About Me

My photo
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

Translate

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Los Angeles County Rethinks Deportation of Inmates

AP (California)
By Ian Lovett
September 23, 2015

Federal immigration officials, who had been banished from Los Angeles County jails earlier this year at a time when many cities here were working to protect immigrants from deportation, will be invited back in — with some limits — under a new a policy that will allow them to interview and identify some inmates for deportation.

The change may reflect a broader shift in California, which has been at the forefront of efforts to protect immigrants — even those convicted of minor crimes — from deportation. A 2013 state law called the Trust Act prohibits local governments from turning immigrants who have committed petty crimes over to federal immigration officials, a policy that was seen as a rebuke to the Obama administration’s deportation efforts. Major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have largely stopped cooperating with federal immigration officials in jails, and opposition in the state to the Secure Communities program — an Obama administration initiative that relied on local law enforcement to help with deportment efforts — contributed to that program’s end last year.

But sentiments have been shifting toward stricter enforcement, after two high-profile murders in the state this year for which illegal immigrants with criminal records face charges. One was the gunshot death of Kathryn Steinle at a tourist pier in San Francisco, said to have been committed by an undocumented immigrant who was released from county jail days earlier. The other was the rape and murder of Marilyn Pharis during a housebreak in Santa Maria, a city on the central California coast, for which two men are charged, one of them an illegal immigrant with an arrest record in this country but no felony convictions.

As recently as four months ago, the Los Angeles County government voted to end a plan that offered immigration officials a permanent place in its jails. But that will not end their presence in the jail system: Under the new policy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be permitted to interview inmates who have committed serious crimes, as well as all inmates who are being processed for release. In addition, the sheriff’s department will give immigration officials a seven-day notice before some inmates are released.

In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors outlining the program, Jim McDonnell, the county sheriff, noted the need to balance public safety with maintaining the trust of one of the most “immigrant-rich communities in the world.”

The letter said, “Serving the community, reducing crime, and promoting public safety is immeasurably harder if law enforcement fails to maintain relationships with — and the trust of — our community.”

Still, immigrant rights advocates responded in anger Wednesday at what they considered a reversal of course.

“In order for there to be trust, there has to be a firewall between the federal immigration agents and the sheriff’s department,” said Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “Does the sheriff run the jails or does I.C.E.? He’s saying they both do. He’s giving them full access to the jails.”

Ms. Salas said that in some cases, Sheriff McDonnell has constructed a policy that is even more generous than what Immigration and Customs Enforcement requested. For instance, instead of 48-hour notifications before certain inmates are released from custody, the sheriff’s department will give immigration officials a week’s notice.

But the sheriff’s department will also advise inmates who are flagged for the federal agency of their right to legal counsel, something advocacy groups had requested. And federal agents will be able to use the county’s databases.

Ms. Salas and other immigrant rights advocates accused the sheriff of bowing to political pressure from Donald J. Trump and others, who have put a spotlight on immigration this summer. But the murders of Ms. Steinle and Ms. Pharis have helped raise new voices in California — including prominent Democrats like Senator Dianne Feinstein and law enforcement officials like the Santa Maria police chief — in favor of more cooperation with immigration officials to help keep dangerous criminals off the streets.

Los Angeles County supervisors offered mixed responses to the sheriff’s policy. Michael Antonovich, one of the board’s most conservative members, expressed support, while Hilda Solis, who voted in May to remove the federal agency’s office from the jails, said that the plan was cause for concern.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

No comments: