The California State Assembly Judiciary Committee approved Democrats’ so-called “sanctuary state” bill on Wednesday, over the objections of law enforcement groups and Democrat-leaning sheriffs’ unions.

According to the Courthouse News Service (CNS), State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles) claims that his Senate Bill 54, the “California Values Act,” is designed to prohibit all law enforcement in California from any and all cooperation with what he has dubbed the “Trump Deportation Machine.”

Earlier this year, De León told the committee that “half his family is in the country illegally” and that his relatives regularly commit identity theft in order to work in the U.S.

For De Leon, the new bill is all about Trump. He reportedly said that if another Republican had won the presidency, his bill would not be necessary.

DeLeon insists that his bill “doesn’t safeguard” criminals, but Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, current president of the California Sheriffs Association, disagrees:

‘We believe this bill provides sanctuary to criminals and makes our communities less safe,” Brown reportedly said. “SB 54 would result in many dangerous criminal offenders being released to our streets without proper communication and cooperation with immigration authorities.’”

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a substantively similar bill (AB 1081) in 2012. In his veto letter, Brown wrote, “I am unable to sign this bill as written,” saying the bill barred cooperation in some instances he believes were serious. “I believe it’s unwise to interfere with a sheriff’s discretion to comply with a detainer issued for people with these kinds of troubling criminal records,” he explained.

In spite of the fact that a many of the criminal alien gang members arrested in recent raids in Los Angeles had gang ties to the notoriously brutal El Salvadoran prison gang known as MS-13, and had committed serious crimes previously, almost all of them would, arguably, have been shielded by SB 54 if it were currently the law.

Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman and author, currently on a book tour for his new book: Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless. He ran for governor in 2014.

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