After immigration arrests, California lawmakers wonder: Are police telling the feds too much?

Citing fear of authoritarianism and invasive surveillance, California lawmakers voted this week to audit the operation of joint intelligence centers where federal, state, and local agencies share information.

The decision was made Tuesday along party lines by the Joint Committee on Legislative Audit, a 14-member body made up of members of the California Senate and Assembly. Nine members voted in favor, one against, and four did not vote. The audit will be conducted by State Auditor Grant Parks.

Advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Oakland Privacy urged lawmakers to demand the audit to rein in what they described as abuses at the facilities, known as fusion centers. They cited an incident in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly asked La Habra police to run searches on its behalf at an Orange County fusion center and several others in which San Francisco police circumvented a local ban on facial recognition by asking for help from a fusion center with access to the technology.

CalMatters investigations last year and last month found instances where local law enforcement agencies shared license plate information with ICE or the Border Patrol, violating state law. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent letters to more than a dozen local law enforcement agencies since 2024 for potential violations of the state law banning it and sued the City of El Cajon for allegedly violating the ban.

The audit will seek details about three California fusion centers, including:

1. Information about violations of legal authority and policies for the past decade and disciplinary actions taken in response.

2. What state and local law enforcement personnel are assigned to the fusion centers.

3. What private sector entities work with fusion centers.

4. Which state or local officials oversee fusion center activity to ensure compliance with state and local law.

Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside, requested the audit. She believes that fusion centers have undermined state law that prohibits cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies for immigration purposes. A 2024 Surveillance Technology Oversight Project report cited in her audit petition alleges that a California fusion center routinely shares information with ICE. She also said the centers put at risk the privacy of Californians more broadly, particularly given what she describes as the slide of the federal government into authoritarianism.

“It’s been 13 years since the last federal audit,” Cervantes said during the hearing. “I am not seeking to ban fusion centers. I’m seeking transparency, and 40 million Californians deserve to know whether fusion centers are serving their intended counterterrorism purpose or whether they have become unaccountable surveillance infrastructure operating in the shadow of our democracy.”

California has five fusion centers, located in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and San Diego. Fusion centers were established nationwide in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack with federal government funding and a combination of federal, state, and local law enforcement resources.

Lawmakers and activists have since sought to scale back or end fusion center activity in Maine, Massachusetts and Texas.

No Republicans on the committee voted in support of the audit, with one opposing it and three not voting. Carl DeMaio, a Republican from San Diego, called it “a political witch hunt” that places the needs of immigrants over American citizens and, with the war in Iran, comes at a time when we need the centers to detect terrorism threats.

“This is not the time to politicize when homeland security is being stretched,” he said at the hearing.

In response to DeMaio’s remarks, former FBI agent Mike German said a time of national security risk is exactly when you want to know whether centers are functioning in an effective way to identify real risks.

“It’s a waste of resources when they’re not operating in a manner that can stand up to public scrutiny,” he told the committee. “As federal law enforcement and immigration agencies are increasingly acting lawlessly, it’s essential to subject these state and local intelligence operations to democratic controls.”

A 2022 study of fusion centers coauthored by German for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found that there is little to suggest that fusion centers have aided counterterrorism efforts. It said they have repeatedly portrayed racial justice, environmental and abortion activists as violent extremists or otherwise menacing. A 2012 congressional report that took two years to complete found that Department of Homeland Security support for fusion centers has resulted in little benefit to federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts and has endangered Americans’ civil liberties and privacy.

No representatives from California’s five fusion centers spoke in opposition to the audit.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.