Did Gavin Newsom call for ‘eliminating sanctuary policy’ in California?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Newsom said he supports ending sanctuary policy if the federal immigration reform passed.
- California law permits ICE notification for serious or violent convictions only.
- Bianco’s claims omit Newsom’s context on federal reform failures and state limits.
A Republican candidate for governor this week claimed Gov. Gavin Newsom as a “potential new ally” in his fight against California’s sanctuary state law.
In a video posted on Instagram, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said the controversial law “does absolutely nothing to protect Californians” and said he was “encouraged and excited about a potential new ally in this fight to keep California safer” before cutting to a video of Newsom speaking with podcaster Shawn Ryan last week.
In the clip, the governor said he “inherited sanctuary policy” both as mayor of San Francisco and governor of California.
He also said in the clip: “I support the broader principle. That said, I’m happy to advocate for eliminating sanctuary policy.”
Bianco then called on Newsom “to immediately inject himself into the Legislature and fix this broken state law. We absolutely must keep California safe again and as the leader of California, the leader of the Democrat Party, you have the power to make this happen.”
But the brief clip cut off before Newsom mentioned a key caveat of his position on sanctuary policies.
The governor’s full quote on the podcast was: “I support the broader principle. That said, I’m happy to advocate for eliminating sanctuary policy. The reason it exists is because of the total abject failure of the federal government to do its f------ job.”
In the podcast, Newsom went on to argue that California’s sanctuary policies were a response to failed immigration reform at the federal level, particularly a 2013 deal written by a bipartisan “gang of eight” that included Republican then-Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
“Let’s go back to the tenets of that deal and then you can start to unwind sanctuary policy,” Newsom said. “It exists because of that failure.”
Republican political strategist Mike Madrid had similar thoughts.
“Because of that failure of both parties and presidents … for four decades, (California) built a policy framework that had to accommodate those that were here,” Madrid said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not just that it was a political message of being ‘tolerant.’ You can’t run a society where 20% of the people don’t have driver’s licenses or people are cutting hair without professional licenses.”
What does California’s sanctuary law do?
California’s sanctuary law, which is also called SB 54 or the California Values Act, prevents state and local resources from being used to enforce immigration law. It blocks police from arresting someone based on their immigration status alone.
In Bianco’s video, the Riverside County sheriff noted he signed onto a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law.
“The sole purpose of SB 54, our sanctuary state law, was to prevent the deportation of criminals, who have victimized us, who are in jails and prisons,” he said.
This is untrue. The 2017 law, enacted two years before Newsom was elected governor, does allow jails and prisons to notify federal authorities of an impending release of an undocumented person convicted of serious or violent crimes.
When Newsom was mayor of San Francisco, he said its sanctuary law was “too permissive,” and he closed a loophole regarding the city’s ability to coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement after making an arrest, a move about which he said “people were pissed.”
On his campaign website, Bianco said he wants to “abolish sanctuary state policies,” “prioritize deportation of violent criminals” and “make it easier for law abiding immigrant workers to enter the workforce.”
His campaign did not respond to clarifying questions but in a statement to The Bee, Bianco said “The Democrats’ sanctuary state laws have done nothing but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding residents. Gavin Newsom can fix this issue tomorrow if he pressures the Legislature to do the right thing: overturn California’s dangerous sanctuary state policies and allow ICE back into our jails to deport criminals.”
Newsom, on the Shawn Ryan Show, said more than 11,000 undocumented people with serious criminal convictions have been turned over to ICE since he first took office in 2019.
Data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shows that is partially true. State prisons notified ICE of the impending release of 11,394 undocumented people under state law. The agency actually picked up 9,130 of those people between 2019 and June of this year, about 86%.
A spokesperson for Newsom said the data proves that “California doesn’t tolerate any violent criminals being in its communities.”
“Instead, state law focuses on protecting communities from crime, regardless of who commits it, versus stopping people for their papers,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said in an email. “But the militaristic, unlawful and cruelly indiscriminate targeting by federal immigration officials does not reflect that reality.”
Newsom’s office blasted the White House and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller for “using the state as a playground to test their chaos-inducing techniques to go after every single immigrant, regardless of whether they are American citizens, legal status holders, and foreign-born and even targeting native born U.S. citizens through their blatant racial profiling.”
Newsom’s views on immigration
During the four-hour podcast episode, Newsom and Ryan, a former Navy SEAL, spent 20 minutes discussing immigration and border policy, during which the governor said he “supports border security” and defended undocumented workers as “the backbone” of industries like agriculture and construction.
He called the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Los Angeles “cruel.”
Newsom said he supports the provision in California’s sanctuary law that allows state prison officials to coordinate with ICE regarding the release of undocumented people convicted of serious or violent crimes and noted that he previously vetoed legislation that would have prohibited the practice. He also pledged earlier this year to veto a similar proposal.
“I just think they’re wrong. My party’s wrong on that,” the governor said of attempts to shield undocumented people with violent convictions from deportation. “That’s aided into the conditions that Trump has exploited politically.”
Throughout his campaign last year, Trump highlighted stories of young women killed by undocumented immigrants such as 22-year-old college student Laken Riley and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. He repeated lines that the country was being “flooded” by “savage, illegal alien criminals.” Multiple studies have shown that sanctuary policies do not result in higher crime rates.
Trump pledged to target violent criminals – and did for several months – but since late May, the majority of arrests involve immigrants with no previous criminal history, according to an ABC News analysis.
This story was originally published July 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Did Gavin Newsom call for ‘eliminating sanctuary policy’ in California?."
