Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Monday that the LAPD will not change its stance on deporting illegal immigrants, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s position on the matter.
“I don’t intend on doing anything different,” he said to the Los Angeles Times. “We are not going to engage in law enforcement activities solely based on somebody’s immigration status. We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts. That is not our job, nor will I make it our job.”
The LAPD has been historically against deporting illegal immigrants.
During Beck’s tenure as police chief, the department has stopped turning over illegal immigrants arrested for low-level crimes to federal authorities for deportation and has not honored federal requests to detain inmates who might be deportable past their jail terms, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In 1979, police chief Daryl Gates signed an order that prohibits officers from initiating contact with someone for the sole purpose of determining whether that person is in the country legally.
Trump has made illegal immigration a central issue of his campaign, vowing to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and remove criminal illegal aliens from the country from day one of his presidency.
Under a Trump administration, the 1.4 million illegal immigrants who signed up for President Obama’s executive amnesty program are expected to be the first to be deported.