See the end of this post for an update on the ACLU applauding the California Senate vote.
ORIGINAL POST, JULY 6, 1:07 A.M.: A bill that had been devised as an answer to the federal government's controversial Secure Communities program won approval on the California state Senate floor Thursday after a slight tweak in the packaging made it a dig at Arizona's divisive immigration reform law.
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Authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), and presented by state Senate floor manager Kevin de Leόn (D-Los Angeles), AB 1081, or “The TRUST Act,” passed by a vote of 21-13 Thursday.
It had cleared a Senate committee in June with a 5-2 vote and was originally crafted long before the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down most of Arizona's SB 1070, save the anti-immigrant law's most-controversial “show your papers” provision that many assume fosters racial profiling.
“Today's vote signals to the nation that California cannot afford to be
another Arizona,” Ammiano said in a statement after the Senate floor vote. “The bill also limits unjust and
onerous detentions for deportation in local jails of community members
who do not pose a threat to public safety.”
The TRUST Act, which was originally crafted to respond to the federal government's Secure Communities program that has been blamed for more than 72,000 deportations in California, would set clear standards for local governments to comply with requests from Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain people for deportation.
Protections against racial profiling would be undertaken to guarantee only those with serious or violent felony convictions would be turned over for deportation, according to TRUST Act sponsors, who add 7 in 10 of those
deported under Secure Communities in California had either no
convictions or only minor offenses on their records.
Supporters, who include the California Catholic Conference, Los
Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Oakland and
Palo Alto's police chiefs, have also shared heartbreaking stories about domestic violence victims facing deportation after ICE sweeps and parents allowing crimes against their children to go unreported out of fears their kids would be whisked away as well.
The bill now goes back for a concurrence vote in the Assembly, where an approval would send it on to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk in search of a signature.
UPDATE, JULY 6, 2:01 P.M.: “We congratulate the California Senate on its leadership in passing
this legislation, which is a model for states seeking to reject
Arizona's approach of immigration-based policing,” says Jennie
Pasquarella, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, in an ACLU statement.
She continues, “The
TRUST Act sends a strong message that California is not Arizona. It
will protect against racial profiling and allow our local police to do
their jobs and focus on public safety.”
The ACLU of Southern California and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca recently commissioned a report that found an average of 2,100 people per day are detained in Los Angeles County
jails on immigration holds, the vast majority of whom are not serious
criminal offenders. In 2011, 14 percent of those in LA County jails were transferred to immigration officials.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.