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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If Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation known as the TRUST Act, that principle would be state law. But he vetoed the bill, saying that it was “fatally flawed.” Under the bill, local law enforcement would not comply with an immigration detainer unless an undocumented immigrant committed serious or violent crimes. Brown argued that many crimes, such as those involving drug trafficking and child abuse, were left out of the bill. While his veto is understandable because the bill should be as complete as possible, it is a major setback for progress on immigration policy.

Brown could have prevented a veto by ensuring that when the TRUST Act reached his desk, it was a bill he could sign. In his veto message, Brown made it clear that he supports the idea of the act and wants it to become law; he stated that federal officials shouldn’t “coerce” local law enforcement into holding people who “pose no reasonable threat to their community.” But if the governor really supported the act wholeheartedly, he should have communicated his concerns to the Legislature. If enacted into law, this act would have huge implications, providing much-needed protection for the many undocumented immigrants Brown seems to support.

Without the act’s passage, undocumented immigrants across the state remain at risk unnecessarily. It is unfair to leave open to deportation individuals who grew up in the United States, make valuable contributions to society and pose no threat to their community. Deportation resulting from a minor crime is the worst case scenario, but it is a very real threat for many people until the TRUST Act becomes law. That fear has also “eroded community trust for local law enforcement,” according to a statement on the website of the the act’s author, state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco.

Despite these negative consequences, and the criticism that the veto prompted, Brown’s decision is not indicative of his overall attitude toward undocumented immigrants. Aside from his veto message, Brown proved his support for that community in the past when he signed the state DREAM Act into law — allowing undocumented students to receive financial aid — and, more recently, when he signed a bill that will enable some undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

At the local level, Berkeley City Council voted in June to craft a policy aimed at accomplishing the same end as the TRUST Act. City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin indicated that the city is still proceeding with its plans despite the act’s failures, and it should. Since reform is moving much too slowly at the state level, the least the city can do is protect the local community.

It is imperative that the state move quickly to amend the TRUST Act’s deficiencies as soon as possible. Brown claimed in his veto message that he “will work with the Legislature to see that the bill is corrected forthwith.” He must live up to his word.

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The vetoed TRUST Act — or AB 1081, introduced by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano — would have prohibited local law enforcement officials from complying with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless the undocumented immigrant was previously convicted or charged with a serious or violent felony.

Despite the bill’s passage in both the state Senate and Assembly, Brown vetoed it because he said the bill fails to include many types of serious crime.

“I am unable to sign this as written,” Brown wrote in a released statement addressed to the members of the California State Assembly. “The bill is fatally flawed because it omits many serious crimes.”

Brown cited examples of serious crimes such as child abuse, drug trafficking and selling weapons, which were not included in the definition specified by the bill.

“(Brown) has always been on the side of Latinos and immigrants, but the bill has to be better,” said Gil Duran, the governor’s press secretary.

Under current policies, undocumented immigrants can be detained and held by local authorities if they cannot produce documentation of their citizenship. Authorities are then able to call ICE, which can decide to arrest or deport the immigrants under the federal Secure Communities program.

Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said Brown’s veto comes as a huge disappointment because of how much effort went into crafting the bill.

“I am very dismayed that he didn’t sign it,” Arreguin said. “It’s a setback for justice and fairness.”

Arreguin said he was concerned about how a deportation affects a family and the community, since many immigrants are deported for minor offenses such as being pulled over for running a stoplight.

“The majority who are detained and deported are charged with low-level offenses,” he said. “It negatively divides families.”

A UC Berkeley student who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of deportation said her sister — an undocumented immigrant — could have avoided the fallout from a run-in with law enforcement last year if legislation such as the TRUST Act had existed at the time.

Police questioned her sister in Southern California because she was sitting in her car in a parking lot after hours. Since the sister was unable to present a valid California ID, she was detained for four days.

“Just because (my sister) didn’t have an ID, it’s not a good excuse to kick her out of the country,” the student said. “She’s a good student and athlete — it’s not fair.”

While the issue may not be as significant in Berkeley, other places, like Richmond and Southern California, face higher numbers of mass deportation, Arreguin said.

Despite the veto of the TRUST Act, Berkeley city officials are working on changing the policy of holding undocumented immigrants in jail, Arreguin said. He hopes to present the policy change to City Council soon.

“This is not a setback locally,” he said. “We are in the process of developing a policy that would model the TRUST Act.”

Although Brown vetoed the bill, he is not opposed to the general concept of the act and said he will work to fix the issues.

“The significant flaws in this bill can be fixed, and I will work with the Legislature to see that the bill is corrected forthwith,” he stated in the release.

Contact Andrea Guzman at aguzman@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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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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