Berkeley says “no” to federal immigration detainers | Berkeleyside

In a surprising twist, ask the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to decline requests from U.S. immigration officials to apply more stringent detention rules to arrested individuals depending on citizenship status. Advocates in attendance said the council made a landmark policy decision believed to be the most comprehensive and definitive in the nation as far as refusing altogether to cooperate with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program to detain and potentially deport non-citizens who are arrested. The decision will, health at least initially, mind have a limited impact given that the vast majority of these individuals ultimately are turned over to county agencies that do cooperate with the feds. Advocates said they believe, however, that the decision will have a ripple effect throughout the state to convince other jurisdictions to take a similar stand. The city has been working since last year to revise its policy

Los Angeles County sheriff’s office sued over immigration holds

Rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit on Friday against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, accusing it of unlawfully detaining immigrants at the behest of the federal government for days beyond when they should have been released. The suit highlights the detention of a British filmmaker and legal immigrant, Duncan Roy, who spent 89 days in jail because of an erroneous federal immigration hold that left him unable to post bail, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit is the latest effort by rights groups to turn California into a so-called sanctuary state that protects unauthorized immigrants. That is in stark contrast to states such as Arizona that are engaged in crackdowns on illegal immigration which have sparked fears of racial profiling. An immigration hold is a request by the federal government that they would like someone to remain in custody so they can seek deportation.

Immigration Questions for Tonight’s Debate

Immigration reform has been on the national agenda for more than ten years, and it is a paramount issue for millions of voters.  On Tuesday, a question was finally asked of both presidential candidates about their views on this defining issue of our time.  The discussion was too brief and frankly raised more questions than…

Jornaleros presentan demanda por detenciones de inmigrantes

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ICE Inmates in California Claim They Were Denied Bail

Tens of thousands of inmates who should have been eligible for release from sheriff’s custody allegedly remain detained for days or even months because of immigration-related holds. Such is the claim made by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, which is now filing a federal lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. The ACLU said it will file the federal lawsuit Friday challenging Sheriff Baca’s ability to detain arrestees solely on the basis of an immigration hold when they are eligible for bail or other forms of release. Plaintiff Duncan Roy — a British film director — said he was held in jail for nearly three months because of a hold filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even though he tried multiple times to post bail. “The sheriff says, he’s on an ICE hold, and the ICE people say, well, he’s got to make bond,”

Lawsuit: ACLU, NDLON, British director Duncan Roy to accuse LA County Sheriff of illegally detaining him

A British man says he was detained unlawfully for 89 days in Men’s Central Jail in Downtown Los Angeles on an immigration hold that should have never been in place. Duncan Roy, a Malibu filmmaker, says he repeatedly tried to bail out of jail after an arrest for suspicion of misdemeanor extortion. But the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department wouldn’t let him post bail for almost three months because immigration authorities had asked the department to hold him while they investigated his immigration status.  Roy was in the country legally.

The Jobs Numbers: Never Mind the Quantity, Check the Quality

It’s heartening to see Friday’s news that the unemployment rate edged down to 7.8% last month. But let’s not get too caught up in celebrations. We need to look beyond the sheer quantity of jobs being created and into the quality of those jobs – something neither presidential candidate seems very interested in talking about.

Buried in the Friday’s jobs report is evidence that a disturbing trend continues: the creation of more part-time jobs, many of them low-wage, taking the place of solid middle-class careers. Positions in sectors like manufacturing continued to decline last month, replaced by new jobs in the healthcare, warehousing and retail industries. A lot of these jobs don’t allow workers to rack up enough hours to earn healthcare benefits – let alone break out of poverty.

Mistrust in California – NYTimes.com

Gov. Jerry Brown of California dropped the ball on Sunday when he vetoed the Trust Act, a bill aimed at keeping harmless immigrants out of the deportation dragnet — not out of misguided compassion, order but to bolster public safety. The police in immigrant communities depend on the cooperation of witnesses and victims; when local officers become federal immigration deputies, fear overrides trust and crime festers. Mr. Brown’s late-night veto bitterly disappointed immigrant advocates, law-enforcement officials, religious leaders and others who had urged him to take a stand against pressure from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is deporting people at a blistering pace and wants to keep doing so. The agency’s Se Communities program has turned local police into handmaidens of federal immigration policy; people arrested are automatically subjected to immigration checks, leading to the deportations of tens of thousands who have no criminal records or are only minor offenders.