The Los Angeles City Council made a preemptive move today to ensure city employees resist efforts by President Donald Trump to follow through with a campaign promise to build a registry to keep track of Muslims.
The City Council advanced a motion asking the city attorney to prepare an ordinance barring city employees from assisting with “any program to register individuals based on their religion or spiritual faith, or that would result in discrimination on those bases.”
Councilman Paul Krekorian, who authored the motion, said Trump’s campaign vow to create a Muslim registry calls to mind shameful chapters in history, including the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
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While Trump has not taken any steps so far to institute a registry of Muslims, Krekorian said the president has so far moved forward on many more extreme promises, including trying to preventing the entry of immigrants and refugees from some predominantly Muslim countries.
Since Trump took office, “again and again this administration has taken actions that we would have thought was unimaginable,” Krekorian said.
“I think it’s important that we be prepared to draw a very clear line that the city of Los Angeles — our public officials, our public employees — that our city government will not participate in the unconstitutional deprivation of people’s rights based on their religion,” Krekorian said.
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It was unclear how city employees may be asked or instructed to take part in a hypothetical registry program, and which types of employees. Krekorian said the council approved just a motion today, so the specifics of the ordinance must still be hashed out in committee.
He said city officials may look at, among other things, whether the city possesses “bodies information that needs to be protected” from being used in a registry program.
The motion also calls for reports on hate crime activity and efforts by the city to protect Muslim Americans and other minorities.
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