San Francisco’s top prosecutor, police chief and public defender gathered on Jan. 28 on the steps outside City Hall’s main entrance in a rare display of unity as they committed to uphold sanctuary laws that protect undocumented immigrants from the Trump administration’s threatened mass deportation. But the agencies diverge on whom to shield from federal action.
San Francisco’s Sanctuary City Ordinance prohibits local agencies from assisting or colluding with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct civil immigration investigations, detentions or arrests.
At the City Hall event, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said being raised without her father, who remained in El Salvador, allowed her to understand how it feels to be separated from a parent due to citizenship status. She assured undocumented immigrants that it was safe to come forward to report crimes.
“My office is doing nothing in coordination with any federal immigration enforcement whatsoever,” Jenkins said.
But the San Francisco Public Defender’s Assistant Chief Attorney Angela Chan, who helped draft state and local sanctuary laws, said the district attorney and police are evading local policies by referring drug cases to federal prosecutors, who are under increasing pressure to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
Chan said several defendants have appeared in court only to have local drug-related charges dismissed by state prosecutors and refiled in federal court, where they are more likely to be ordered deported.
“The district attorney’s ongoing collusion with the federal government to funnel people into immigration detention and deportation is unconscionable,” Chan said, “especially at a time when the Trump administration has ramped up immigration arrests, threatened mass deportations and issued numerous executive orders targeting immigrants.”
Among the federal government’s latest efforts is the Laken Riley Act — named for a nursing student murdered by a man who entered the country illegally — which President Trump signed into law Jan. 29. It directs federal authorities to indefinitely detain and deport undocumented immigrants who are merely accused — not convicted — of low-level crimes such as shoplifting, theft, larceny or burglary.
The new law dovetails with recent San Francisco practices that prioritize working with federal authorities. To address drug sales on San Francisco streets, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California in November 2023 announced the All Hands on Deck initiative, building on a coordinated effort involving local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to crack down on drug sales, distribution and use in the Tenderloin. All Hands on Deck involves fast-tracking federal cases to take as little as a month to resolve.
Plea deals promote quick exits
Chan said that during the fast-tracking process, “coercive” plea deals give defendants a choice between lengthy federal prison sentences and deportation, followed by a swift transfer to ICE detention and removal, depriving people of their right to a jury trial.
The District Attorney’s Office denied using such plea deals, in a statement emailed to the Public Press.
“Pleas and sentences in federal and state court do not include deportation or non-deportation as a term of any sentence,” the DA’s statement asserted. “What happens after sentencing is outside of the purview of the court and the prosecutors.”
However, several federal judges have criticized prosecutors for offering plea deals like those Chan described. In June 2024, U.S. District Judge James Donato admonished prosecutors for what he viewed as an overly lenient offer that gave a defendant short-term incarceration followed by deportation.
“The idea that your only sentence is a couple of months in jail and a ticket home certainly does not protect the public,” Donato said.
Sylvie Sturm / San Francisco Public Press
Members of the San Francisco Firefighters Union, Latino Task Force, United Educators of San Francisco and the Service Employees International Union joined city and law enforcement officials at City Hall to affirm their approval of laws that support protecting undocumented immigrants from mass deportation.In December 2023, U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejected two similar plea deals in a harshly worded order that described federal prosecutors’ offers as “valuable recruitment tools” for drug cartels.
“Migrants deserve our sympathy in other contexts, but when they sell fentanyl, they deserve to go to prison like everyone else,” Alsup wrote.
A federal public defender moved unsuccessfully to have Alsup disqualified from a case for refusing to impose the shorter prison sentences that are part of the fast-track process.
The DA’s Office in its statement asserted that prosecutors consider a defendant’s immigration status only when the defense invokes a section of the state penal code requiring them to avoid “adverse immigration consequences in the plea negotiation.”
“The Public Defender is lying and misleading the public by intentionally conflating ICE with normal federal investigations in the prosecution of drug dealing cases,” said a DA’s Office statement sent to the Public Press. “We have made it very clear that we work with the federal government in the prosecution of drug dealers, who are destroying lives and communities.”
Some immigrants subjected to human trafficking
Public defenders say the fast-track process does not give those accused of crimes enough time to prepare an adequate defense. California law allows people to defend themselves by presenting evidence to show they were acting under duress, and public defenders said several of the accused had proof that they were driven to sell drugs through threats to themselves and their families.
Labor trafficking has been argued as a defense in seven San Francisco drug sale trials from 2022 to 2024, resulting in two guilty verdicts, four hung juries and the acquittal of a 27-year-old Honduran who couldn’t read or write in either Spanish or English.
The acquitted man was living in poverty with his family 10 years earlier when he was approached by someone promising well-paying construction jobs in the United States. Once he was in this country, the cartel moved him to different cities while threatening to harm his family over $10,000 it said he owed for escorting him over the border. He took other jobs but was threatened for paying down his debt too slowly. He was arrested in San Francisco several times but didn’t report his circumstances to police because he didn’t trust them — his public defender said the man knew Honduran police to collude with the drug cartels.
A multicity research study conducted from 2014 to 2016 found that 81% of homeless 17- to 24-year-old victims of labor trafficking were forced into drug dealing through coercion and violence. And according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, half of people trafficked to the United States for labor between 2015 and 2018 were from Latin America.
Jenkins has rejected the labor trafficking defense in local drug sale cases, saying these defendants have more autonomy than victims of sex or other labor trafficking since they are allowed to travel freely while having access to phones and cars.
The police department did not respond to a request for comment. At the City Hall event, Chief Bill Scott said his department was committed to upholding sanctuary laws “except when required by federal or state law.”
“This police department remains steadfast in its commitment to being a sanctuary city,” Scott said. “That is who we are, and that is who we will always be.”
