Bill Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, California, is ripping the state and Attorney General Rob Bonta for state rules that protect human sex traffickers and block local action to help their victims.
Last week, Wells, a Republican, sent a letter to AG Bonta about the 2018 sanctuary city law SB 54 and asked Bonta if his city police officers could conduct mere welfare checks on unaccompanied children using information provided by federal authorities.
“The answer should have been yes,” Bonta wrote in an op ed at Fox News. ” Instead, the attorney general’s office warned that even confirming a child’s location to federal officials could violate SB 54 — the state law that limits local cooperation with immigration enforcement. In other words, checking on a kid who might be in danger could put our officers on the wrong side of California law.
Wells called the refusal to help a child being sex trafficked the “icing on the cake.”
Wells is now demanding that Bonta and the state make changes to the law and says that smaller communities like El Cajon are “stuck in the middle” between State Democrats warring with the federal government, and victimized children are stuck in the middle. Wells wrote:
It’s not a new question. We sent the attorney general’s office a letter in December 2024 asking about the boundaries of SB 54. The response cited court opinions but did not answer our core concern that conflict between state and federal law leaves cities like our stuck in the middle. Subsequently, in February 2025, our City Council passed a resolution that declared our intent to comply with federal immigration law to the legal extent permissible.
With U.S. officials warning that obstruction of federal immigration laws could land local officials in federal court, Wells says that “Our officers didn’t sign up to be referees (or punching bags) in a fight between Sacramento and Washington.”
He worries that the state law contradicts itself and puts his officers in danger.
“When lawmakers passed SB 54 and related bills, they stated that the goal was to ensure residents could live and work ‘without fear of deportation,’” he wrote. “And state officials repeatedly cite the economic contributions of undocumented workers as a reason to shield them from enforcement. But when a state openly pursues a strategy of helping people remain in the country unlawfully, it raises a serious question under federal law.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston
Read the full article here