The ongoing Los Angeles riots could have been stopped in Sacramento and not have reached the point of federal intervention if Democrats had passed a Republican effort to improve coordination between state, local and federal law enforcement in terms of immigration, GOP leaders said.
"Federal authorities doing the vital work of immigration enforcement have been met with obstruction and violence on the streets in Los Angeles," California Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, told Fox News Digital on Monday.
"Make no mistake: These agitators and failed California policies caused this chaos. It will not be tolerated and many of them have already found out," Gallagher said.
In that regard, Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, R-San Diego, said his caucus had a fix for the issues that led to the immigration raids that sparked the rioting.
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"California Republicans had a solution in our Senate Bill 554, but the sanctuary city crowd brought this on themselves by prohibiting state and local law enforcement from cooperating with the feds to identify violent illegal immigrants in prisons and jails," Jones said.
SB 554 would have adjusted existing California law under the California Values Act, which generally prohibits state law enforcement from investigating, detaining or questioning suspects for immigration-related purposes.
Instead, the bill, which Jones said Democrats had tanked, would have allowed for improved communication with federal immigration and law enforcement agencies.
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"Now the feds have to run broader raids, like what we’re seeing in LA, which sweep up way more people," Jones said.
"This whole thing was easily preventable."
Just north of Jones’ hometown, he said the ICE raids that occurred leading up to the unrest were characterized by an increase in "collateral arrests," a term used to describe illegal immigrants not specifically targeted by the feds in any particular operation who are also detained.
That has happened, he said, because state and local authorities hadn’t handed over some of the targeted suspects in the first place.
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Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared to blame President Donald Trump for the unrest, saying it is "exactly what [he] wanted."
"He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard."
Fox News Digital reached out to California Senate President Pro-Tempore Mike McGuire, R-Healdsburg, for response to Republicans’ comments.
