State Democrats on Tuesday voted down legislation that would have amended California’s sanctuary law to allow the deportation of fentanyl-dealing illegal immigrants.
“This bill is simply a referendum on the sanctuary state policy as it relates to fentanyl dealers,” the assembly member remarked.
“I don’t believe current law is working and I believe we need to give law enforcement more tools to protect our California communities. AB2209 is a choice. It’s a choice between fixing our fentanyl crisis or doing nothing,” she added.
California’s current law prohibits law enforcement agencies from investigating, interrogating, detecting, or arresting people for immigration enforcement purposes.
There are limited exceptions to this prohibition, including transfers of persons pursuant to a judicial warrant and providing certain information to federal authorities on serious and violent felons in custody.
The proposed bill would “additionally except, for purposes of the act, any California law enforcement agency performing any responsibilities under the scope of its jurisdiction regarding any person who is alleged to have violated, or who has been previously convicted of violating, specified provisions relating to fentanyl.”
“CA Dems just killed my bill to strip felony fentanyl dealers of sanctuary state protections. How can we crack down on criminal cartel drug dealers if Sacramento gives them tools to evade deportation?” she asked.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, which is a significant contributor to drug overdoses in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated.
According to the California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard, there were 7,385 opioid-related deaths in California in 2022, of which 6,473 were fentanyl-related.
The governor, a Democrat, said that operations supported by the state’s National Guard, or CalGuard, led to the seizure of a record 62,224 pounds of fentanyl in the state and at ports of entry in 2023, marking a 1,066 percent increase since 2021.
The street price for the intercepted fentanyl would be about $670 million, according to calculations using the Los Angeles High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area price sheet for that year.
“Fentanyl is a poison, and it does not belong in our communities,” the governor said.
“California is cracking down, increasing seizures, expanding access to substance abuse treatment, and holding drug traffickers accountable to combat the immeasurable harm opioids have caused our communities,” he added.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a potentially lethal dose, and one kilogram of the drug has the potential to kill 500,000 people.
