by John Glidden | glid24@protonmail.com | October 29, 2025
VALLEJO – Vallejo police last week reiterated the department’s position on immigration enforcement, saying it “prioritizes crime prevention and public safety not immigration enforcement.”
Police Sgt. Rashad Hollis made the comments during the October 23 2×2 Committee meeting. The committee gets its name from having two city council members and two school board members that meet to discuss issues which affect both agencies.
“Fear of deportation can undermine the public safety by discouraging cooperation with law enforcement,” said Hollis, who was joined by Vallejo Police Chief Jason Ta in addressing the committee.
Under President Donald Trump’s direction, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), supplemented by Customs and Border Protection officers, have carried out increasingly controversial operations including an immigration raid in Chicago in which officers rappelled down onto an apartment complex from a helicopter.
“VPD will never use ICE in the manner of interpreters, and VPD does not have the authority to enforce any federal laws,” Hollis added.
The department’s stance is influenced by its own policies and that of the California Values Act (SB 54) which prevents the use of state and local resources in assisting federal immigration enforcement.
Under SB 54, California law enforcement departments cannot ask about your immigration status, they are also forbidden from arresting a person for only having a deportation order or for most other immigration violations, according to information from the ACLU Southern California chapter.
As Hollis mentioned, the law also prevents state law enforcement from using (ICE) or Border Patrol agents as interpreters.
The department’s comments came the same day as immigration agents were deployed to the U.S. Coast Guard base in Alameda. Preparing for the deployment were members of the North Bay Rapid Response network which has the stated mission of helping impacted immigrants, the Vallejo Sun reported.
However, Trump writing on his via his Truth Social page Thursday morning, said the surge of immigration agents to the Bay Area had been cancelled after he spoke with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.
That didn’t stop protesters and police from clashing as protesters attempted to prevent immigration agents from leaving the base. Police used pepper spray and flashbangs, injuring two, as reported by the Vallejo Sun.
Ta said during the meeting Thursday night that Vallejo had not seen immigration agents in the city.
“To date, we have not seen a lot of immigration (enforcement) activity here in our city,” Ta told the committee.
Vallejo police updated committee on other law enforcement topics
Ta spoke about several other law enforcement topics including updating the committee about the deployment of security towers, and the status of the department’s traffic division.
The Vallejo City Council in July approved spending $500,000 on five additional mobile security towers around the city.
“We have currently two of these towers being utilized, and we just deployed five more, so a couple of these towers are going to be placed strategically to deal with dumping, so sex trafficking behavior,” Ta told the 2×2 Committee.
Ta spoke about increasing the traffic division to help with the Solano Safe Routes to School program which encourages children to safely walk or bike to school.
“As we start building back our traffic unit,” Ta explained, “we’re going to be doing more traffic enforcement throughout the city but also planning for future Safe Routes to School days for our awareness campaigns.”
He further said that the newly created Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) Team, a specialized unit focused on proactively addressing crime trends and quality of life concerns, would augment the traffic division.
The POP team is led by Sgt. Justin Samaniego, and includes Cpl. Patrick Knowles, Ofc. Zachary McKenna and Ofc. Elias Diaz, according to information released through a Public Records Acts request.
ELITE charter parents, administrators express displeasure
Vallejo school board President John Fox, who was running the meeting, called for a recess that lasted about 20 minutes after a handful of students, parents and administrators from ELITE Public Schools, began shouting for the audience section, demanding equal funding for their charter school.
The five-person school board voted during its October 15 meeting decided against approving an application that would have allowed the charter to apply for state funding to build additional classrooms.
Prior to the recess, parents of students attending ELITE, along with co-founder Ramona Bishop addressed the 2×2 Committee.
“As was made very clearly to us during your school board meeting, you don’t represent, clearly, our charter school students. So, perhaps, we should open up this venue to have an ELITE representative sitting here,” Bishop said to the committee.
Bishop expressed irritation that those on the dais were not looking at the public speakers.
“I’m sure that ELITE representative would look people in the eye when they are speaking,” she added.
Bishop argued that ELITE should have “special considerations” since the charter has eliminated the opportunity gap for students.
“Let me clear, that we are here, we are here to stay,” Bishop told the committee.
ELITE representatives held a news conference on Monday, October 27, explaining their plan to seek assistance from Congressman John Garamendi, State Sen. Chris Cabaldon, and Assemblywoman Lori Wilson to persuade the district to change its stance. ELITE has until Thursday to apply for the funding through Proposition 2, which allocated $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of schools. From that amount, $600 million was earmarked for charters, the Vallejo Sun reported.
Meeting notes:
Vallejo Mayor Andrea Sorce was absent from the 2×2 Committee meeting. The other three members were in attendance, including Councilman Diosdado “J.R.” Matulac, Vallejo school board President John Fox and school board Vice President Glenn Amboy.
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