ImmigrationCalifornia passes “Anti-Arizona” immigration measure
The California State Senate last Thursday passed Assembly Bill 1081 — some call it the Anti-Arizona law — under which local police officers would be limited to refer only those individuals convicted of serious felonies to immigration agencies; police officers would no longer have authority to detain lower-level offenders on their undocumented status
California law limits police in verifying a person's immigration status // Source: ivn.us
The California State Senate last Thursday passed Assembly Bill 1081 — some call it the Anti-Arizona law — which limits local law enforcement to act on the immigration status of an individual.
Under the new law, local police officers would be limited to refer only those individuals convicted of serious felonies to immigration agencies. Police officers would no longer have authority to detain lower-level offenders on their undocumented status.
The bill also requires local agencies to “adopt a plan” to guard against racial profiling before complying with a federal immigration hold, and also to guard against mistakenly detaining U.S. citizens.
The measure, called the TRUST Act, is aimed more at disassociating California’s law enforcement from the requirements of the Secure Communities program. The Examiner quotes San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano to say that the state’s Senate vote shows “that California cannot afford to be another Arizona.”
“The vote recognizes that S-Communities is sabotaging our public safety,” Ammiano said. “The TRUST Act is the solution we need to begin rebuilding the confidence that our local law enforcement worked so hard to build, but that ICE has shattered.”
The Monterey County Herald notes that the California bill takes the opposite approach of the one taken by Arizona SB1070. The California measure is unlikely to conflict with federal law as Arizona’s did because “even the federal government acknowledges these [immigration holds under Secure Communities] are ‘requests’ … so it’s not as if they are refusing an order from the federal government,” said Aarti Kohli, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy. The bill flexes power that local and state governments already have, Kohli said.
Another immigration policy expert told the Monterey County Herald that the California bill initially was a reaction to Secure Communities but “has been reshaped as an antidote” to Arizona’s law. “The Trust Act shows that different states want different policies in immigration enforcement. California does not want its policies to be like Arizona’s,” said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law. “It seems to me that we will have skirmishes like this until there is comprehensive national immigration reform.”
Police chiefs in Oakland, Palo Alto, and elsewhere have supported the bill, but ABC-Los Angeles reports that the California State Sheriffs Association opposes the legislation, saying it puts local law enforcement squarely between state law and federal policy. “The sheriff believes that secure communities is an effective tool in protecting the communities we are charged to serve,” said Steve Whitmore of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Governor Jerry Brown has not said publicly whether he will sign the legislation. Brown, as state attorney general, signed the pact with the Obama administration allowing federal immigration agents through the fingerprints-sharing Secure Communities program to track down and pick up every deportable immigrant arrested by local police in the state.
