Berkeley City Council made an unexpected move at its Tuesday meeting by unanimously voting to revoke a policy requiring Berkeley Police Department to hold undocumented immigrants in the local jail by request of the federal government.
Under the originally proposed policy change — which the council did not approve — brought to the council by Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan, the city would comply with detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for undocumented immigrants who had a previous conviction for a serious and violent felony and then had been arrested for another serious and violent felony.
Berkeley Police Department previously detained and transported about one to two people per month to ICE, according to information obtained through a Public Records Act request by the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley. Under the revised policy brought Tuesday to the council, Meehan said this number would be lower. Because of the City Council’s actions, this number will now be zero.
Secure Communities, a program within ICE, was developed to identity and enforce action to remove “individuals who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by the severity of their crime, their criminal history, and other factors,” according to the U.S. Immigration website.
When the police department has an interaction that involves taking a suspect’s fingerprints, these fingerprints are transmitted and ultimately end up in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, said Sharon Adams, attorney with the National Lawyers Guild and member of the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley.
If there is a question about the subject’s immigration status, ICE can ask Berkeley to detain the person, whereby he or she may then be transported to ICE and detained, Adams said.
The immigrant detainer policy was previously reviewed at the Sept. 18 council meeting, but concerns from groups such as the ACLU and the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley, as well as confusion about the policy’s restrictions, led to a delay until the Oct. 30 meeting.
While the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley and the ACLU stated their overall goal was to reduce enforcement of all immigration detainers, both wrote letters to specifically advocate that the City Council eliminate enforcement detainers for juveniles, who they said should not be held to the same standards as adults facing deportation.
A press release by George Lippman, chair of the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, stated that the Oct. 30 meeting “will address the specific issue of how minors are treated by the policies.”
Instead, the meeting re-evaluated the city’s policy in the larger context of Berkeley’s current stances and opinions on immigration.
Meehan said the revised policy was much more restrictive than previous iterations and felt the policy had kept in mind public safety.
“It’s been a long process,” Meehan said. “We worked for a policy that we believed (the council) would support.”
Meehan said the cases in which ICE would deal with juveniles were minimal but added that, in a few cases, the policy allowed the police department to retain individuals who could be dangerous but who, under normal circumstances, would have been released.
This comment, among other issues, led to the council’s decision to remove the policy.
“We are basically throwing out the idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty,” said Bill of Rights Defense Committee member Nadia Kayyali. “We are holding them on their immigration status.”
Council members cited concerns that the fundamental ideas of the policy encroached on a person’s human liberties and that current laws in the justice system for arrests and detaining individuals were already in place. By eliminating the policy, council members said they were creating an “immigration-blind” policy that was more in line with other actions the council has taken.
Berkeley, argued concerned citizens, has already established itself as a city of refuge for undocumented immigrants.
“The City Council passed the resolution to Reaffirm the City of Refuge prohibiting city departments from using city resources to assist or cooperate with any Department of Homeland Security investigation, detention or arrest procedures,” said Mayor Tom Bates in a May 2008 press release, following ICE raids in Berkeley and Oakland.
While supporters of the council’s motion not to honor the ICE detainers called the vote “amazing” and the “best policy in the country,” its decision did not completely eliminate the detainer holds.
After leaving the Berkeley holding jail, a time phase Meehan said was minimal, suspects are transported to the county jail or juvenile hall. Both these places honor current ICE detainment requests, according to Kayyali.
But for the one to two people who were previously affected by this system at the Berkeley jail each month, this is life-changing, she said.
“This is exactly what we wanted,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin at the meeting.
Meehan said Berkeley Police Department will be implementing the new policy very soon and said he does not expect any pushback from ICE.
“They don’t have any say in what the local governments do at the local level,” Meehan said. “It’s not required for us to participate.”
Chloe Hunt covers crime. Contact her at [email protected]
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“…hold undocumented immigrants in the local jail by request of the federal government.”
It’s obvious that when the federal government identifies the illegal alien then he or she is no longer “undocumented”. Crimes are fully documented by other police departments so it’s highly inaccurate to label these perps as innocent immigrants. They may not have personal documents, but their crimes in other cities have been fully documented and they can’t escape their photos or biometric data.
“Berkeley City Council made an unexpected move at its Tuesday meeting
by unanimously voting to revoke a policy requiring Berkeley Police
Department to hold undocumented immigrants in the local jail by request
of the federal government.”
Terrible, inaccurate journalism. There was no doubt whatsoever that these liberals on the city council would vote for this nonsense. What else could you expect from these idiots?
So Berkeley has effectively seceded from the USA. Last time a local government did that, we had a Civil War. Be prepared for it.
Not likely. But the Feds could (and should) sue the city government for this. The city council’s grandstanding on this issue could have negative implications for the next fiscal year’s budget…
Eric Holder’s Justice Department only sues city or state governments that try to follow federal immigration laws. Not ones that flout immigration law.
“Berkeley City Council decides to stop local detainment of undocumented immigrants”
SHOULD READ
“Berkeley City Council decides to stop local detainment of illegal immigrants”
See The Daily Cal Editorial Board’s disgusting lack of neutrality at http://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/02/editors-note-daily-cal-drops-use-of-illegal-immigrant/ (“Editor’s Note: Daily Cal drops use of ‘illegal immigrant’”)
Foreign invader is more accurate than illegal immigrant.
A much more accurate term. The PC mentality of The Daily Cal and the Berkeley City Council is pathetic but unsurprising in this goo goo liberal enclave.
the term illegal immigrant is itself a dehumanizing term and hold tons of negative rhetoric to it. When you break the law and pass a stop sign are you an illegal? Simply calling a human being “illegal” implies that the person is outside of the law, not what they have done. They use these words to criminalize communities and build fear. If you call an 8 year old child an “illegal” do you think that will somehow not have a negative effect on him or her? It’s a bias term. Check yourself please. Bottom line, why does a piece of paper determine weather or not you are treated as a human being? These are people like you and me, nobody wants to leave their homes, their culture, and go to a place where they are treated as less than human. Criminalizing families, children, individuals for wanting a better life only serves to create a justification for more exploitation and ignorance.
[the term illegal immigrant is itself a dehumanizing term and hold tons of negative rhetoric to it.]
The terms “illegal” and “alien” are defined in Section 8 of the US Code, so stop your whining. You and your ilk are trying to avoid the fact that these people are breaking the law.
The term illegal is not dehumanizing because it describes the person who has committed a crime. It’s also common to use an adjective as a noun, such as “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. We use the term “illegal poachers”, “illegal street racers”, or “illegal drug dealers” all the time to reinforce the idea that the perp did in fact break the law, since some communities may not consider poaching or drug dealing to be illegal. If you blow through a stop sign you’re not considered “illegal”, but if you are underage and drive a stolen car anyways then you are an “illegal driver”. Of course the term should hold negative connotations. That’s what happens when you break the law whether your parents forced you to do it or not. If you admit that immigration laws were in fact broken, but that the children should not be blamed, then you must argue for CPS to remove those children from their criminal parents, who forced their children to break laws against their will and who will continue to force their kids to commit identity fraud well into adulthood.
And where did you read that illegal aliens are not being treated as human beings? We treat all our criminals like human beings, but we remove some of their rights such as the right to vote or the right to travel. Illegal aliens even enjoy rights not given to out of state U.S. citizens or tourists, such as free K-12 education and in-state UC tuition. We all want a better life but how can you justify breaking laws to get that better life? What if I broke into your house to steal your iPad because I just want a better life for me and my family? What if I dump toxic chemicals into the S.F. bay for a living because I’m trying to make some money? If the illegal aliens want a better life, they should stay in their home countries, fight for economic and political reforms, and get their own act together or else wait in line with the legal immigrants to get into this country. Once the illegals arrive, who is exploiting them? Do we go out of our way to hire them as gardeners and nannies just because we hate them and want to insult them every day? Or are they being terrorized by criminals from their own countries who transported them here or gave them loans? I mean, if you don’t want them to be exploited, then make it impossible for any of them to be hired here and then deport them quickly so that we cannot exploit them even if we wanted to. Don’t offer them sanctuary in our city or free benefits because that keeps them close to us, which allows you to accuse us of exploiting them.
These so-called “officials” are hired to protect the citizenry, not pull BS like this that will undoubtedly endanger the public. The sheeple have forgotten that deranged dirtbags like the Berkeley City Council are PUBLIC SERVANTS. When they behave like public enemies they need to be fired and fired fast.
Just in time for next week’s elections, I see.
I guess there weren’t enough coffins floating to the surface back in New Jersey to make a significant contribution to the Democrats voter base.
send the berkeley city council to guantanamo. one way ticket.
And kill puppies.