Immigration took center stage at Bakersfield City Hall during the July 15 council meeting as dozens of residents urged leaders to consider making the city a sanctuary city.
While there was no vote, the issue is expected to come up again.
"Right now, there is a family in this city deciding whether it is safe to drive to the grocery store, a parent deciding whether it’s safe to send their kid to school,” said speaker Lindsey Parker.
For speaker after speaker, the conversation wasn't about politics; it was about families they say are living in fear.
“It is my job everyday to knock on peoples doors and I can see the fear in their eyes, I can see wether they do not know if its going to be a neighbor knocking on their door or ICE,” said speaker Miguel Bautista.
Packing the chambers, the community made two requests: make Bakersfield a sanctuary city, and hold a public forum on the TRUTH Act.
Sanctuary cities are communities that choose to limit how much local agencies assist with federal immigration enforcement.
But it's unclear what such an ordinance would accomplish.
According to the Bakersfield Police Department's immigration policy, unless immigration status is relevant to another criminal offense, being undocumented is not be a reason for detainment and its officers do not gather immigration information for enforcement purposes.
This wouldn’t be the first time a policy like this is proposed in Kern County, with Delano trying to adopt a community-first ordinance earlier this year but was ultimately rejected.
Vice Mayor Manpreet Kaur and Council member Andrae Gonzales said they support exploring what legal options the city has. But not everyone agreed on how quickly the city should move forward.
“State law is very clear on this, the state has the ultimate authority on this issue, and so I don’t want to see any time spent staff developing a sanctuary city policy until it comes back to city council for further discussion,” said council member Larry Koman.
Rather than taking a vote on a sanctuary city ordinance, the council agreed to move forward with planning a TRUTH Act forum and referred the sanctuary city proposal to the Laws and Legislation Committee for further review.
Although no vote was taken, further discussions are expected to take place in about three to four weeks as the city prepares to hold a special meeting.
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