U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi discusses a drug enforcement-related announcement during a press conference at DEA Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., July 15, 2025.
Umit Bektas | Reuters
The Department of Justice on Thursday asked California sheriffs for data on their non-citizen inmates — including the crimes they committed and their release dates — in the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation plans.
The federal law enforcement agency said it told sheriffs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other California counties to turn over “lists of all inmates in their jails who are not citizens of the United States.”
If California does not voluntarily produce the requested information, the DOJ said it “will pursue all available means of obtaining the data, including through subpoenas or other compulsory process.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s letter to LA County Sheriff Robert Luna asked for that data within 30 days.
Bondi’s letter also appears to reference a 2015 settlement agreement that the LA Sheriff’s Department struck with the DOJ. That settlement, which was not related to immigration, required the department to provide the U.S. “full and complete access to the jails” and some related records.
“This Administration is committed to enforcing federal immigration laws. Our highest priority is removing those illegal aliens who committed crimes after illegally entering the United States,” Bondi wrote.
The requests show the Trump administration ratcheting up pressure on major California cities, where it has already staged some of its most aggressive and controversial federal immigration enforcement raids.
Bondi and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on Thursday received a briefing at Alcatraz, the famed former prison island in San Francisco Bay, a senior DOJ official told NBC News.
Trump has said he wants to reopen the facility, which has not operated as a prison since 1963 and currently stands as a museum operated by the National Park Service.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who frequently clashes with Trump, swiped at Bondi later Thursday by referencing the ongoing controversy over the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files, which has engulfed her agency.
“Pam Bondi will reopen Alcatraz the same day Trump lets her release the Epstein files,” Newsom’s press office wrote in an X post. “So… never.”
California’s 2017 sanctuary law bars state and local police from arresting people on immigration grounds, and limits their participation in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The law also limits when sheriff’s departments can provide U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers with an incarcerated non-citizen’s release date.
The latest move by Trump’s DOJ comes as federal immigration authorities have conducted sweeping deportation operations in California that have spurred a backlash in the form of heated protests and lawsuits.