Los Angeles City Council Votes on TRUST Act

National Day Laborer Organizing Network Statement

CONTACT: Chris Newman, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

LOS ANGELES –The Los Angeles City Council votes on the TRUST Act today following incorrect claims made earlier this week by some sheriffs that the measure conflicts with federal law.

Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), released the following statement:

“Sherriff Lee Baca’s profound misunderstanding of the law and his unwillingness to join the rest of us in an earnest policy discussion is proof of the need for the TRUST Act.”

Press release on letter from law professors and deans to Gov. Brown refuting sheriffs’ claims below

Prominent Law Professors and Deans Endorse TRUST Act,
Refute Some Sheriffs’ Incorrect Claims that Measure Conflicts with Federal Law
Support for Legislation Reaches Critical Mass as Key Law Enforcement Officials Back Bill to Limit Immigrant Detentions

SACRAMENTO – Support for the TRUST Act, the California legislation billed as the “Anti-Arizona” immigration policy, continues to grow across a broad coalition urging California Gov. Jerry Brown to sign the bill into law.

Top law professors from around the country issued a letter to Gov. Brown today supporting the legislation and refuting the principal argument against the TRUST Act(AB 1081 – Ammiano). The letter, signed by 31 professors, explains that federal requests to local law enforcement officials to detain undocumented immigrants for additional time are not orders carrying the force of law, as some sheriffs have claimed. In fact, the Professors explain, these “hold” requests are completely optional, and California’s effort to limit them is entirely within its power. Pledges made by some Sheriffs to defy the legislation if it is signed into law have no legal basis.

Meanwhile, two crucial new law enforcement leaders endorsed the legislation this week, including a past President of the State Sheriff’s Association. The endorsement highlights divisions within the Association, the sole entity which has registered opposition to the bill. The division emerged as a wide coalition continues to grow in support of the bill.

The TRUST Act has captured national attention. It would rebuild community confidence in law enforcement – and save local resources – by limiting unfair detentions for deportation purposes in local jails often caused by the federal government’s “Secure Communities” deportation program.

Key points made to the Governor in the law professors’ letter include:

• The primary opposition argument against the TRUST Act - that immigration detainers are mandatory orders - is without merit
• Immigration detainers raise Due Process and Fourth Amendment concerns
• The TRUST Act would support Equal Protection guarantees under the Constitution.

While the California State Sheriffs’ Association remains opposed, letters of support from individual law enforcement leaders have poured into the Governor’s office this week, including from Santa Clara County Sherriff Laurie Smith and San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr. (They join Oakland Police Chief Jordan and Palo Alto Police Burns.) Other new supporters of the measure include the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus; the California Legislative Black Caucus; the Califomia Latino Legislative Caucus, and the California Legislative Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Caucus, who sent a joint letter to the Governor earlier this week.

Under the TRUST Act, local law enforcement would have clear guidelines on when not to submit to immigration hold requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while allowing holds for those convicted or charged with serious or violent felonies. Cook County and Chicago have far more expansive legislation already in place.

In California alone, nearly 80,000 immigrants have been deported since the program’s inception. As of July 2012, cumulative data shows that 69 percent of deportations were of people not convicted of a crime or convicted of only minor offenses, including traffic violations, selling food without a permit, and others. A recent report showed that California spends $65 million annually to participate in the program.

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Legal Analysis of immigration detainers and the constitutionality of their enforcement:

"Administrative detainers are unsupported by sworn evidence or probable cause, and they are not reviewed by a neutral magistrate. Local detention based solely on a detainer from ICE is no more jusitfied under the law than detention based on a postcard from ICE."
- Michael J. Wishnie, William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

"Without the TRUST Act, individual local police will, in practical effect, be entrusted with the discretion to make federal immigration policy on the ground by deciding who is arrested and brought into contact with the federal immigration enforcement system. Federal prosecutorial discretion can only have a limited effect in detecting and eliminating any racial and ethnic profiling that occurs in the initial arrest context."
- Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law at UCLA Law School.

"DHS has made it mandatory that all counties participate in Secure Communities by sharing fingerprint information, but the requests for ICE holds have never been mandatory and are just that, requests."
- Allison Davenport, Clinical Instructor & Lecturer International Human Rights Law Clinic University of California, Berkeley School of Law

California TRUST Act, DC Bill Set New 'Commonsense' Trend 

7.10.2012. Washington, DC. 

Days after the California senate passed a "Post- Arizona SB1070” bill called the TRUST act, and on the day the Washington DC council is signed a similar bill (Bill 19-585) into law, more than twelve cities launched efforts to develop local policies that restore the trust in law enforcement damaged by the Department of Homeland Security's coercive “Secure Communities” deportation program. Groups are calling for an end to the program and urging local officials to join a trend of municipalities led by Cook County, IL, California, and Washington, DC to counter the criminalization of immigrants, to protect against racial profiling, and to prevent the wrongful extended incarceration of residents for the sole purpose of deportation by setting commonsense standards for how to respond to immigration authority's voluntary hold requests.

Mary Rose Wilcox, Pastor Stewart, Puente, ACLU Cite Pending Humanitarian Crisis, Call for Suspension of Secure Communities, Termination of All 287(g) Agreements in Arizona

PHOENIX, 6/27/2012 -- In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in the Department of Justice SB1070 case that allowed section 2B, the racial profiling section of the law to move forward, more than one hundred Arizona-based organizations and notable individuals sent a letter calling on the state's former governor, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, to end DHS' collaboration with Arizona to prevent a pending "humanitarian crisis."

OIG Report on Secure Communities Deportation Program Heightens Controversy over Failed Program. Advocates Decry report as “window dressing,” and renew calls: “End SCOMM. Don’t Mend it.”

04.06.2012. Washington, DC.

 Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General issued two reports on the much-maligned “Secure Communities” deportation program. The reports, which come after two years of mounting opposition to Secure Communities from state and local officials, congressional representatives, advocates, and faith groups, were quickly dismissed by advocates as inadequate to address the program’s failings.

Instead, the groups conclude that the reports are proof that ICE cannot reform itself and that there is no suitable solution for the program other than its termination.

“In an attempt to justify the program, the reports inadvertently admit that ICE has mutated S-Comm into an overreaching dragnet. Secure Communities was sold as a public safety program but has since proven the opposite. The OIG reports confirm that when it became clear that over 50% of deportations fell outside the program’s original scope, ICE changed its categories and is now trumping minor offenses as its new priority,” explains Sarahí Uribe of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “These reports only strengthen calls for the program's complete termination.  DHS refuses to take responsibility for the program’s failues. DHS cannot continue to stick it's head in the sand while spreading the program’s dangerous consequences."  

Sunita Patel of the Center for Constitutional Rights says “The Inspector General reports are wholly insufficient. The reports ignore the enormous body of evidence that Secure Communities is a failure. Instead, the IG offers window dressing for a program that can’t be dressed up. The only suitable solution is to terminate Secure Communities and shift priorities to repair the harm it has caused.”

Sonia Lin of the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic adds, “The fact that DHS expects the public to accept this report as reform is an outrage. It does little to address the real-life impact of Secure Communities on immigrant communities. Not only does Secure Communities undermine community policing efforts in jurisdictions seeking to work with immigrant communities, it also facilitates racial profiling in jurisdictions such as Maricopa County to violate the rights of non-citizens and drive immigrants out.  After so much pain has been caused by Secure Communities, its victims deserve to see the program terminated.”

More than two years ago, CCR, NDLON, and the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic began still-on-going FOIA litigation to uncover the truth about the rapidly expanding deportation program.

Since that time, the program has been mired in controversy for deliberately misleading the public and for devastating trust in law enforcement due to its wide-reach that has been known to ensnare even victims of crimes. The program’s implementation created such a chilling effect on law enforcement relations that parents in the sexual abuse tragedy at Miramonte school in Los Angeles cited the Sheriff’s participation in Secure Communities as a primary reason they did not seek law enforcement help to protect their children.   

Last August, in an attempt to quell the growing criticism of the program, including the governors of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts who attempted to opt-out of Secure Communities, DHS established a taskforce whose members eventually resigned in response of recommendations similar to the IG report they found to be completely insufficient. 

Evidence chronicled in two national reports; Restoring Community published by a national coalition and Secure Communities by the Numbers published by the Warren Institute have led to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus calling for a moratorium program and a broader chorus calling for its termination.

Background:

“Restoring Trust” A National Report on Secure Communities

Secure Communities By the Numbers – Warren Institute Report

The DHS Inspector General Report can be found here

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DHS Inspector General Report: Operations of Secure Communities