Los Angeles, the second largest US city, is setting itself up for a standoff with President-elect Donald Trump over immigration. On Tuesday, its city council passed a “sanctuary city” ordinance to bar using local resources to help federal immigration authorities.LA’s public school system also reaffirmed itself as a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ students in a series of emergency resolutions.Trump, who will be sworn in in two months, has promised mass deportations once he returns to the White House. His chosen “border czar”, Tim Homan, has urged sanctuary cities to “get the hell out of the way” of federal immigration crackdowns.The term “sanctuary city” has been popular in the US for more than a decade to describe places that limit their assistance to federal immigration authorities. Since it is not a legal term, cities have taken a variety of approaches to becoming “sanctuaries”, such as setting policies in laws or simply changing local policing practices.Aimed at making a 2019 executive order into city law, the city council’s sanctuary city ordinance prohibits using city resources for immigration enforcement, including cooperating with federal immigration agents, NBC News Los Angeles reports.The ordinance will “prevent federal immigration enforcement from being able to access city facilities or to use city resources in the pursuit of immigration enforcement”, council member Nithya Raman told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, ahead of the vote.It will also prohibit some data sharing between immigration authorities and city officials and agencies.The ordinance will go into effect once it has been signed by Mayor Karen Bass.Officials in a number of other cities, including Boston and New York City, have similarly promised that local resources would not be allocated to helping federal immigration enforcement issues.Since Trump was elected the first tim …
