The House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement released interim staff reports on Thursday, October 29, accusing California and Oregon of using sanctuary policies to shield removable noncitizens from federal immigration officials — including people the committee says were charged with or convicted of murder, felony DUI, racketeering, stalking, strangulation and assault.
Source: House Judiciary Committee
The two reports — 'California: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies' and 'Oregon: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies' — are the latest in a series of state-by-state staff reports from the Republican-led committee, following earlier reports on places including New York and Fairfax County, Virginia. The claims in them are the committee's; they are presented here as its findings, not as independently adjudicated facts.
The California numbers, city by city
According to the committee, the Los Angeles Police Department honoured only 0.096 percent of the nearly 4,200 detainers it received from 2020 through early June 2026. Reporting on the 22-page California report by the New York Post, summarised by Not The Bee, put the precise figures at 4 honoured out of 4,177 received between January 2020 and June 2026.
Source: Not The Bee summarising New York Post reporting
In San Francisco, the committee said, state and local laws and policies have forced the Sheriff's Office to refuse to honour a single detainer since 2020, despite receiving 2,201. In San Diego County, it said, sanctuary laws and policies have prohibited the Sheriff's Office from honouring 2,527 ICE detainers since 2023 — including, according to the Post's reporting on the report, 894 in the last year alone. Together, the Post calculated, the three jurisdictions account for 8,901 ignored detainers, and 48 of California's 58 counties plus dozens of cities operate under similar sanctuary policies.
The committee said that within the past year alone, California state and local law enforcement have not honoured detainers for people whose criminal histories include assault, burglary and aggravated assault with a weapon, and were 'forced to decline' detainers for multiple people charged with or convicted of homicide.
Oregon: a sanctuary state since 1987
The Oregon report describes a state that, in the committee's words, 'openly boasts that it's been a sanctuary state since 1987.' The committee said Oregon law prohibits its Department of Corrections from honouring ICE detainers even for people with convictions including murder, burglary, strangulation, felony DUI and assault; prohibits state and local law enforcement from disclosing information to federal immigration officials and from sharing release dates; limits immigration arrests at certain locations; and is promoted through a Sanctuary Promise Violations Hotline for reporting suspected violations of the state's policies.
On Portland specifically, the committee said the Portland Police Bureau not only refuses to honour ICE detainers but directs people who witness ICE activity to call an organisation that advocates abolishing ICE, and has warned its own officers that shaking hands with federal counterparts would 'likely raise eyebrows within the community and will garner attention.'
What a detainer is — and why states resist them
An ICE detainer is a request from federal immigration officials asking a local jail to notify ICE before releasing a person and to hold that person briefly so federal officers can take custody. The committee argued that Congress has explicitly prohibited any restriction on communication between state or local entities and federal immigration authorities about a person's immigration status, and accused California and Oregon Democrats of defying federal law. Supporters of sanctuary laws argue the opposite side of the same argument: that detainers are administrative requests rather than court warrants, and that limiting cooperation keeps immigrant residents — including legal residents and mixed-status families — willing to report crime, seek help and cooperate with local police.
For California's Punjabi diaspora — concentrated in Los Angeles, the Central Valley, Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego, and including many lawful permanent residents, truckers and small-business owners — the fight is not abstract. Detainer policy decides whether a routine local arrest can turn into a federal immigration transfer, and the level of trust between immigrant neighbourhoods and local police shapes everything from crime reporting to whether families call for help at all.
The 8,901 figure combines three different counting periods: Los Angeles (Jan. 2020–June 2026), San Francisco (since 2020) and San Diego County (since 2023). The figures come from the committee's interim staff report as reported by the New York Post; they are the committee's calculations, not a court finding.
The reports land at a charged moment: five days before the November 3 midterm elections, and in the middle of a reported increase in ICE arrests across California in the run-up to election day, documented this month from Sacramento to San Diego. Earlier this month a federal judge in Los Angeles also blocked suspicionless, race-based immigration stops across Southern California — a separate court fight over how enforcement is carried out on the ground.
What happens next: the reports are interim staff reports, not legislation, but they set out the committee's case ahead of expected post-election immigration fights in Congress, including a Judiciary-approved bill that would require compliance with DHS detainers and let victims sue officials in jurisdictions that release people under detainers. California and Oregon officials, who have defended their sanctuary frameworks in past rounds of this dispute, will now face the same argument state by state — with their own detainer numbers in print.