Los Angeles Times (California)
By Kate Linthicum
April 9, 2015
Kern
County Sheriff Donny Youngblood was hiking along the bluffs overlooking
Bakersfield last year when he got a call from Gov. Jerry Brown.
"What are you trying to do to me?" the sheriff said Brown asked him.
"What are you trying to do to me?" Youngblood shot back.
A
Republican in one of the reddest counties in the state, Youngblood had
riled the Democratic governor when he announced that his department
would defy the Trust Act,
a law signed by Brown that restricts cooperation between local law
enforcement officials and federal immigration agents.
The
sheriff said the law put him in an impossible position, stuck between a
federal program that relies on local jails to hold inmates who might be
deportable and a state
law that says inmates in jail for low-level crimes can't be detained
past their release dates.
That
kind of stance has won him enemies in California's immigrant-rights
movement and frequent comparisons to Joe Arpaio, the brash Arizona
sheriff notorious for his workplace
raids and ID checks.
Youngblood,
64, said he isn't trying to make headlines. The Vietnam War veteran,
who grew up working in the potato sheds around Bakersfield, said he's
happier hiking or
riding his quarter horse, Sparky.
He
lives in the same modest suburban neighborhood where he grew up, on
Bakersfield's now heavily Latino Eastside, and bristles at accusations
that his policies encourage
racial profiling, pointing out that a third of his deputies are Latino.
As
he drove through town on a recent morning, past oil derricks, gated
golf courses and strip malls lined with Mexican restaurants and
carnicerias, Youngblood outlined
his philosophy on immigration.
The
federal government should start enforcing immigration laws — or write
new ones, he said. He criticized President Obama's new deportation
policies, which say most immigrants
who have not committed serious crimes and have fewer than three minor
crimes on their records should not be priorities for removal.
"You're
in this country illegally and we're going to give you three bites of
the apple? That's three victims!" Youngblood said. "If you commit
crimes, you oughta go."
Youngblood's
defiant views have made him a rare voice of dissent in what has become
the nation's most welcoming state for people in the country illegally.
At
a time when the Democrat-controlled Legislature has moved to allow such
immigrants to drive, practice law and pay in-state college tuition —
passing 26 immigrant-friendly
laws last year alone, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures — Youngblood is an outlier.
He
has largely refused to sign paperwork that immigrant crime victims need
to apply for U visas, which allow some victims to stay in the country
lawfully. As president
of the Major County Sheriffs' Assn., a national advocacy group, he has
asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to share data with
police so patrol officers can determine whether the person they stop may
be in the country illegally.
Youngblood
said his department began following the Trust Act last year on the
advice of county attorneys. But he said he reserves the right to violate
it.
"If
ICE calls me and says, 'You have someone there who has committed this
heinous crime, and we really need you to hold them,' I'm probably going
to hold them," he said.
Youngblood's
approach has been celebrated by those who believe, as he does, that
Obama has been too lax on immigration enforcement.
And
it has made him the target of activists who accuse him of setting his
own immigration policy and of sowing fear among the estimated 66,000
immigrants in this rural
county illegally.
"People
are scared," said Lorena Lara, an immigrant who was brought to the
country illegally by her farmworker father and who now works for a
community organizing group
called Faith in Action Kern County. "They're afraid to call the police
because they think they might be deported."
Immigrant
advocates have been pushing for more protections and political
representation in the Central Valley since Cesar Chavez launched the
modern immigrant-rights movement
in the grape fields here half a century ago. In recent years, Kern
County has been the scene of tense standoffs between protesters on
opposing sides of the immigration debate, including a well-publicized
shouting match outside the Bakersfield office of Republican
Rep. Kevin McCarthy in 2013.
The
majority of Kern County residents are Latino, but it wasn't until the
1990s that a Latino was elected to the Bakersfield City Council or the
Kern County Board of Supervisors.
(Political scientists point out that Latinos make up only about a third
of registered voters and tend to turn out for elections at much lower
rates than their white counterparts.)
Youngblood
says his views are in line with the conservative voters who have put
him in office three times since 2006. Their ideas about immigration and
government couldn't
be more different than the electorate in Los Angeles, he added, even
though Kern borders Los Angeles County.
"We are right-of-the-center on things," he said. "I always say Kern is a county that ought to be in Arizona."
Not
far from Youngblood's home, Jose and his wife live in a run-down gray
bungalow. There's a large portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the
living room and a dirt yard
out front. On a recent evening, as the couple cleaned up after a long
day in the fields, a locomotive screeched on nearby tracks.
The
couple came here from Mexico nine years ago to find work. Jose, who
didn't want to give his full name because he said he fears retaliation
from the sheriff, now earns
$9 an hour picking almonds and oranges. He made $9 a day as a bus
driver back home.
Jose
said that in 2013 he and his wife were attacked by armed robbers while
they slept. The thieves stole everything of value and beat Jose for an
hour, shattering his
ribs.
Organizers
with the United Farm Workers encouraged Jose to apply for a U visa,
saying he had a slam-dunk case. The crime was sufficiently severe, they
said, and he had
cooperated with the sheriff's deputies who responded to the 911 call.
To
apply for the visa, immigrants must present a declaration from the law
enforcement agency that investigated the crime saying that they were or
will be helpful.
The
Bakersfield Police Department, like most agencies in the nation, has a
policy of signing all U visa declarations. Youngblood doesn't.
Out of 160 requests between 2012 and 2014, he signed just four, according to Sheriff's Department records.
"I
think he has something personal against Latinos," said Jose, who prays
that Youngblood "will find it in his heart to reconsider."
"We are at his mercy," he said.
Youngblood said he hasn't signed most declarations because he doesn't believe in the premise of the law.
"If you have a system that rewards you for being a victim, it's subject to abuse," he said.
The
sheriff's stance has won him supporters, such as Ellen Fluhart, 70, a
retired rancher who lives in the northeastern part of the county. She
said Youngblood's decision
not to sign U visa petitions "is his prerogative."
Fluhart
said Youngblood's views are refreshing in a state where politicians
have passed bills that she says encourage unlawful immigration.
"They broke the law," Fluhart said. "They shouldn't be rewarded."
Tensions
between law enforcement and immigrant laborers in this community go
back decades, said Gonzalo Santos, a sociologist at Cal State
Bakersfield. In the 1930s, sheriff's
officials deputized farm owners so they could use their badges to shut
down labor protests, Santos said. Some farmworkers were killed.
Now the department is intervening in immigration matters, said Santos, who called Youngblood "a rogue sheriff."
Youngblood
argues that Brown and the Legislature were interfering when they passed
the Trust Act. Conflicting state and federal mandates put sheriffs like
him "in the
crosshairs," he said.
"It's unfair, because the law is so unclear," Youngblood said. "Really what we're looking for is clear law, clear direction."
Despite his strong views, he insists he isn't an ideologue.
Inside
his wood-paneled office at sheriff's headquarters, he keeps a portrait
of former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger next to photos of
meetings he had with Obama
and Vice President Joe Biden.
A
framed picture of his horse hangs above the electric fireplace, and
several pictures of his friend, Bakersfield native Merle Haggard, are
prominently placed on a chest.
"If
everybody thought the same, this would be a pretty boring place,"
Youngblood said. "This is where I learned my behaviors and my thoughts
and my beliefs. None of which
make me right.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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