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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Napolitano’s troubling record on immigration and the rights of undocumented people is the basis of the bill sponsored by CalSERVE Senator Sean Tan. The bill lays out a list of demands for Napolitano to meet before the third week of October, or else the senate will express no confidence in her as president of the UC system.

In her role as the governor of Arizona and the head of the federal Department of Homeland Security, it is undeniable and deeply troubling that Napolitano played a key role in the deportations of thousands of undocumented immigrants and their families.

The department’s Secure Communities program, which claims to actively seek out serious criminal offenders for deportation among undocumented immigrants, has come under fire for misleading the public about whom it targets. This is a trouble spot on Napolitano’s record that she needs to explain. The rights of undocumented Americans must not be ignored.

However, the ASUC Senate’s bill  will not force a productive solution. With a timetable of just over a month, what should be necessary systemic changes that include the UC Office of the President and the UC community will be either rushed and half-met, or ignored completely. A few weeks is not a sufficient amount of time for changes of the scope and breadth  necessary to accommodate the  senate’s demands. To establish “mandatory annual UCPD trainings” or to create a staff education protocol on undocumented citizens’ rights, as the bill demands Napolitano does, requires time and careful deliberation.

Napolitano has a lot to offer UC students: She has managed massive state bureaucracies successfully, and her experience as a Democratic governor in a Republican-dominated state shows her ability to work with a difficult legislature such as California’s, even with its Democratic supermajority. And a campus such as our own, with both its rich history of student activism and its demonstrated commitment to the cause of undocumented students, would naturally be predisposed toward feeling skeptical of an official responsible for thousands of deportations. Napolitano must answer questions about her record.

But such a short timetable sends the message that the point of the bill is to express no confidence in Napolitano before she can prove her commitment to the students of the University of California — undocumented or otherwise.

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Under Napolitano, the Department of Homeland Security instituted the federal program “Secure Communities,” which deports undocumented immigrant offenders from the United States with the support of local police agencies. The program is rife with controversy, as there have been many reports that immigrants have been deported due to minimal offenses. On the other hand, Napolitano has come out in support of the federal DREAM Act and has said she is in support of varied paths to citizenship. As head of a university with a fair number of Latino and minority students and an even larger Latino population statewide, Napolitano needs to be open to educating all types of students and recognize that some of them might be undocumented.

There is also apprehension about Napolitano’s handling of budget cuts to her department during the sequester and her role in overseeing more vigorous airport search practices. In light of the events of Occupy Cal and the pepper-spray incident at UC Davis, Napolitano needs to ensure UC police are not militarized.

Napolitano’s apparent lack of significant educational experience is also concerning, though as the former governor of Arizona, she has proven herself a proponent of that state’s higher education system. In that role, she expanded the state’s higher education budget in order to raise the capacity of students accepted to the state’s universities, bolster financial aid and provide raises to university faculty. Ideas she has presented as governor could make her an appealing choice — among those ideas are a four year fixed tuition rate and doubling the number of bachelor’s degrees earned by the end of the next decade. This type of innovative leadership is what the UC desperately needs right now.

Still, Napolitano is presented with the difficult task of learning the ins and outs of academia and how much of a role research plays in maintaining the university’s level of prestige. She should utilize the number of promising advisers at her disposal to help her along, including Aimee Dorr, the UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, who has committed herself to retaining the university’s academic excellence.

We believe choosing Napolitano is indicative of the UC Board of Regents preparing for a more privatized future with decreased reliance on the state. With her high profile political status, Napolitano brings connections that might prove useful when it comes to financial and political support on the federal level. Napolitano has also already recognized the priority of forming and maintaining university connections by immediately calling the president of the University of California Student Association after her selection was announced to discuss UC issues.

The selection of Napolitano has forever changed the trajectory of what types of candidates can be picked to run the UC system. Ultimately, Napolitano has to work to keep the priorities of UC students, faculty and staff, as well as those of the state of California, at the forefront of her agenda. We hope that her choice to resign as the leader of a powerful federal department and come to the UC system demonstrates her commitment to do that.

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Arya Aliabadi/Staff

Six protesters were arrested Thursday after disrupting the appointment of incoming UC president Janet Napolitano and refusing to disperse pursuant to police orders at a UC Board Regents meeting at UCSF Mission Bay.

After a public comment session in which many spoke against Napolitano’s appointment, the regents approved Napolitano’s salary package in a quick vote.

As the board barreled toward full approval, many in the section cordoned off for the public took action.

Chants of “Undocumented is not a crime” and  “Don’t deport my education” erupted from the crowd, referencing Napolitano’s recent position as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.

“We were going to do this because we really believe that Janet Napolitano should not be the UC president, so we were willing to go to jail for it,” said Bruno Rosales Huizar, a UCLA student.

Shortly afterward, two protesters charged toward the regents, prompting police to declare the assembly unlawful. After five minutes of warning, four protesters remained and were arrested. Six were arrested in total, but all were released with citations.

More than 40 protesters turned out on Thursday to protest the appointment of Napolitano. Some demonstrated outside the meeting while others shared concerns at the meeting’s public comment session, indicating Napolitano’s history of deportation as homeland security secretary.

Speakers critical of Napolitano described their own experiences as undocumented students under the federal program Secure Communities, which allowed local governments to turn in undocumented immigrants to federal immigration authorities.

Huizar shared how his father was deported on his way to work at a construction site, severely affecting his family’s financial circumstances and his opportunities to pursue higher education.

“I had to worry about finding food for every meal,” Huizar said. “I couldn’t prioritize school anymore. My dream had been shattered. How are you going to tell a parent they don’t have the right to see their child?”

After the arrests, the meeting reconvened with discussion of Napolitano’s appointment. While some regents expressed support for Napolitano, student regent Cinthia Flores voted against her appointment, citing many of the same reasons voiced by protesters.

“I cannot and I will not deny the pain and experiences of countless students and families who have been negatively impacted by Secure Communities,” she said. “I know that their fear is real.”

But Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom defended Napolitano’s record on immigration, saying the responsibility for implementing Secure Communities was widely spread, with many decisions on enforcement falling to local governments instead of just the Department of Homeland Security.

“I just want to apply a broader level of responsibility that we all shared for the app of Secure Communities,” Newsom said, referencing his own history as mayor of San Francisco. “The application as it was processed created a lot of legitimate controversy that was rightly addressed, city by city and across this country.”

Regent Bonnie Reiss, who also sat on the selection committee, affirmed that Napolitano would address concerns of protesters who were fearful because of her prior experience. Reiss said Napolitano was eager to know the “real concerns among the student body” and that she sat with many and assured them she hears their voice.

Napolitano also addressed protesters’ criticism at a press conference following her appointment.

“I would say to these students, documented or undocumented, we are here for the business of education, and I will be an advocate of that in Sacramento and in D.C.,” she said.

Ju Hong, an undocumented UC Berkeley alumnus, was among those who demonstrated at the meeting. He said he will continue protesting Napolitano’s appointment as UC president despite the board’s decision Thursday.

“I know that undocumented immigrant communities are disappointed, and I know that this is just the beginning,” he said.

Contact Sophie Mattson and Andrea Guzman at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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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 cthunt@dailycal.org.

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Earlier this year in June, Berkeley Police Department announced it will not honor its agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold illegal immigrants who are being detained for minor offenses.

This issue arose after the initiation of Secure Communities, which launched in 2008, and raised concerns among residents of Berkeley and elsewhere who say immigrants without any criminal history have also been subject to detainment and deportation.

Also on the agenda for discussion on Tuesday is the Watershed Management Plan, contract amendments to the CalPERS retirement plan and research into the aftermath of the effects of the fire at the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond.

Read the full annotated agenda below:

Daphne Chen covers city government. Contact her at daphnechen@dailycal.org.

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Imagine yourself picked up by the Berkeley police on a minor matter. You’re quickly cleared for release, but the cops see that you were once suspected — NOT CONVICTED — of a more serious offense.

On top of that, your parents brought you here from another country when you were little, and your papers are not in order.

You’re in it deep now. The cops will turn you over to immigration, and you will be separated from your family, on the way to a country you may know little about.

This scenario is completely realistic, even in Berkeley, the original “City of Refuge.” The weirdest thing is that it will continue to happen even under the supposedly reformed policies that Berkeley City Council is about to consider. Only a strong community turnout Tuesday night can push the council to strengthen protections against police abuse.

Some background: The Coalition for a Safe Berkeley, a broad-based network of civil and human rights groups, immigration rights advocates, legal and faith groups and others, has been struggling for more than a year to codify Berkeley’s progressive values into police policy. We found our opportunity last October, when the Berkeley Police Department’s agreements with the FBI, Immigration, University of California, Oakland and all other agencies came up for review by the council.

In June, the council directed the city manager to draft changes that respect human rights and provide civilian oversight. The city manager has responded with the set of proposals for the council to consider. Community members will bring both support and criticism to Tuesday’s meeting, before a final vote is called on the changes.

Under a fearsome program misnamed “Secure Communities,” which we call simply S-Comm, the feds have deported more than 1 million undocumented immigrants in just the Obama period alone. Most of them are far from being career criminals — just ordinary hard-working family people caught up in the anti-immigrant web.

“Detainer” requests from immigration to local cops are an integral part of S-Comm. But the requests are purely voluntary, with no force of law behind them, because S-Comm was never passed by Congress. It is simply a George W. Bush brainchild that Barack Obama embraced. Communities across the country are refusing to cooperate with this mass-deportation scheme and ignoring the detainer requests.

But here’s the rub. Though the council told Berkeley’s city manager to create a new policy based on the most liberal laws enacted to date, she has filled her proposal with very troubling loopholes. Among the worst provisions is that not just convicted felons but those simply arrested on felony charges will be handed over on Immigration’s request. So even a simple, possibly false complaint against you may get you deported.

Also, the city manager’s new policy does not protect minors from being turned over to Immigration. As Sister Maureen Duignan, executive director of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, said, “Even Immigration Services is more compassionate than the policy proposed by the city manager with regard to minors: A minor who is detained gets a bond to be released.”

We in the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley call for a complete halt to collaboration with the failed S-Comm program. The City Council has denounced the program as incompatible with our Sanctuary City status. So let Berkeley stop collaborating with it!

Wait, there’s more. The coalition and other community members have campaigned tirelessly for a full range of other changes to police policies. We’re hopeful that our effort may bring about some real change. For example, the city is promising to cease reporting merely “suspicious” though legal activities to the national network of intelligence fusion centers. These suspicious activity reports, or SARs, have raised fears of racial, religious and ethnic profiling, particularly in Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities.

The city also says it will ban infiltration and espionage against nonviolent civil disobedience protests. The BPD will also have to notify the City Council when it requests a federal grant for equipment like the armored personnel carrier it applied for in the spring — but only if the grant is for more than $50,000! Finally, a conversation has begun about mutual aid relationships between BPD and other agencies, including UCPD, and how Berkeley can be restrained from participating in crackdowns such as that at Occupy Oakland.

But the proposal remains vague on how these great ideas will be enforced. Who will have oversight authority? Will an independent agency like the Berkeley Police Review Commission make sure the police are respecting human rights? Or will we find out down the road that, behind the scenes, nothing has changed?

How strong a policy we get depends on who comes out in this final hour of the campaign. We need you to tell your stories about personal experience with immigration, profiling and violations of your right to protest.

Berkeley City Council meets Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. in Old City Hall.

George Lippman is the chair of the Peace and Justice Commission and a member of the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@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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At a special meeting of Berkeley City Council, Police Chief Michael Meehan clarified that a person would have to be determined suspicious — involved in activities like item intrusion, manipulating or defacing infrastructure, theft, vandalism or cyber attack — to be detained.

The specific terms have yet to be determined. The council decided to send the policy to the city manager to review what qualifies as a criminal act, after which it will be presented to the council again at a meeting in September.

“Absolutely (the meeting) in September will determine our compliance with ICE,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin.

According to Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission chair George Lippman, this change reflects city officials’ desire to establish a policy in which Berkeley puts its constitutional and human rights values first.

“I applaud the courage of the people making the decision to not comply — rather than ‘honor,’” said activist and former UC Berkeley graduate student Francisco “Pancho” Ramos Stierle. “There’s nothing honorable about kidnapping parents and hardworking people with the ICE hold.”

Stierle was arrested while meditating during a police raid of Occupy Oakland in November and detained because his student visa expired in 2008.

Through a program called Secure Communities, detainees’ fingerprints are run through the federal database, which then sends the data to ICE even if the person has not committed a criminal act. After being turned over to ICE as an illegal immigrant, Stierle was at risk of deportation, despite having no criminal record.

Stierle’s arrest for nonviolent civil disobedience is one of many cases that prompted the City Council to make the changes in the department’s compliance with the ICE.

“(Implementing this policy) will address the flaws of Secure Communities to make sure that innocent people don’t get arrested,” Arreguin said.

According to the ICE website, 396,906 illegal immigrants were removed from the United States in 2011 — 54.6 percent of whom were criminal offenders. Arreguin said he considers that percentage to be flawed because of the loose definition of what is criminal.

Many community members concerned with the ICE agreement with Berkeley and other cities expressed their sentiments at the meeting.

“Unfortunately, being an immigrant is like being black in the age of slavery in the United States,” said Berkeley resident Pablo Perez. “(Illegal immigrants) have no idea what it is like to be innocent until proven guilty.”

Others expressed their sentiments about Berkeley police’s compliance with ICE.

“They are using our resources when they should be behind the real criminals, not behind people that work hard,” said Manuel de Paz, a member of the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley.

According to Lippman, although the city was not able to finalize the policies at the special meeting, a conversation about creating a human rights-oriented policy was definitely started.

“Berkeley will be the first in the country to have such a policy,” Arreguin said. “This sends a message to Berkeley we should not adopt a policy in which we are giving our employees to a forced federal immigration law.”

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In November, former UC Berkeley graduate student Pancho Ramos Stierle was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following his arrest at a raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment.

Stierle came to the United States with a student visa to pursue his Ph.D in astrophysics at UC Berkeley but became undocumented when he dropped out in 2008.

Despite having no criminal record, Stierle was detained following an ICE hold after his fingerprints revealed he was an undocumented immigrant.

According to Jon Rodney, communications project coordinator for the California Immigrant Policy Center, Stierle’s case highlights the absurdity of Secure Communities, a federal program that shares fingerprints through a database to identify illegal immigrants that have committed serious crimes. Stierle was arrested for protesting peacefully but was still detained at local expense even after his charges were dropped due to an immigration hold through the program, Rodney said.

“It doesn’t make anyone safer,” he said.

Secure Communities, which was launched in 2008, is raising concerns among residents of Berkeley and elsewhere who say immigrants without any criminal history have also been subject to detainment and deportation.

When people are arrested for a criminal offence, their fingerprints are sent to the FBI who run them through their federal database to check criminal history. The FBI submits this information to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which determines if the individual may be subject to deportation.

“The stated purpose of the program is to identify and detain dangerous, undocumented felons,” said Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin. “The reality is that a large number of people not convicted of any crime have been deported as well.”

According to the ICE’s website, more than 110,000 immigrants convicted of crimes were removed from the country through the Secure Communities program between its 2008 inception and Oct. 31, 2011. This figure includes 39,500 immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies such as murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children.

According to ICE’s own data, 28 percent of people transferred to ICE custody through Secure Communities had no criminal background.

Although some cities and states originally believed they could opt out of the program through a memorandum of understanding, ICE recently announced that participation in fingerprint sharing is federally mandated.

A report from the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at Boalt Hall School of Law found that approximately 3,600 U.S. citizens have been arrested by ICE through the Secure Communities program. The report also states that 93 percent of the people arrested through the program are Latino, even though Latinos are only 77 percent of the illegal immigrants in the country.

Next month, Arreguin will present a resolution to Berkeley City Council that would ask the city manager and chief of Berkeley Police Department to revise policies within the police department. One of the revisions would allow the department to choose not to hold individuals for whom ICE has issued an immigration detainer.

Although Berkeley cannot resist information sharing through Secure Communities, the police can choose not to hold individuals for additional time at ICE’s request in order for them to be picked up by the agency.

Arreguin said the proposed policy revision keeps with Berkeley’s status as a city of refuge.

“That means no police or city resources should be used to violate our refuge policy,” Arreguin said.

Although Stierle was eventually released to await an eventual immigration hearing, no date has yet been set, according to Melissa Dickman, Stierle’s friend and one of the organizers of a petition for his release. For now, Stierle is going about his normal life, but the threat of deportation still lingers, she said.

“That’s how it works,” Dickman said. “They put a hold on you, and you never know when they could call you up and you have to start defending yourself.”

Adelyn Baxter is the lead city government reporter.

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