A bill that would increase penalties for child sex buyers in California could die before getting a vote amid concerns from state finance officials over the costs of housing additional prison inmates. 

California lawmakers last week placed Senate Bill 1414 on “suspense file,” a list of bills that are expected to cost the state a significant amount of money, during an Aug. 7 meeting. The bill will either advance or be killed without public discussion in a special Thursday hearing.

“When we pursued this to prevent children from being trafficked, bought and sold in the state of California, we never thought in a million years it would be this difficult,” Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove, who introduced the legislation and is its primary sponsor, told Fox News Digital.

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The bill would allow prosecutors to charge adults charged with soliciting minors with a felony. If the minor is younger than 16, or younger than 18 but a victim of human trafficking, the defendant would face up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The bill would also require adults convicted multiple times of soliciting a minor at least 10 years younger than them to register annually as a sex offender. Under the current law, soliciting or purchasing a minor for sex is a misdemeanor punishable by a minimum of two days in jail and up to a year or a fine.  

During last week’s Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing, a representative for the California Department of Finance spoke in opposition to the bill. 

“California has successfully remained below the court-ordered prison population cap and has even made strides towards closing prisons, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings,” Millie Yan, a Finance Department official, told lawmakers. “However, increases to the (prison) population threaten the state’s ability to continue making progress in right-sizing California’s prison system.”

The annual costs associated with increasing the prison population by one inmate can range from $10,000 to tens of thousands of dollars, she said. 

“We also note that similar legislation that expands the list of individuals required to register as sex offenders has estimated to result in costs to the Department of Justice in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Yan. 

Grove and other lawmakers have dismissed financial concerns, arguing the potential cost pales in comparison to combating a significant problem across the state. 

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California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California on May 2, 2023.  (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

“We’ve spent $24 billion on the homeless population, and it got worse,” Grove said of California’s efforts to address its growing homeless population. “And they’re worried about spending tens of thousands of dollars on the prison population to lock individuals up who are buying children for sex?”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom supports the bill, his office said. The governor’s office pointed to a Monday social media post when contacted by Fox News Digital. 

“It’s standard practice for DOF to oppose bills that have a fiscal impact when not addressed via the budget,” the post states. “It’s NOT a position on policy or merits. The Governor SUPPORTS this bill.”

California state Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher said the issue of child sex trafficking shouldn’t be a “financial question.”

“It should be a right and wrong question,” he told Fox News Digital, while noting the billions of dollars California has spent to fix homelessness and the ballooning costs for a proposed high-speed rail project. “They are funding all of those things fully… but they don’t have money to make sure that johns buying children go to prison. If that’s the case, their priorities are seriously misplaced.”

Millie Yan, a California Finance Department official, spoke in opposition to SB 1414 during an Aug. 7 state Assembly hearing. Gov. Gavin Newsom supports the bill, his office said.  (California Assembly Appropriations Committee)

He also urged Newsom to take charge as the executive of the state and push for similar policies. 

In addition to financial concerns, Grove said she was forced to make amendments to SB 1414 by the Democratic-controlled Senate Public Safety Committee. 

That resulted in the exclusion of 16 and 17-year-olds from the protection provided, she said. These individuals are now required to prove that they are victims of trafficking in order for the perpetrator to be charged.

Fox News Digital has reached out to state Sen. Aisha Wahab, chair of the committee. 

President Biden joked about his upcoming exit from the White House during an event at the West Wing of the White House on Wednesday, telling a group of content creators that he is “looking for a job.”

The White House held a Creator Economy Conference on Wednesday, playing host to social media influences and other content creators. He said in his brief remarks that they can play a key role curbing partisanship in U.S. politics.

“It’s never been this bad before. I don’t mean the press, I mean the way we treat each other in politics,” Biden said. “It’s getting incredibly difficult to count the number of lies people hear.”

“They don’t know what to believe. They don’t know what to count on, but you break through,” he told the creators. “And that’s why I invited you to the White House, because I’m looking for a job.”

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Biden’s humor comes despite rumors that he remains bitter toward top Democrats who forced him to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election. Biden is particularly frustrated with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, reports say.

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The Democratic Party is planning a massive celebratory sendoff for Biden at the DNC in Chicago next week. The very party members who forced him to drop out now hail him as an elder statesman.

President Biden has expressed frustration in private after Democratic Party heavyweights, including Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and even former President Obama encouraged him to drop out of the race.  (Getty Images)

“President Joe Biden is a patriotic American who has always put our country first. His legacy of vision, values and leadership make him one of the most consequential Presidents in American history,” Pelosi wrote in July just moments after Biden announced his withdrawal.

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“With love and gratitude to President Biden for always believing in the promise of America and giving people the opportunity to reach their fulfillment,” she added. “God blessed America with Joe Biden’s greatness and goodness.”

Biden will deliver a major address on the first night of the DNC in Chicago. (Susan Walsh/AP)

The schedule for the DNC reveals how Democrats plan to formalize the transfer from Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden will deliver his address on Monday night after Hillary Clinton and others. Two other Democratic former presidents will take the stage the following nights, with Obama headlining Tuesday and Bill Clinton on Wednesday, followed by Gov. Tim Walz. 

Harris will take the stage on Thursday, completing the transition.

As her junior year of high school came to a close in 2023, Tamara Gisiger’s history teacher tasked the class with a research project of their choosing.

A then-17-year-old Gisiger narrowed in on what she called an “underground, hurtful and dark part of history that just isn’t talked about” — the Mexican repatriation that took place in the 1930s amid the Great Depression.

The repatriation involved deporting 1 million people with Mexican heritage, 60% of whom were American-born citizens, and was one of the largest deportations in American history, according to Gisiger, who lives in New York City.

The epicenter took place in Los Angeles, where up to 75,000 Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were deported by train — oftentimes at Union Station — in one year, Gisiger, now 19, said in a phone interview, reciting the dates and numbers off the top of her head.

Gisiger’s research has involved contact with descendants of those deported and eventually led to a panel at the United Nations’ Hispanic Leadership Summit last December. It could soon lead to a new law in California to create a statue memorializing a portion of history that politicians, academics and community leaders say is at risk of happening again.

“It’s so important that [the bill] is happening now,” said Gisiger, who is of Mexican and Swiss descent. “Next year will be the 95th anniversary of the start of the Mexican repatriation .…Hopefully, the statue and educating people can stop history from repeating itself.”

The bill, which faces a hearing Wednesday, is authored by Sens. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) and Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), both of whom felt driven to commemorate the lives affected by the repatriation.

Becker said he met with Gisiger and her family and discovered upon reading her research paper how much he didn’t know about that time in history. He tagged in Gonzalez, who said she also did not learn much about the repatriation while attending public school in California.

Gonzalez, whose mother is a Mexican immigrant, said that the statue is important to combat “political rhetoric that basically is trying to bring back that history.”

Agricultural workers of Mexican descent await deportation in 1950 in California.

(Los Angeles Times)

“Let’s be very clear: [Former President] Trump has promised mass deportations in this election cycle, even mass deportations of people who have American children,” Gonzalez said. “He’s bringing back this generational trauma that so many of us have pushed aside.”

Trump has put fears about immigration at the center of his campaign and suggested using the National Guard to target between 15 million and 20 million people for deportation. He’s said he intends to launch “the largest mass deportation in the history of our country.”

Republican Assemblymember Tom Lackey of Palmdale said that although he supports the bill, he felt it was a “very unfair characterization” to compare the repatriation with current day immigration.

“The issue of illegal immigration is a very emotional issue,” Lackey said. “I think that sending people back, and the way that they did it in that day, is much different. Those are people that did not break any rules or any laws by being here.”

Lackey described the memorial as an opportunity to show how “this country has made mistakes in its developments.”

“I think it’s very, very healthy to acknowledge poor decision making and things that were done that shouldn’t have been done so that we don’t repeat them,” he said.

The statue’s planning process would involve creating a nonprofit organization to oversee fundraising and development of a memorial in L.A., which supporters hope will be ready in time for either the 2026 World Cup or 2028 Olympics. The cost has not yet been determined, but supporters of the bill say it will be funded by private donations and not state dollars.

“The fact that there are some major events coming is important because, again, the whole goal of this is for people to learn about this part of history, acknowledge this part of our history, because that’s the only way we can try to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Becker said.

As for location, Gisiger envisions the memorial’s placement at either Union Station or a green space near Olvera Street. There’s no set design for the memorial, but Gisiger hopes it can be carved by a Mexican sculptor and show how families were separated due to the mass deportations by train.

“Through the statue, we need to be able to give respect, courage and honor to all the families of the Mexican Americans who need to hear that their family sacrifices were all worth it,” she said.

Efforts — and lawsuits — have been mounted in the past to address the repatriation’s impact in California. One of the most recent attempts came in 2005, when California issued a formal apology and required that a plaque be erected in L.A. The plaque was unveiled in February 2012 near the La Plaza de Cultura y Artes.

The statue that would be created from Becker and Gonzalez’s bill, however, could result in a more robust tribute and become an act of restorative justice, according to Kevin Johnson, dean of UC Davis’ law school and professor of public interest law.

“It also could help educate the community about what happened and how it affected people during a time about how they identified themselves,” Johnson said.

Martin Cabrera’s late grandfather Emilio Cabrera, who was born in Wilmington, didn’t dwell too much on the day he was deported in 1931 at about 12 years old. He was expelled via train, but was able to later return to the U.S.

Emilio Cabrera and his wife Maria Asuncion in 1934. Although a U.S. citizen, Cabrera was deported to Mexico at age 12, but later returned.

(Family photo)

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“I couldn’t understand it as a person growing up — how can he be deported when he was born in the United States? But it was what was taking place at the time. There were a lot of comments that said Mexicans are taking all the jobs,” Cabrera said from his office in Chicago.

Emilio, who died in 2005, refrained from contemplating the past, because, for him, there was too much work to be done, his grandson said.

“It was something that happened, and you deal with it and you keep working,” Cabrera said. “And that’s the one thing he instilled in us: hard work ethic. There’s always challenges in life.”

Cabrera hopes the statue will contain an uplifting message, perhaps one that can pay homage to the resilience of the Latino community in light of his grandfather’s legacy.

“That’s what I think is the key message,” he said, “that there are no limits on what we can do.”