LAPD says it does not enforce civil immigration law. Its role during federal operations and the safeguards around police data remain central to the debate over community trust.
LAPD’s promise to immigrant residents is straightforward: they should be able to call police without fear that officers are there to enforce civil immigration law.
The debate over Chief Jim McDonnell’s leadership turns on whether the department’s actions have reinforced that promise.
Councilmember Nithya Raman’s criticism of McDonnell has brought the issue into the Los Angeles mayoral race. During the October 13 debate hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo 52, Raman and Mayor Karen Bass clashed over police leadership as the city prepares for the 2028 Olympics.
The record behind that disagreement predates the campaign. It includes LAPD officers responding during federal operations, concerns about access to police information and repeated assurances from McDonnell that his department does not carry out civil immigration enforcement.
Those events establish reasons to examine LAPD’s conduct. They do not establish how every immigrant resident feels about the department.
What LAPD says its officers were doing
On March 3, 2025, McDonnell addressed officers’ presence during a federal operation in Newton Division, which covers part of South Los Angeles.
In his statement about the operation, McDonnell said officers were helping with traffic control while Homeland Security attempted to arrest a suspect wanted for human trafficking.
“The LAPD does not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” he said.
That was the department’s explanation of its role. Federal agents conduct criminal investigations as well as immigration enforcement, so the presence of local officers alone does not establish that they helped carry out a deportation. What matters is what officers were instructed to do and what they actually did.
A similar question arose after federal operations on June 6, 2025.
In its account of that evening’s response, LAPD said federal authorities requested help around 6:30 p.m. and that officers subsequently dispersed a crowd. The department said it had not coordinated with federal agencies before their enforcement operations.
LAPD described the deployment as a public-safety response to conditions that developed afterward. That account explains the department’s stated purpose; evaluating its conduct also requires examining officers’ actions and the instructions they received.
McDonnell reiterated the department’s position in a separate June 9 statement.
“We will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations,” he said. He also reaffirmed the longstanding prohibition on initiating police action solely to determine someone’s immigration status.
Police data require separate scrutiny
Restrictions on immigration arrests do not answer every question about information held in police systems.
In June 2025, Oakland Privacy published findings from license-plate search records obtained from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office. The organization said the records included searches referencing Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative division.
Oakland Privacy also identified vague search justifications, including entries labeled simply “investigation” or “criminal justice.” Those descriptions make it harder to determine why someone accessed the database. The organization linked to the records it obtained.
These are Oakland Privacy’s findings about a regional database, rather than an independently verified finding here that LAPD supplied information for a particular deportation.
The safeguards governing such searches are a separate accountability issue. The California Department of Justice’s guidance on automated license-plate data explains restrictions on sharing that information with federal and out-of-state agencies. A criminal-investigation label does not, by itself, resolve whether a particular disclosure complied with those rules.
Parriva’s earlier coverage of LAPD’s reporting on ICE detention requests examines another part of that relationship. Detention requests, database searches and street deployments are different activities. Each needs its own records and explanation.
Bass acknowledged the need for further review in her July 2025 executive directive supporting immigrant communities. She directed an LAPD-led working group to gather community feedback about federal operations and the city’s response, and requested additional guidance for officers where appropriate.
Where residents can check LAPD’s policies
LAPD’s “Community Policing and Immigration” guide is available in English and Spanish. It addresses civil immigration arrests, questions about immigration status, criminal warrants and coordination with federal agencies. It describes department rules, rather than guaranteeing the outcome of an individual encounter.
The campaign dispute makes scrutiny of those rules especially timely. Written restrictions establish what officers are supposed to do. Deployment records, search logs and investigations of complaints help establish whether they followed those restrictions.
For residents weighing LAPD’s assurances, that distinction is essential: confidence in the department depends on both the promise and a clear account of how it is kept.
