For Immediate Release // Please Excuse Cross Posting

January 10, 2017

Contact: Armando Carmona, 323-250-3018; armando@ndlon.org;

Coalition Provides Blueprint on How LA County Should Protect Immigrants

Groups Release Conclusions of Report on LASD Practices & Call on Sheriff and County Supervisors to Not Be Complicit in Trump’s Deportation Efforts

Los Angeles, CA — On Tuesday, a broad-based coalition of labor, faith, immigrant and civil rights groups called on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to protect the County’s immigrants in the face of expected anti-immigrant policies of the incoming Trump Administration.

More than thirty groups joined together and submitted recommendations in advance of a meeting of the Board of Supervisors in which Sheriff Jim McDonnell and other County officials will testify regarding existing policies and expected or necessary modifications to protect immigrants (see attachment below).

“LA County must not feed people into Trump’s deportation pipeline. LA County should be better than that,” said Emi MacLean, attorney at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), one of the authors of the recommendations. “We will all need to resist at every turn, and we will need to know that local and state leaders are not aligned with the hate-mongers who want to exploit fears and destroy families and communities.”

The blueprint of recommendations called on the Board of Supervisors, the governing body of LA County, to:

  • Endorse the California Values Act (SB 54, De Leon), the Due Process for All Act (AB 6, Bonta), and Assembly Bill 3 (Hueso), introduced at the state legislature to protect California’s immigrants;

  • Continue efforts to establish a program to provide legal representation for all immigrants in deportation proceedings, prioritizing those who are detained and at most immediate risk of deportation;

  • Prohibit the Sheriff’s Department from participating in federal immigration enforcement;

  • Protect personal information of County residents from disclosure to the federal government for purposes of immigration enforcement or the creation of a Muslim registry;

  • Establish a County oversight mechanism to monitor immigration enforcement actions affecting County residents;

  • Oppose any registry based on religious identity or national origin;

  • Re-affirm the County’s commitment to enforce wage theft and labor violations regardless of immigration status; and

  • Commit to fight any effort to strip federal funding in response to County policies defending and protecting immigrants.

“The County and Sheriff’s Department should immediately take concrete steps to protect residents from the dire economic, emotional, and social impacts of deportations by not using any resources, facilities, or personnel to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC).

Today, the ICE Out of LA Coalition, one of the authors of the recommendations to the Supervisors, also released the executive summary of A Toxic Entanglement: The Human Rights Consequences of LASD-ICE Collaboration (see attachment below). This report, prepared in collaboration with the International Human Rights Clinic at the UCLA School of Law, is due to be released in full on Thursday and reviews the Sheriff Department’s 20-year history of entanglement with federal immigration enforcement.

“Sheriff McDonnell should stop collaborating with ICE. This collaboration is even more troubling on the eve of the inauguration of a president who has shown utter disregard for the fundamental rights of immigrants,” said Felicia Gomez, Policy Coordinator for the California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC), a member of the ICE Out of LA Coalition which authored the report. “If there was ever a time to say, ‘enough,’ now is that time.

The Sheriff’s Department currently transfers over 70 people per month, on average, to ICE custody for deportation, including an average of 13 legal permanent residents. ICE also has full access to the County’s jails and databases and interviews people in LASD custody.

The rally was hosted by the Los Angeles Coalition for Universal Representation and the ICE Out of LA coalition***

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Executive_Summary_HR_Report_LASD-ICE_Collab.pdf
Memo_to_LA_County_CEO_from_Immigrant_Rights_Coalition-FINAL.pdf

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