California Audits Fusion Centers for Immigration Complaints

This article is also available in English. Read it here.

Citing concerns about authoritarianism and invasive surveillance, California lawmakers voted this week to audit the operation of the Joint Intelligence Centers, where federal, state and local agencies share information.

The decision was made Tuesday by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, a 14-member body made up of California senators and members of the Assembly, along party lines. Nine members voted in favour, one against and four abstained. The audit will be conducted by State Auditor Grant Parks.

Civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Oakland Privacy urged lawmakers to require an audit to curb what they described as abuses at the facilities, known as fusion centers. They cited an incident where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reportedly asked La Habra police for conducting searches on his behalf at an Orange County fusion center and other cases in which San Francisco police bypassed local ban on facial recognition by requesting assistance from a fusion center with access to said technology.

CalMatters Investigations from last year Mr from last month uncovered cases where local law enforcement shared license plate information with ICE or the Border Patrol in violation of state law. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sent letters to more than a dozen local law enforcement agencies since 2024 about possible violations of the state law banning it, and is suing the city of El Cajon for allegedly violating the ban.

The audit will collect details on three fusion centers in California, including:

• Information on violations of statutory authority and policies in place over the past decade, as well as disciplinary actions taken in response.
• What state and local law enforcement personnel are assigned to fusion centers?
• Which private sector entities cooperate with fusion centers?
• Which state or local officials oversee the operation of the fusion center to ensure compliance with state and local laws?

Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, requested the audit. He believes that fusion centers have been undermined state law which prohibits cooperation with federal law enforcement on immigration matters. A Surveillance Technology Monitoring Project Report 2024, cited in its audit request, alleged that a California fusion center routinely shared information with ICE. She also said these centers put the privacy of Californians in general at risk, especially in the face of what she described as the federal government’s slide toward authoritarianism.

“It’s been 13 years since the last federal audit,” Cervantes said during the hearing. “I don’t want to ban fusion power plants. I’m looking for transparency, and 40 million Californians deserve to know whether fusion power plants are fulfilling their purpose to fight terrorism or have become irresponsible surveillance infrastructure that operates in the shadow of our democracy.”

California has five fusion centers located in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and San Diego. These centers were established across the country after the September 11, 2001 attacks with funding from the federal government and a combination of federal, state, and local law enforcement resources.

Since then, lawmakers and activists have sought to reduce or shut down fusion power plants in Maine, Massachusetts and Texas.

Not a single Republican on the committee voted in favor of the audit; one opposed and three abstained. Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, called it a “political witch hunt” that puts the needs of immigrants before those of American citizens and, in the context of the war in Iran, comes at a time when we need these centers to detect terrorist threats.

“This is not the time to politicize the situation when national security is at stake,” he told the hearing.

In response to De Maio’s statements, former FBI agent Mike German said the moment of national security risk is exactly when you want to know if the centers are working effectively to identify real risks.

“It’s a waste of resources when they don’t work in a way that can stand up to public scrutiny,” he told the committee. “As federal law enforcement and immigration agencies increasingly operate outside the law, it is critical that these state and local intelligence operations be subject to democratic scrutiny.”

and 2022 survey on fusion centers, which German co-authored for New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, concluded that there is little evidence that these centers have contributed to the fight against terrorism. The study notes that activists for racial justice, environmental protection and abortion rights are repeatedly portrayed as aggressive extremists or generally threatening people. A 2012 Congressional Report. which took two years to prepare, found that the Department of Homeland Security’s support for fusion centers had little benefit to federal intelligence efforts to fight terrorism and threatened Americans’ civil liberties and privacy.

Not a single representative from the five California fusion centers spoke out against the audit.