California Dems toy with plan to ignore law-breaking

By Michael Volpe

If Democrats have their way, California will join a growing number of states and municipalities who are curbing their cooperation with the Secure Communities program under the nation's Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The new legislation to be offered this spring by Democratic State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will follow in the footsteps of Cook County in Illinois, the state of New York, Santa Clara County, and San Francisco County. In each case, local governments passed legislation curbing their participation with Secure Communities.

The result is that illegal immigrants who are detained for minor infractions are not held in custody even if the federal government asks.

Secure Communities is a program started under the Bush administration but it's seen its greatest growth under the Obama administration. It created a new database which would share fingerprints of those arrested in municipal jails with federal agencies like ICE.

Those inmates flagged by an ICE Secure Communities investigation often are tagged with an ICE detainer. An ICE detainer is a hold, up to two business days, placed on municipal inmates otherwise scheduled to be released.

ICE places a detainer on those inmates it believes are also in violation of immigration statutes. By placing a detainer, ICE can send a representative to the jail in order to detain the inmate in immigration facilities before they are released at large.

Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and La Raza have complained, alleging the program has led to racial profiling and unfairly targets suspected illegal aliens charged with minor traffic offenses. As a result, a growing number of state and municipal governments have been influenced by those interests and have passed legislation curbing their cooperation with detainers.

According to Ammiano's chief of staff, Quintin Mecke, the proposed law would seek, "to codify and define a dangerous prisoner."

He says the federal government has done a poor job of doing so and the result is that far too many suspected illegal aliens stopped for a simple traffic offense wind up being flagged by Secure Communities.

Mecke said the bill hopes to spell out the criminal offenses with which cooperation is mandatory and then give local sheriffs the discretion not to comply with the rest.

Ammiano hopes to introduce this legislation during the regular session this spring.

The most radical action on the issue comes from the area that includes Obama's hometown of Chicago, Cook County. In that county, its governing board passed an ordinance that effectively forbade cooperation between the county's jail and ICE officials on all ICE detainers.

The bill has been a public relations disaster with a series of high profile releases of inmates who caused a great deal of embarrassment to those backing the bill.

One such case was the case of Eduardo Sanchez, a suspected illegal alien with a long rap sheet, who was accused of beating a cop. His mug shot served as a stark reminder of the consequences of this ordinance.

In Santa Clara County, county officials drafted an ordinance and its language was nearly identical to that of Cook County. While in Cook County, the ordinance has become synonymous with the result of dangerous criminals, Santa Clara County officials have seen no such high profile incident yet.

Greta Hansen, lead deputy county counsel for Santa Clara County, said this to WND, "I understand that you also requested information regarding any high-profile incidents involving individuals who were released or bailed out as a result of the county's policy. We know of no such incidents."

Meanwhile, in June of last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York State issued an executive order effectively ending cooperation between jails in the state and ICE on Secure Communities. Much like Cook County, Cuomo has been embarrassed by high profile incidents of dangerous inmates released under the order.

In the case of the state of New York, it was Luis Rodriguez Flamenco, 24. According to police reports, Flamenco allegedly stabbed to death 45-year-old Kathleen Byham outside a Wal-Mart in Albion, N.Y., last November. Flamenco, in the U.S. illegally, was out on bail for an unrelated burglary charge at the time of the arrest. According to ICE, ICE put a detainer on Flamenco at the time of his burglary arrest. Because of the new executive order, that detainer was ignored and Flamenco was released after he posted bail for the burglary charge.

San Francisco County has the mildest legislation. There, the sheriff, Paul Hennessey, has the power to review each ICE detainer and choose not to cooperate on a case by case basis.

While La Raza has been out front in criticizing Secure Communities, the group has only backed San Francisco County's law as a reasonable response to the controversy.