooperate with — and stop obstructing — federal immigration authorities should be copied by U.S. attorneys around the nation to help rid the country of criminal illegal aliens being detained by local authorities.  

It’s a no-brainer. 

Sanctuary Cities 101

California has been a sanctuary state since 2018, when former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law turning it into a sanctuary for criminal illegal aliens. But California’s move to create a safe haven for criminals started even earlier, at the local level.    

In 1979, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates implemented “Special Order 40,” which prohibited his police officers both from making contact with anyone for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status and from making arrests for violations of U.S. immigration law.

In 1985, San Francisco’s then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein signed legislation designating the city as a sanctuary for aliens whose asylum claims had been rejected by the federal government.

In 1989, San Francisco voters passed an ordinance extending that protection to all illegal aliens, prohibiting the city’s police force from aiding federal immigration officers.

In 2013, San Franciscans passed the “Due Process for All” ordinance, which limited when local law enforcement officers could give Immigration and Customs Enforcement advance notice of an illegal alien’s release from a local jail and prohibited cooperation with ICE detainer warrants or requests.

In 2016, San Franciscans amended the law again to impose even further restrictions on city employees that, in essence, ban any and all inquiries into the immigration status of any resident and prohibit any cooperation with federal officers. 

Sanctuary City Crime Hell Holes

Is it any surprise that California as a whole and particularly its cities have become a magnet for illegal aliens? It shouldn’t be. 

And is it any surprise when some of those illegal aliens commit additional crimes, including rape and murder? Sadly, no. 

But lawmakers and elected politicians there think it’s better to endanger the safety of their constituents by releasing these criminals back into local communities rather than turning them over to the feds so they can be deported and returned to their native countries.

This has consequences.

Take Kate Steinle. She was murdered on Pier 14 in San Francisco by José Inez García Zárate, a career criminal with seven felony convictions and who had been deported five times.  He had recently been released from local custody back out on the streets after San Francisco dropped drug charges that were pending against him and refused to cooperate with the immigration detainer ICE had filed against him.

California’s brand of egregious sanctuary legislation explains how it’s possible for 250,000 illegal aliens to have a combined total of nearly 1.7 million arrests for three million offenses committed on U.S. soil, as one 2011 study showed. Of course, those numbers have likely expanded exponentially after four years of Biden’s open border policies with virtually no vetting.

Just this week, the Department of Homeland Security published a list of sanctuary jurisdictions across the country, including entire states, counties, and cities. That list includes a total of over 560 sanctuaries that release thousands of deportable criminal aliens every year.

Between 2021 and 2024 alone, 22,000 illegal aliens were released from sanctuary city jails without notification to ICE.  

One of these released illegal aliens was Jose Antonio Ibarra, the Venezuelan man who brutally murdered Laken Riley in February 2024. The 22-year-old nursing student was jogging on the University of Georgia campus when she was attacked by Ibarra.

DNA evidence showed Riley fought back against Ibarra, who was trying to rape her. After a struggle, Ibarra bashed her head in with a rock multiple times.

Her cause of death was blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. But it was New York’s sanctuary policy that allowed it to happen. 

Shortly before Laken’s murder, Ibarra had been released from New York custody after being arrested on local charges, but ICE was not informed.

Tragically, Laken and Kate’s stories are not unique. Every day, thousands of Americans are victimized by violent illegal aliens, who are escorted right past ICE and into our communities by the district attorneys of sanctuary cities.  

Flouting Federal Law

Local and state laws that claim sanctuary status directly violate federal law — specifically, 8 U.S.C. §1373, which bans local governments from preventing law enforcement from sharing information about the “citizen or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

Laken Riley would be alive today had New York’s rogue prosecutor Alvin Bragg waited until the DHS issued a detainer for Ibarra and then cooperated with DHS the way the law requires.

Kate Steinle’s life would have been spared if San Francisco hadn’t enacted a policy banning local police officers from notifying DHS when they arrest an illegal alien.

A New Way Forward

Fortunately, one U.S. attorney is finally fed up with his fellow Californians being slaughtered, assaulted, raped, and otherwise victimized by criminal illegals benefiting from the Golden State’s irresponsible policies.

Operation Guardian Angel closes the loophole in sanctuary cities’ blatantly lawless schemes that allow them to simply ignore administrative ICE detainer warrants.   

How? Two words: judicial warrants.

U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pulled together an all-star federal task force comprising agents from five federal law enforcement agencies — including ICE and the FBI — all working out of an office in Los Angeles. When an illegal alien with a prior deportation is inevitably arrested, upon identification and booking into the local jail, the task force seeks a federal criminal warrant — signed by a federal judge — for felony reentry under 8 USC §1326.

By using available criminal databases to find illegal aliens who were arrested and jailed the day before, the team quickly learns of each new offender. Then, a federal warrant is served on local officials, who obviously won’t buck a federal judge’s warrant. That warrant requires local officials to hand over the illegal criminal alien to ICE.  

As Essayli said in one interview, “They have no choice; they will comply.” 

And it’s already working. Operation Guardian Angel started May 10, and by the 15th, ICE agents had made 13 arrests. Once fully underway, the task force expects to make 40-50 arrests weekly, even despite the obstructionist sanctuary policies of the city and the state.

There is no reason why every one of the 93 U.S. Attorney’s offices shouldn’t be copying Essayli’s playbook. His simple, effective strategy returns to immigration law enforcement the power that his sanctuary state wrongfully stole.

Operation Guardian Angel is a step in the right direction of recovering the Central District of California from the open border crisis, removing criminal illegal aliens, and restoring sanity in a state that has lost its way.

Republished from The Daily Signal.