The TRUST Act, or the Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools Act, will prevent local law enforcement agencies from detaining undocumented individuals on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than 48 hours if they are eligible for release or have not committed a serious felony.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced the bill as a response to the Secure Communities federal program, which allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to screen detainees based on their immigration status by running their fingerprints through a federal database.

“While Washington waffles on immigration, California’s forging ahead,” Brown said in a press release. “I’m not waiting.”

Last fall, Brown vetoed an earlier iteration of the law, requesting that certain types of serious crimes that were not part of that version, such as child abuse, be included in the list of serious felonies.

The law Brown signed had been amended to include the changes and is designed to  help rebuild trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. According to the law, undocumented residents are less likely to cooperate with police when it “could result in deportation.”

Secure Communities has led to the deportation of more than 90,000 California residents — more than in any other state, according to data from the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

Last Tuesday, UC President Janet Napolitano, previously Secretary of Homeland Security, met with students who were part of the Statewide Multicultural Student Coalition, a universitywide group of undocumented students and their supporters that formed in response to her appointment.

At the meeting, Napolitano informed the students that she had discussed the TRUST Act with Brown, telling him she thought it would be “good for the state of California,” said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron.

Leti Volpp, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, said California should encourage legislation that recognizes immigrants as part of the community rather than removing them from it.

However, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., raised concerns about public safety issues and how law enforcement officials would be able to arbitrarily determine which individuals will be subject to immigration enforcement.

“(The law would) force them to release people who should be left in custody,” Vaughan said.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, undocumented individuals accounted for 6.8 percent of California’s population and 9.7 percent of the state’s labor force in 2010.

There are about 200 undocumented students on campus as of 2012, according to Meng So, the campus’s first undocumented student program coordinator.

Volpp said she hopes the TRUST Act will “remove daily insecurities” for undocumented students in California.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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Jeffrey Joh/File

While top Obama adviser and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano’s decision to resign from the administration may have taken many political spectators by surprise, the announcement was accompanied by a different sort of eyebrow-raising among a narrower community tracking the selection process of a new University of California president.

A UC Regents’ special committee to select the next president chose U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and former two-time Arizona governor to succeed outgoing president Mark Yudof — an unconventional choice for more reasons than simply that she would be the first female president in the university’s 145 year history.

The selection of a political powerhouse instead of the traditional choice of an academic can be seen as a drastic shift in the university’s responses to the challenges it faces.

Napolitano’s selection suggests that if the UC system is to continue fulfilling its mandate of fostering excellence while guaranteeing universal access to education as outlined in the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, it needs an advocate capable of securing increasingly scarce resources.

Although the record shows Napolitano to be an effective, accomplished administrator capable of handling a tall order, she lacks professional experience in higher education, having only limited background in the vast system she is inheriting — its 10 campuses, more than 200,000 students and a $24 billion budget. While she has garnered praise for presiding over the expansion of Arizona’s public university system during her time as governor, she has never been faced with the responsibility of making long-term educational policy decisions or running the day-to-day operations of an academic institution.

“While some may consider her to be an unconventional choice, Secretary Napolitano is without a doubt the right person at the right time to lead this incredible university,” said UC Regent Sherry Lansing, chair of the search committee, in a statement. “She will bring fresh eyes and a new sensibility — not only to UC, but to all of California.”

Despite statements from U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., praising Napolitano’s commitment to immigration reform, the nominee for UC president faces criticism for her record on undocumented immigrants. During her tenure with the Department of Homeland Security, the Obama administration put itself on track to deport 2 million undocumented immigrants — far more any other period in U.S. history, including the George W. Bush years.

Napolitano’s decision to lead the UC system is a surprising one given the types of positions she has previously expressed interest in. According to the New York Times, she sought to become U.S. attorney general at the beginning of Obama’s second term and was on the short list for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Napolitano’s national prominence could allow her to win strong-arm concessions from a state government that increasingly siphons resources away from the UC system. During her second term as governor of Arizona, she fought for $1 billion in university construction and renovation, and she led efforts to increase access to Arizona public universities.

While Napolitano’s nomination for UC president should strengthen the system’s voice within the halls of Sacramento, it also suggests that the university will continue to use private partnerships and donations as a more viable alternative to fledgling state funding. President Yudof has already led major fundraising efforts, such as Project You Can, and has stated that private contributions are crucial if the UC system wants to maintain an important public role.

Because of her connections to many levels of government, Napolitano is in a position to continue Yudof’s path of finding sources of funding for the university beyond direct state funds. Napolitano can use her time in Washington to act as a broker for individual campuses seeking to win more funding from government agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, which already offer research grants and contracts to the university.

While the current UC president struggled against the trajectory of public divestment, Napolitano’s selection can be viewed as a renewed effort on behalf of the regents to make the university’s battle for financial security a winnable one.

Contact Jeremy Gordon at jgordon@dailycal.org.

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The National Guard /Courtesy

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano was nominated Friday to become the next president of the University of California. If her nomination is approved the UC Board of Regents next week, she will succeed outgoing president Mark Yudof  and become the first female president of a 145-year-old institution.

The unexpected announcement quickly invited international attention and sparked widespread debate on the social media sphere. This page will aggregate tweets, public statements and news coverage about Napolitano’s nomination.

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According to a press release by the National Nuclear Security Administration, the flyovers are part of a joint research project between the administration and the Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office to gather background data for improving aerial radiation measurement capabilities.

The estimated five-day survey — which started Aug. 27 and ends Sept. 1 — will be taken of an approximate 69-square-mile area which includes San Francisco, Pacifica and Oakland during daylight hours.

The twin-engine helicopter, operated by the Remote Sensing Laboratory Aerial Measuring System in Las Vegas, Nev., will fly in a grid pattern over the locations about 300 feet above the ground, the release said.

Weiru Fang is the assistant city news editor. Contact her at wfang@dailycal.org

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Nicole Lim/Staff

On the morning of Nov. 14, 2011, Francisco “Pancho” Ramos-Stierle and other activists were meditating peacefully in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza in solidarity with the adjacent Occupy encampment. As police officers moved in to clear out the encampment, they ordered Ramos-Stierle and others to disperse. Ramos-Stierle, however, refused to leave and continued sitting and meditating. Oakland police officers soon afterward cited and arrested Ramos-Stierle for failure to disperse. Ramos-Stierle, a former UC Berkeley student and nonviolent activist, was then taken to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

Normally, someone arrested for failure to disperse could be released after his or her time was served. But because Pancho Ramos was undocumented, when he was fingerprinted and booked his information ended up catching the attention of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, who asked Alameda County Sheriff’s Department to hold Ramos for additional time so they could take custody for violation of federal immigration law.

Despite the fact that Ramos’ only crime was peacefully meditating, he has faced the prospect of being deported from the United States. Unfortunately, Pancho Ramos is not the only person charged with a minor crime who faces the threat of deportation. Ramos is one of many victims of a flawed federal program called the Secure Communities program.

Alameda County was the fourth Bay Area county to participate in the Secure Communities program, which is administered by ICE, an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Secure Communities creates an automated information-sharing system through which fingerprints collected by local law enforcement at the time of booking are submitted by the California Department of Justice to the FBI, which in turn shares those fingerprints with ICE.

ICE compares the fingerprints from the California Department of Justice database with its civil immigration database to identify and apprehend individuals who are not in compliance with federal immigration law. Once ICE identifies someone suspected of violating federal immigration law, it uses a civil immigration detainer request to ask a county to hold the individual so that ICE can take custody of the inmate. Neither state nor federal law requires a county to honor civil detainer requests. Recent court decisions and letters from ICE itself to local law enforcement agencies have confirmed that detainer requests not mandatory.

According to a recent White House report titled “Building a 21st Century Immigration System,” in large part due to the implementation of Secure Communities, the deportation of undocumented persons with criminal records increased by more than 70 percent as compared to 2008, when ICE began implementing the program. While the stated purpose of the program is to apprehend undocumented persons who have been convicted of serious crimes, in reality a large percentage of those apprehended and deported have either no criminal record or are low-level offenders.

According to ICE figures, in the nine Bay Area counties, serious criminal offenders account for less than 30 percent of detainees, and since May 2009, when Secure Communities began in California, to Jan. 31, 2011, more than 79 percent of individuals identified and taken into ICE custody as a result of Secure Communities have never been convicted of serious or violent offenses. In Alameda County, this program has led to the deportation of more than 1,382 people since its inception.

Secure Communities has eroded trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement, creates a sense of fear in the immigrant community and has negatively impacted law enforcement activities.

Fortunately, several local communities have found ways to deal with the negative and divisive impact of Secure Communities. Cook County, Ill., and Santa Clara County, Calif., have all adopted detainer reform policies, directing law enforcement to honor ICE immigration detainers in very limited circumstances. Berkeley City Council will also be voting on a similar policy in September that would prohibit Berkeley Police Department from honoring ICE detainers for people held in our city jail, except for people convicted of serious or violent felonies.

Two weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down many parts of Arizona’s discriminatory immigration law, SB 1070. This past Thursday, another important step forward occurred. The California State Senate adopted Assembly Bill 1081. AB 1081, also known as the TRUST Act, would set a clear standard for local governments to not detain people for deportation unless an individual has a serious or violent felony conviction. Additionally, the bill guards against profiling. AB 1081 is an important step to address the key linchpin of Secure Communities — the holding of undocumented inmates. AB 1081 ensures that Secure Communities achieves its stated purpose of identifying and deporting serious and violent undocumented felons, not innocent people. It will help reverse the negative trend of large numbers of deportations of people and will prevent families from being divided and help restore trust between law enforcement and our immigrant communities.

The bill now moves back to the California State Assembly, which will hold a concurrence vote in early August, and then to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for him to decide whether to sign the bill into law.

At a time when Arizona has passed discriminatory immigration laws that encourage racial profiling, it is all the more important that California be a model for other states. AB 1081 is an example of how we can balance public safety while protecting civil liberties. In these difficult economic times, it’s easy to scapegoat immigrants. Remember, it has happened throughout the history of our country. However, deporting immigrants and creating fear in our communities will not solve the problems of our recession. It will not create one new job, and it is also morally unjust. We need to fix our broken immigration system. But until we can create an easier pathway for people to become legal citizens, we need to adopt laws in our own communities to protect immigrants from discrimination and deportation.

AB 1081 is a step forward in reversing the destructive impact Secure Communities has had on our communities and in restoring trust.

Jesse Arreguin is a Berkeley City Council member.

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North County Tactical Working Group/Courtesy

UCPD, Berkeley Police Department and Albany Police Department recently decided to partner to seek funding for an armored vehicle despite opposition from community members who fear it will be used to suppress protests.

The proposal for the armored vehicle, known as the East Bay Tactical Intervention Vehicle, has not yet been presented to Berkeley City Council, though the Berkeley Police Department’s mutual aid agreements — through which the department can request assistance from local agencies in times of need — will be presented to the council at a special meeting Tuesday night.

City council members, ACLU of Northern California representatives and the city’s Peace and Justice Commission are expected to speak at the meeting.

The proposal concerning the armored vehicle will not be specifically addressed until the council’s meeting on June 26, according to Councilmember Kriss Worthington.

The three agencies would share the vehicle in times of threats to the safety of the public. The armored vehicle will be used for “active shooters, barricaded subjects and rescuing individuals,” according to Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss.

The agencies plan to receive funding from the Urban Areas Security Initiative, a Department of Homeland Security nonprofit organization that is intended to financially support agencies that are in high risk of a terrorist attack with “security enhancements.”

However, some residents believe the armored car is a symbol of fear and has been obtained in an effort to suppress protests, such as when an armored vehicle was previously used to break up the May 1 Occupy Oakland protest.

“We do not want our police officers sent to other jurisdictions to suppress protected First Amendment activity or non-violent civil disobedience,” the Social Justice Committee of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists stated in a letter to members of the Berkeley Police Review Commission and Subcommittee on Mutual Aid Pacts. “(R)ecent events, including various police agencies’ responses to Occupy demonstrations, show that there is a need for additional review of our mutual aid policy.”

Other opposing organizations, such as the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley, accuse the Urban Areas Security Initiative of “militarizing” local police agencies, and have urged the council to “sever its ties” with the initiative, according to a letter the organization sent to the Police Review Commission.

UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada said the agencies’ intentions stand opposite from the criticisms they are facing.

“(The vehicle is) just a resource the agencies are trying to acquire in terms of protection for the community,” Tejada said.

UCPD will maintain custody of the rescue vehicle, according to Tejada.

The coalition and other organizations have been concerned about the mutual aid agreements because other agencies unfamiliar with Berkeley’s police protocol may end up handling its citizens.

The Gray Panthers and the SHARE Foundation also urge modification of the mutual aid agreements so that other law enforcement agencies working with Berkeley Police Department will comply with the city’s police procedures.

Worthington said that one of the problems with the armored vehicle is that its proposal has been hidden from the public.

“I first heard of the armored car from the general public,” he said. “The proposal wasn’t presented to the council in any grant request form.”

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said the armored vehicle will be used at events for Cal Athletics and the Solano Stroll. In fact, this statement came from Gene Bernardi, a member of SuperBOLD.

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Under this plan —  issued in a memorandum sent by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to the heads of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — illegal immigrants will avoid deportation for two years of “deferred action”  if they meet a series of qualifications.

According to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security, individuals must have been brought to the United States before they turned 16 and be younger than 30 to qualify for deferred action. They must have lived in the country for at least five consecutive years with no criminal history and they must have graduated from a U.S. high school, earned a GED or served in the military.

This policy also enables illegal immigrants who meet these qualifications to apply for a work permit that will be good for two years and have no limits upon renewal. While this is not a path directly towards citizenship, it does allow an estimated 800,000 illegal immigrants to remain in the United States for extended periods without threat of deportation.

“Our nation’s immigration laws must be enforced in a firm and sensible manner, but they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in the press release. “Discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here.”

These new measures may serve as only a temporary solution to a greater problem, since they do not offer a way of obtaining permanent citizenship and can be overturned by any future administrations because they are enforced by executive order and not legislation.

In a press conference at the White House Friday, Obama said the new policy would make the immigration system “more efficient and more just.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said a statement issued Friday that the new policy could present difficult obstacles to  future immigration reform.

“There is broad support for the idea that we should figure out a way to help kids who are undocumented through no fault of their own,” said Rubio in the statement. “But there is also broad consensus that it should be done in a way that does not encourage illegal immigration in the future.”

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau expressed his support for the new policy in a statement issued Friday, and said he hopes the announcement leads to the eventual passage of the federal DREAM act.

“This is an important and courageous act by President Obama, especially in an election year,” Birgeneau said. “The entire Berkeley community and, most especially, our undocumented students are grateful to him for this humane action.”

For outgoing CalSERVE Senator and undocumented immigrant Ju Hong, Obama’s announcement represents positive action toward a brighter future.

“It’s good news and it’s very significant because a lot of dreamers like myself have lived in fear of facing deportation,” Hong said. “But now, because of this new policy, (we are) more comfortable to come out and (we) can be more focused on family and school.”

Hong also said the component of the policy which allows approved immigrants to apply for work permits will be very beneficial to the illegal immigrant community.

“This work permit will provide an extensive amount of opportunities for dreamers to pay not only for their education, but also support their families who may be undocumented and trying to get a job,” said Hong.

Hong said his only criticism of the policy is the age requirement which disqualifies anyone over 30.

“We still need to consider those who don’t qualify under the policy, and fight for comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. “At the same time, it’s a good move because so many dreamers have lost hope, and this policy will give hope and a boost to immigration communities.”

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