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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The TRUST Act — Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools — would make it easier for statewide law enforcement agencies to opt out of a program requiring them to detain immigrants who have not committed felonies or other serious crimes for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The bill was originally introduced last year by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, and passed by both the California State Assembly and the Senate Public Safety Committee. The current act, heavily amended since it was originally introduced, was written in response to a controversial program launched through ICE in 2008 called Secure Communities.

“I think it will be something that will hopefully lessen the fear in immigrant communities,” said Aarti Kohli, senior fellow at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “There’s a lot of fear that interacting with local police will lead to deportation.”

Through Secure Communities, detainees’ fingerprints are run through the federal database, which then sends the data to ICE even if the person has no criminal history. If there is a fingerprint match, ICE would review databases to determine if the individual is removable.

According to Tiffany Mok, a legislative advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union, local law enforcement usually holds an individual for up to 48 hours while waiting for an ICE detainer.

But two weeks ago, the Berkeley Police Department announced it will not honor its agreement with ICE to hold illegal immigrants who are being detained for minor offenses.

Berkeley City Council voted to send the policy to the city manager to review specifics of what qualifies as a criminal act. The policy will be presented to the council again in September, when, according to Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, it is likely to pass.

If the TRUST Act is passed, Berkeley’s policy will work concurrently on a citywide level.

“Over 70 percent who have been deported were convicted of low-level crimes,” Arreguin said. “We’re not going to hand them to ICE … The TRUST Act is a really important bill to ensure justice and fairness. It balances policies to protect public safety with the need to make sure our immigrant communities are not being targeted.”

The bill is also known as the “anti-Arizona law,” in reference to the Arizona law allowing police in Arizona to investigate an individual’s citizenship based on “reasonable suspicion.”

“(The) vote signals to the nation that California cannot afford to be another Arizona,” Ammiano said in a press release.

Berkeley council members also rallied in opposition by voting to boycott businesses headquartered in Arizona and have continued to uphold the resolution since 2010.

“(The boycott) is to send a message to the governor of Arizona that these policies that criminalize immigrants, that promote racial profiling, that really create fear and division in the community, are the wrong ways to go,” Arreguin said.

However, other groups, such as the California State Sheriffs’ Association and the Center for Immigration Studies, have been critical of the legislation.

According to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., the act is based on many faulty misconceptions and would make it harder for local police and federal authorities to remove criminals.

“It’s a big mistake to pick and choose which criminal aliens are going to be held for ICE,” Vaughan said. “It makes much more sense for ICE to make that decision based on what they know about the immigrant’s background.”

According to Vaughan, in many cases, illegal immigrants still have due process and are entitled to make their case before an immigration judge.

The bill will go back to the state Assembly for a concurrence vote after summer recess ends in August, and then to Gov. Jerry Brown for a final decision.

“The most important thing now is contacting the governor and urging him to sign the bill,” Arreguin said.

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