A long-range look at crime statistics, particularly homicide data, shows that the 2020-21 crime rate nationally and in California was still a fraction of its highs in the early 1990s. Simply counting the year-over-year changes belies a larger truth: Crime throughout the 2020s has been down significantly compared to the rate 20 or 30 years ago. As with the long-term homicide rate declines, the recent tapering in California is part of a nationwide trend. A report published Thursday by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank found that among 35 major cities nationwide, homicides dropped by 21% between 2024 and 2025.
California lawmakers are seeking to target the deep pockets of for-profit contractors key to the Trump administration’s growing deportation campaign, amid outrage over the killing of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
A new state bill would raise taxes on companies that contract with the federal government to run immigration detention facilities, which hold thousands of men and women in California. AB-1633, introduced by Assemblymember Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, on Tuesday, would tax operators’ detention contract revenue by 50% annually and reinvest those funds into services supporting immigrant communities.
The first-in-the-nation bill aims to mitigate economic, emotional and social harms caused to the state as immigration authorities detain more residents, businesses lose workers and students skip school due to deportation fears, Haney said during a press conference on the bill on Wednesday. “We will not allow these for-profit corporations to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of human suffering and family separation,” Haney said, flanked by Democratic lawmakers, gubernatorial candidate Tony Thurmond and immigrant advocates. “If you are going to impose this kind of terror on our state and on our people, we are going to tax you for the pain and harm that you’re causing.”
This comes as the fatal shootings of protesters Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse, and Renee Macklin Good, a mother of three, have generated intense backlash in spaces as varied as professional basketball games, social media influencers’ baking feeds and Trump voter surveys.
Democratic members of Congress from the Inland Empire on Wednesday called for the removal of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, citing what they described as aggressive and deadly immigration enforcement across the country. They’re also demanding immediate reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol enforcement.
At a news conference outside ICE’s field office in San Bernardino, Democratic Reps. Pete Aguilar, Raul Ruiz and Mark Takano, joined by immigrant rights advocates, called for Noem’s removal or impeachment and outlined a series of reforms. Those demands included limits on enforcement operations, greater transparency at detention facilities and accountability for agents involved in shootings.
Immigrant rights advocates who joined the news conference said federal immigration enforcement under the Trump administration has fueled fear in working-class and immigrant communities, while diverting public resources away from healthcare, education and worker protections. “Instead of investing in things that would actually improve people’s lives, this administration is using billions of our tax dollars to sponsor an agenda of brutality and violence against the most vulnerable,” said Yunuen Trujillo, director of workers’ rights and labor legal services with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.