Longtime immigrant advocate Martha Arevalo’s clashes with Jim McDonnell’s Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department date back years, but are still fresh in her mind after this week’s election.

Under McDonnell, who served as sheriff during President Donald Trump’s first term, the department gave federal immigration authorities free rein to run people facing deportation at the nation’s largest prison.

So as soon as Arevalo heard that McDonnell had been chosen as LAPD chief after Trump returned to office and promised a massive immigration crackdown, she braced for a new battle.

Mr. McDonnell and some of his supporters have defended his record against the Department of Security, saying his administration complied with the law and handed over only the most dangerous criminals to federal authorities. McDonnell said he would not do that as chief because department rules prohibit it.

But Arevalo, executive director of CareCen Los Angeles, is among those who have expressed concerns about McDonnell’s immigration record and called for stronger protections for the city’s diverse immigrant population. The next chief is scheduled to appear before the City Council for confirmation on Friday, and the oath of office is scheduled for Thursday.

“It’s alarming in L.A., a city of immigrants. We’re electing someone to be our police chief who doesn’t have a track record of caring for immigrant communities, who doesn’t have a friendly history, who doesn’t even want to protect immigrant communities,” Arevalo said. Ta. “Maybe we were naive about this, or maybe I was naive, but I never thought the city and the mayor would choose someone like McDonnell to be mayor.”

The Los Angeles Police Department has a longstanding policy that prevents McDonnell and other chiefs from working closely with federal immigration authorities.

For more than 40 years, the Los Angeles Police Department has prohibited officers from questioning residents solely to determine their immigration status. After Trump’s first election in 2016, the department stepped up efforts to foster trust and cooperation among illegal aliens. Officials say continued outreach has enabled the department to make significant progress in some communities that have long had a distrust of law enforcement.

The once almost exclusively white police force is now more than half Latino, just like the ethnically diverse cities it patrols. Police also welcomed their first new recruits, so-called Dreamers, after the passage of a state law allowing police departments to hire immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

But Arevalo said days after Mayor Karen Bass selected McDonnell for the chief’s post in early October, she and other immigrant advocates met with both officials and said they were “disappointed by the very weak response we received.” I did,” he said.

“All he could really say about McDonnell was that he would abide by the law. Unfortunately, we know that doesn’t necessarily guarantee protection,” Arevalo said of McDonnell.

McDonnell gave a similar answer when he appeared before a City Council committee last month and faced questions about his immigration history. Asked if he supports sanctuary city ordinances being pushed by some community groups and city council members to protect some immigrants from deportation, he remained steadfast and said only that he would follow the law. Ta.

Immigrant community advocates say police encounters, already dangerous for undocumented people in the city, will become even more problematic under the expected increased enforcement under the second Trump administration. Minor violations such as a broken taillight or not wearing a seatbelt can result in a ticket for the average driver, but can have life-altering consequences for an illegal alien. .

During the first four years of Trump’s presidency, police departments in places like Los Angeles reported fewer calls for even serious crimes such as domestic violence, which some experts believe means people are reporting fewer crimes to law enforcement. He saw this as a sign that he had become afraid of things.

“The same thing happened when Mr. McDonnell was sheriff. Even if they were victims of domestic violence, families and victims would not call the police,” Arevalo said.

McDonnell has not given interviews since being appointed LAPD chief. In 2017, he told the Times that he was “not pro-Trump” and “not anti-Trump.” He was previously a registered Republican, but stated during his time as sheriff that he was no longer affiliated with a political party.

Malachy Alemseged, of local organizer Black Alliance for Fair Immigration, said concerns extend beyond the Latino community. Alemseged said the group’s research found that people of African descent were disproportionately included among those deported in recent years, many for minor offenses that led to their detention. This is said to be the cause.

“When we talk about the police-deportation pipeline being a racial justice issue, this is exactly what we mean,” Alemseged said.

Other research has also shown that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than U.S. citizens.

Alemseged and others called on the City Council to reject McDonnell’s appointment. They plan to gather outside City Hall on Friday to voice their opposition.

The department’s relatively lenient stance toward illegal immigrants dates back to 1979. In response to the wave of illegal immigration, then-Secretary Secretary Daryl F. Gates sought to keep lines of communication open between police officers and the communities they police.

Mr. Gates issued a policy known as Special Order 40, prohibiting police officers from initiating contact with others for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. Gates also banned arrests solely for violating U.S. immigration law.

The department currently prohibits police officers from asking about their place of birth when interviewing victims, witnesses and people temporarily detained. Previously, suspects’ birthplaces were recorded during fingerprinting upon arrest and sent to an FBI database that immigration authorities could access, but this is no longer the case.

LAPD also no longer transfers people with certain misdemeanor convictions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Officers continue to turn over people wanted on federal warrants for serious or violent felonies, including murder, rape, criminal intimidation, auto robbery and arson.

In a presentation to the Police Commission in May, the commander said: German Hurtado, head of the Office of Professional Standards, said the agency had not responded to 631 “detention” requests it received from federal authorities last year to detain undocumented immigrants who could face deportation.

The department’s policies to protect illegal aliens have come under repeated attack from factions within the Los Angeles Police Department as well as anti-immigrant activists who say they are giving criminals in the country illegally a free pass.

But the department has assigned officers to a number of federal task forces, including Homeland Security Investigations, which handles “criminal tourists” from South America who travel to the state on temporary 90-day visas and form robbery rings.