THE CITY OF SANTA ROSA this week became the latest jurisdiction in California to strengthen protections for residents without certain immigration documentation by prohibiting most city property from being used for immigration enforcement.
Members of the City Council voted unanimously at their regular meeting Tuesday to restrict city property that is not open to the public from being used by immigration authorities or any other entity whose purposes do not comply with the city’s stated mission of providing quality, accessible services for its residents.
Councilmembers have been grappling for months with how to respond to a surge in federal civil immigration enforcement that renewed when the second administration of President Donald Trump began in 2025 and was accelerated after a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last year gave federal immigration authorities permission to do enforcement operations based on factors like language and appearance.
Santa Rosa’s ordinance was modeled after one passed by San Francisco that is meant to restrict the city’s police and other employees from assisting in immigration enforcement.
Roughly two dozen residents stayed to speak at the public comment period late in the evening to express varying levels of support for the ordinance as written, with some saying it was long overdue, and others saying the ordinance did not go far enough in its protections.
No commenters opposed the policy, which seeks to build on preexisting state laws and county policies that were previously enacted, including a resolution passed in 2017 emphasizing the county’s commitment to its immigrant community and another in 2018 opposing the first Trump administration’s child separation policy.
The council also passed a resolution in January urging Congress to conduct more oversight of immigration authorities.
The new ordinance has four main components. It prohibits city property that is not open to the public from being used for immigration enforcement or any other purpose not aligned with the city’s mission. Those are spaces like offices, classrooms, waiting rooms, or any other areas that are not generally accessible without a city worker’s permission.
That would include barring entities from taking over public spaces such as parks or parking lots for staging operations.
The law would prevent city employees from facilitating access, sharing data or collaborating with immigration authorities and would empower the city attorney to issue injunctions against any city employee who did.
The ordinance also reiterates support for Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, passed in 2017, which restricts most law enforcement participation in immigration enforcement, including data sharing.
Santa Rosa Police Chief John Cregan told councilmembers he supported the ordinance as it was written. He said he did not want to ask his officers to face potential federal prosecution or provoke violence for intervening in enforcement and noted such a concern was unprecedented in his career.
He reiterated that because of state law, Santa Rosa police do not ask about immigration status in the course of their duty and do not share data with immigration authorities except for cases involving convictions for certain felonies.
Mayor Mark Stapp later said he agreed, citing the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota as examples of why it would not be safe to ask police to intervene when enforcement is happening.
But Councilmember Dianna MacDonald asked what authority Santa Rosa police officers would have if they witnessed a crime being committed by immigration agents, citing the recent reported use of a child in Minnesota to lure the child’s father out of a residence in which the child was described as “bait.”
Cregan said that the situation would not be any different from if a police officer saw another police officer committing illegal acts, which he said required the officer to intervene and to report the crime.
The ordinance does not prevent immigration authorities from conducting enforcement on public property that is “traditionally open to the public without city authorization.”
Calls for stricter anti-collaboration rules
But several public commenters wanted more explicit language restricting “collaboration” with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies, with one saying they did not want to see what happened recently at San Francisco International Airport happen in Santa Rosa. In a widely publicized incident on Sunday at SFO, several San Francisco police officers were seen in videos forming a line to shield immigration agents trying to detain a woman and her child from bystanders trying to provide citizen oversight.
Santa Rosa residents expressed skepticism that without more robust, explicit language preventing collaboration in any form, residents could not be assured their local government will not assist in enforcement. One commenter said there needed to be more training for non-police city employees to know how to handle such a confrontation if one occurred on city property, including schools.
But councilmembers said the current ordinance was the fastest way to get a new policy enacted and said they could make amendments to it down the road if needed.
The ordinance was passed unanimously and will have a second vote on April 7 before becoming final. It will become active 30 days after that if it passes a second time, in accordance with state law.