Is California a Sanctuary State? ICE, Employers, and Limits

Yes, California is a sanctuary state. The California Values Act, codified at Government Code sections 7284 through 7284.12, prohibits state and local agencies from using their staff, money, or facilities to help federal civil immigration enforcement. A separate law, the Immigrant Worker Protection Act, extends similar protections into the workplace. Together they draw a hard line between local government work and the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with narrow exceptions tied to serious criminal convictions.¹

What Local Police and Jails Cannot Do

Government Code section 7284.6 lists the specific actions California law enforcement agencies are barred from taking. The restrictions apply to every police department, sheriff’s office, and school police unit in the state.²

Officers cannot ask about immigration status during routine policing.
Jails cannot hold someone past their release date based on an ICE hold request.
Officers cannot make arrests based on civil immigration warrants issued by ICE.
Agencies cannot transfer a person to ICE custody unless a judge has issued a judicial warrant or made a judicial probable cause determination.
Agencies cannot tell ICE when a person will be released, or share home or work addresses, unless that information is already public.
Agencies cannot give ICE dedicated office space inside their facilities.
Peace officers cannot be deputized as federal immigration officers.
Immigration agents cannot be brought in to serve as interpreters during law enforcement interactions.
Local agencies cannot enter new contracts to house people in local facilities for civil immigration detention.

These prohibitions are designed to make it practically impossible for local agencies to function as an extension of ICE, even informally. A traffic stop, a call to 911, a visit to a public hospital, or a court appearance for a civil matter is not supposed to become an immigration investigation.

ICE Detainers vs. Judicial Warrants

This distinction is the most important one for anyone trying to understand what sanctuary status actually does.

An ICE detainer is an administrative request that ICE issues on its own authority. It asks a local jail to hold someone for up to 48 additional hours after they would otherwise be released, so that immigration agents can pick them up. Under California law, local jails cannot honor these detainers on their own. Doing so would mean holding a person in custody without any judge ever reviewing the basis for that extra detention.²

A judicial warrant is different. It is signed by a judge who has independently found probable cause. California law enforcement can and must comply with a valid judicial warrant, the same as with any other court order. The Ninth Circuit has held that the Fourth Amendment requires a neutral decision-maker to review the basis for detention before someone can be held on an ICE request, and detainers alone do not meet that standard.

If you are in local custody and the jail receives only an ICE detainer, California law says you should be released on schedule.

When Local Agencies Can Cooperate With ICE

The California Values Act is not an absolute wall. Section 7284.6(b) allows local law enforcement to respond to ICE notification requests or transfer someone to federal custody in limited circumstances, generally tied to criminal history.

Cooperation is permitted when the person has been convicted of a serious or violent felony, or a felony punishable by state prison time. It is also permitted for people convicted of certain other felonies within the past 15 years, or certain higher-level misdemeanors within the past five years. The specific offenses are listed in Government Code section 7282.5.²

Two features of these exceptions matter. First, cooperation is permissive, not mandatory. The statute says agencies “may” cooperate, and a local jurisdiction is free to adopt policies more restrictive than state law. Second, when a local agency decides to cooperate, it must give the person advance written notice along with a copy of the federal request.

Schools, Hospitals, and Courthouses

Government Code section 7284.8 required the California Attorney General to publish model policies limiting immigration enforcement at public schools, public libraries, health facilities operated by state or local government, courthouses, shelters, and several labor agencies including the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement and the Division of Workers’ Compensation.³

Public schools, state-operated health facilities, and courthouses must implement the model policy or an equivalent. Libraries, shelters, universities, and organizations providing education, health, or legal services are encouraged to adopt one. Immigration agents generally cannot conduct enforcement at these places without a specific judicial warrant, and state and local employees cannot help them do so.

Rules for Employers and Workers

California’s sanctuary framework reaches into the workplace through the Immigrant Worker Protection Act (AB 450), which took effect in 2018.

An employer cannot voluntarily consent to letting immigration agents enter nonpublic areas of the workplace. If ICE shows up without a judicial warrant, the back office, warehouse, and other areas closed to the public stay closed. An employer can take an agent to a nonpublic area solely to verify whether the agent has a judicial warrant, but only if no employees are present and no consent to search is given.⁴

Employers also cannot voluntarily hand over employee records. The exceptions are a judicial warrant, a subpoena, or a federal Notice of Inspection for I-9 employment verification forms.

When an employer receives a Notice of Inspection for I-9 forms, it must notify every current employee within 72 hours. That notice must include the agency conducting the inspection, the date the notice was received, the nature of the inspection, and a copy of the notice itself. If the inspection produces results affecting specific employees, the employer has another 72 hours to notify those workers and any union representative.⁴

Employers who violate these requirements face civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.⁵

What Sanctuary Status Does Not Do

The California Values Act does not stop federal immigration enforcement in California. ICE can still run its own operations, make its own arrests, and carry out deportations using federal personnel and federal resources. What the state has done is refuse to let its own agencies be used as a force multiplier. If a federal agent with a valid judicial warrant arrives at a local jail, the jail complies. Without that warrant, the jail cannot hold someone extra time on a detainer or tell ICE when the person will be released.

There is also a live tension with federal law. Under 8 U.S.C. section 1373, no state or local government may prohibit its employees from sending or receiving information about a person’s citizenship or immigration status to federal immigration authorities.⁶ California’s position is that the Values Act restricts the use of state resources for enforcement rather than banning communication about status, and does not violate section 1373. The federal government disagrees, and that disagreement has produced repeated litigation.

The Federal-State Fight Over Sanctuary Status

California’s sanctuary policies are the subject of an active dispute with the federal government. In April 2025, the White House issued an executive order directing the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to publish a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” obstructing federal immigration enforcement, and instructing every federal agency to identify grants and contracts to those jurisdictions that could be suspended or terminated. The order directed federal officials to “pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures” against those jurisdictions.⁷

California jurisdictions sued. A coalition led by the City and County of San Francisco and Santa Clara County argued that conditioning unrelated federal funding on immigration cooperation violates the Tenth Amendment and the separation of powers. A federal court granted a preliminary injunction in April 2025 and extended it in August 2025 to cover dozens of additional jurisdictions, blocking the administration from withholding or freezing federal funding based on sanctuary designations.

The litigation is ongoing, and the picture can change. For now, federal courts have blocked the most aggressive funding threats, and the California Values Act remains in force and enforceable through the Attorney General’s office.¹

1
California Legislative Information. California Government Code GOV 7284.2
2
California Legislative Information. California Government Code GOV 7284.6
3
California Legislative Information. California Senate Bill 54
4
California Department of Justice. AB 450 FAQs
5
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code Section 1019.2
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 U.S. Code 1373 – Communication Between Government Agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service
7
The White House. Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens