San Mateo County has joined a growing movement to no longer detain jailed individuals for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, except in unusual circumstances.
In a statement made in June, Sheriff’s Deputy Rebecca Rosenblatt said San Mateo County would stop detaining persons for ICE once they have been cleared for release.
“We have decided we will modify our policy to state that (ICE) holds will not be honored or placed on individuals in custody (by the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department) unless a rare exception arises in cases of individuals who pose significant public safety concerns,” said Rosenblatt.
San Mateo County joins Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties in declining to hold individuals who pose no significant public safety concerns, said Rosenblatt.
In January, the California Trust Act went into effect that allows local law enforcement to decline to comply with federal hold requests if the person has not been charged with a serious offense.
Also in June, San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi stated that his jail would not hold people for ICE after they are cleared for release from county custody.
“My long-held belief is that local law enforcement should not be in the civil immigration detainer business,” Mirkarimi was quoted as saying in a story in the San Francisco Examiner. “Public safety is not advanced and could be hindered when immigrant communities fear the repercussions of cooperating with law enforcement.”
Federal immigration hold requests rose after the Obama administration created the Secure Communities program, unifying similar programs within the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.
Through the Secure Communities program, local law enforcement would send arrest information, such as birthplaces and fingerprints, to immigration officials. That information would then be crosschecked to determine residency status. If a person’s status came back as “undocumented,” ICE could place a request with local law enforcement to hold that person, usually for 48 hours, while ICE officials conducted their own investigation.
Those individuals would be held at local taxpayers’ expense and in violation of their constitutional rights, according to recent court rulings. Those cases in favor of the immigrants, and the Trust Act, have allowed a shift in local policy in regard to immigration holds.
“We’re leaving the door open for the off chance that something comes up that doesn’t fall within this policy. There can be exceptions for public-safety reasons,” said Rosenblatt.
Supreme Court Decision Erodes Occupants’ Right to Deny Police Search of Residence
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February that law enforcement officers can legally search a residence after one person living there initially denies them consent to conduct the search if another legal occupant afterward does give them consent to search.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court decided against a 28-year-old California inmate and gang member who had challenged the October 2009 search of his Los Angeles apartment, which was conducted when his girlfriend gave officers permission after he was in custody.
Walter Alberto Fernandez had claimed he was trying to leave his L.A. gang and criminal life behind him when his apartment was searched. Initially, police were investigating a robbery. After hearing screams coming from the apartment Fernandez shared with his girlfriend, Roxanne Rojas, and after seeing that Rojas appeared to have been beaten, they took Fernandez into custody. At the time, Fernandez told police, “You don’t have any right to come in here.” However, police returned to the apartment after Fernandez was arrested.
According to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Rojas consented to allow police to search the apartment after about 20 minutes of being questioned and threatened by police. They said they would take her son away from her if she did not consent to the search, she claimed. During the search, police found gang paraphernalia, a butterfly knife, ammunition and a sawed-off shotgun. Fernandez is currently serving a 14-year sentence after pleading no contest on firearms charges after being convicted of robberyand inflicting corporal injury.
The court’s split ruling said that the girlfriend’s eventual consent was sufficient, even though Fernandez had previously denied permission.
Alito is a former federal prosecutor with a history of supporting law enforcement in cases that appear before him. “Any other rule would trample on the rights of the occupant who is willing to consent. Such an occupant may want the police to search in order to dispel suspicion raised by sharing quarters with a criminal.”
Alito also warned of “practical complications” if the refusal to consent by Fernandez was upheld. The justice suggested a possibility where a refusal to give consent to search a dwelling could last through a long prison term. It would require police to have a search warrant, which could possibly hinder detectives who were trying to solve crimes.
ACLU Sues Alameda Over Pregnancy Tests
A civil rights organization is suing to halt the forced pregnancy testing of women when they are booked into the Alameda County jail.
This amounts to an invasion of the women’s privacy, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in the lawsuit filed in June against Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern.
Plaintiffs are three women, including a 69-year-old political activist, who were forced to submit to the testing. The suit says the forced testing violates privacy rights under both federal and state constitutions, and violates state law allowing inmates to refuse non-emergency medical care.
“The sheriff’s policy publicly intrudes into one of the most intimate and private areas of a person’s life – reproductive decision-making,” the suit states.
This case comes on the heels of the revelation that some women were sterilized by state prison doctors against their will and consent.
Plaintiff Nancy Macias said she was forced to take a pregnancy test after her arrest during an August 2012 political protest.
“Being forced to submit to a pregnancy test against my will was not about my health,” Macias told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It was invasive, offensive and humiliating.”
The suit filed in Superior Court included a 2010 letter from Ahern to the ACLU, stating that women who are brought to the Glenn Dyer Jail are tested so they can be provided with the necessary medical treatment. When a woman tests positive, she is transferred to the Santa Rita County Jail where there is an obstetrics clinic, the letter said.
Susan Harman, a political activist, was 69 years old when she was forced to take a pregnancy test in 2010 after being arrested during a protest of the Oscar Grant shooting. Harman says the testing was not done out of concern for her health.
“Nobody gave us any explanation,” she told the Chronicle. Harman, who is diabetic, says officers ignored her requests for her daily insulin shot, but were insistent that she take a pregnancy test. Both Harman and Macias were released the following day, without the results of their tests.
The ACLU says that the proper way to conduct the testing is to offer it on a voluntary basis as part of the routine health care screening.
A spokesman for Ahern, Sgt. J.D. Nelson, said the forced testing was part of the settlement from a 10-year-old lawsuit against the sheriff’s office for not providing pregnancy testing.
“If you tell us that we have to test people and then tell us that we can’t test people, what can we do?” Nelson said. He did not provide details of the settled lawsuit or who filed it.
The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages, but instead requests the court to order the sheriff’s office to end the practice.
Curbing Truancy in California to Prevent Dropouts
A campaign is underway to curb truancy in California, termed a crisis that frequently leads to dropouts, crime and prison.
“We take this matter very seriously,” Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a March news conference to endorse a series of bills in the Legislature to combat truancy.
She said more than 690,000 elementary (K-6) students – 20 percent of the total – were truant at least once in the 2011-12 school year.
If not stopped in elementary grades, students are more likely to drop out of high school, and dropouts are more likely to wind up in prison, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Harris said.
Five bills introduced in March of this year aim to strengthen accountability by both state and local school districts when it comes to the collection and reporting of truancy statistics. Truancy is defined as any student who is late to class by 30 minutes or more without a valid excuse three times during the year.
“We need to try to get ahold of our young people early and make sure they end up in the classroom and not the courtroom,” said Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, during the news conference. Holden is the author of one of the proposed bills.
“With this slate of bills, we are not putting more students in the juvenile justice system, but inviting communities to intervene before they end up in the penal system,” said Holden.
The proposed legislation would require that the Attorney General’s Office issue a report each year, increase truancy data collection and require counties to create school attendance review boards that issue reports on truancy intervention programs. It also requires prosecutors to issue reports whenever charges are filed against a parent or student to enforce attendance laws.
“We act like it’s a surprise, but it’s not,” Harris said during the press conference. “Almost all of it is predictable. Instead of being reactive, this data will allow us to be preventive.”
Harris said her interest in the truancy issue began when she was San Francisco district attorney. She noted that 94 percent of San Francisco’s homicide victims under the age of 25 were high school dropouts.
In September 2013, Harris released her report of the truancy problem in the state, which was the first statewide assessment of truancy specifically addressing elementary schools and the financial impact on counties.
The report concluded chronic truancy and absenteeism in the state’s schools caused California to lose $1.4 billion a year in funding and suffer lower test scores and a higher dropout rate. The report estimates that society lost $46 billion a year when other factors are added, including reduced earnings, increased welfare services and higher crime rates for high school dropouts.
Calaveras County reported the highest truancy rate at 31 percent of the county’s elementary school students. Yuba County had the lowest rate, with only 4.9 percent of elementary students being truant.
Push to Speed Up State Executions Fails to Make Ballot
A ballot measure meant to speed up the review process for prisoners sentenced to death did not qualify for the November election, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The proposed initiative would have limited appeals by death row inmates, eased the qualifying standards for death penalty defense lawyers and done away with public hearings on lethal injection procedures.
The initiative, backed by supporters of the death penalty, including former California governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis, had only collected a couple hundred thousand signatures before the campaign was suspended in May of this year. Chris Orrock, spokesman for the ballot measure, told Bob Egelko, a reporter for the Chronicle, that suspending the campaign will allow supporters more time to raise money and gather signatures. They now hope to qualify the measure for the November 2016 ballot. The initiative required 807,615 valid signatures to qualify.
In his interview with Egelko, Orrock stated that the proposed changes would speed up the execution process and save money without taking away fairness and due process.
“We’ll use the next year or so to continue to educate the public about the changes to the criminal justice system that this initiative makes,” he said.
At the same time, supporters of Proposition 34 – the 2012 measure that would have abolished the death penalty in the state – are also planning to get their initiative on the November 2016 ballot. Proposition 34 was supported by former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and former San Quentin State Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford who was also director of Corrections for the California prisons. Prop. 34 lost, picking up 48 percent of the vote.
In a statement by Garcetti, death penalty opponents called the death penalty “broken beyond repair” and say that the proposed ballot measure to shorten the wait time for executions would only serve to make the system more secretive and expensive.
Egelko reported that the proposed initiative would place a five-year limit on death row appeals in state court, put time limits on state judges to make rulings, eliminate public hearings on execution procedures and allow the state to obtain lethal injection drugs from sources other than licensed pharmacies. Opponents of the measure say this will lead to secret policies and the use of untested drug combinations from secret sources. They point to the drawn-out April 29 execution of a convict in Oklahoma, where the man ultimately died of a heart attack.
California has the nation’s largest number of inmates on death row, with approximately 750 condemned to death. However, the state has executed only 13 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated by ballot initiative in 1978, and none since February 2006 when a federal judge ruled that lethal injection procedures were flawed and could lead to undue suffering for the inmate.
U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Gov. Brown’s Appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Gov. Jerry Brown of a lower court’s order that the state is responsible for monitoring the care of approximately 2,000 disabled prisoners being held in county jails under Realignment.
The high court declined to comment when it refused in June to hear the state’s appeal asserting that the order “violates fundamental federalism principles” by making the state responsible for the mistakes of local officials.
Brown and California Attorney General Kamala Harris had asked the high court to compel the 9th Circuit Court to review a District Court’s order that the state was responsible for state inmates and parolees sent to county jails under a state program that changed how the state housed low-level convicted felons.
Realignment requires counties to retain low-level offenders rather than sending them to state prison. That was in response to the Supreme Court siding in 2011 with federal judges who determined that California’s prison system was dangerously overcrowded and ordered the state to reduce its prison population.
The Realignment legislation stated that those inmates shifted back to the county jails were the “sole legal custody” of county officials.
However, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the state must check on the welfare of every disabled parolee sent to county jail and is responsible to ensure that they are appropriately accommodated. This ruling was appealed by the state to the 9th Circuit.
But in 2013, federal Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled that the state could not abrogate its responsibilities for disabled inmates who had been under state custody prior to being sent to the county jails, and were legally responsible to ensure that those prisoners were given “reasonable accommodations” entitled to them under the Americans With Disabilities Act, even if they are held in county jails.
“These accommodations include the basic necessities of life for disabled prisoners and parolees,” stated Reinhardt in his ruling upholding the lower court decision. “The state is not absolved of all of its responsibilities for ADA obligations as to the parolees.”
Federal Judge Rules in Favor Of Immigration Bail Hearings
Immigration officials have illegally denied bail hearings to hundreds of immigrants, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in May that the government must allow bail hearings for some immigrants who have been released from prison.
Federal law
Judge Rodgers ruled the U.S. Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) misused a 1996 federal law that authorized ICE to detain immigrants and deny them bail for up to six months after the immigrant is released from state custody following a conviction for a deportable crime. Some of the immigrants were in the U.S. legally, then arrested, in some cases years after their release from state custody.
Detain
The judge ruled ICE must detain the person in question immediately upon their release from state custody if it is allowed to deny a bail hearing.
Gonzalez Rogers ordered ICE to bring those immigrants affected immediately before an immigration judge so they may argue that they are not a threat to public safety and should be granted bail while they fight extradition.
“The court rightly acknowledged that not even the government is above the law,” Stacy Chen, one of the immigrants’ attorneys in the class-action lawsuit, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “(The government) cannot deny bond hearings to individuals who are plainly entitled to them.”
Conviction
Immigrants convicted of a felony can face deportation after being released from state custody, if that crime is considered serious or violent under federal statutes.
The government estimated 200 to 300 persons could be affected. Jenny Zhao of the American Civil Liberties Union said the ruling could affect many more. She reported similar lawsuits have been filed in Massachusetts and Washington state.
Study Reveals More Prisoners Applied for Clemency Under New Government Guidelines
More than 3,300 federal prisoners have applied for clemency under new government guidelines announced in April. That is almost five times the 702 who applied during the same period last year, The Associated Press reports.
Clemency
The U.S. Justice Department has changed its regulations to increase the number of federal prisoners eligible to apply for clemency and early release. This is an effort to ease the rigid sentencing policies that were first introduced in the 1980s and 1990s.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who announced the new regulations, said many more inmates would be eligible to apply, but most likely only a small percentage would make it through the process before President Obama leaves office in 2017.
New policy
The new policy would allow prisoners convicted of nonviolent crimes to apply for clemency if they have served 10 years or more in prison and would have received lesser sentences if convicted under today’s laws.
“Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system,” Cole said during a press conference reported by The New York Times. “I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals, (that of) equal justice under law.”
Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that the disparity in sentences is a civil rights issue and has advocated for changes in sentencing structures.
Defense lawyers
According to The Clemency Project 2014, a coalition of defense lawyer groups and other organizations, “more than 20,000 federal prisoners have returned surveys seeking to have legal representation during the clemency process,” The AP reported.
Washington Aids Oakland School Programs
David Johns, executive director of the President’s Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, recently visited Oakland High School to talk with teachers and students and learn lessons from the programs the city has implemented to help black and Hispanic young people.
Earlier this year President Obama began a $200 million initiative, which includes a task force to identify how the federal government can support and promote programs designed to improve educational outcomes for young black and Hispanic men.
The Oakland High and Oakland School District’s programs grabbed the attention of the president’s national initiative, My Brother’s Keeper. Johns came to Oakland to identify some of the programs that have been effective and shown a record of success, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
According to the Obama administration, black and Hispanic men are six times more likely to be murdered than white men. By the fourth grade, most African-American and Hispanic boys are reading below standard proficiency levels. The San Francisco Chronicle pointed out that over the last decade in Oakland, the number of young black men prepared to attend college after high school was nearly the same as the number killed.
Four years ago, in an effort to address the problems of young black men failing in high school, getting caught up in the criminal justice system and failing to continue their education on to college, Oakland opened the African-American Male Achievement Office in the school district.
In 2011, Manhood Development classes, designed for and by black males, enrolled their first students. Other programs were started throughout the city to address issues most significant to the success or failure of young men of color — including community violence, mental health services, role model and mentorship programs, plus personal and academic support. The aim was to help these young men continue on to college.
Julian Taylor, who participated in the meeting with Johns, was one of the first students enrolled in the Manhood Development class. He is now a junior and taking Advanced Placement courses.
“I’ve grown as a person since being in it. It gives me a lot of support,” Taylor said of the program.
Out of 22 students who began the program with Taylor, only eight remain. The others have either moved out of the district or left school. One student landed in the juvenile justice system.
Oakland High Principal Matin Abdel-qawi told Chronicle reporter Jill Tucker that there are no easy answers.
“For a lot of reasons [black males] don’t do well in these four walls,” Abdel-qawi said. He pointed out that the lives of his students are complicated, with very specific needs, and it can be hard to resist the lure of the streets. Abdel-qawi said he would like to see an academy with a range of courses for African-American young men.
“We can cater a program solely for African-American males with them in mind,” he said. “They could become assets to the community rather than leeches on it or someone who takes away from our society.”
Immigration Shackles Lawsuit Settled
U.S. immigration officials and lawyers representing detainees settled a lawsuit concerning the use of shackles during immigration hearings.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the settlement reached was in response to a suit filed in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of detainees in Northern California. Reportedly, the Northern District of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had a policy of shackling all immigrants held in detention at the wrists, waists, and ankles for all court appearances. This shackling policy varied throughout the different ICE administrative districts with no uniform guidelines. The ACLU argued that the restraints were painful and made it difficult for detainees to communicate effectively with their lawyers at their hearings.
In the terms of the settlement, ICE agreed to not shackle detainees during deportation or bail hearings unless they become disruptive, violent or are deemed an escape risk.
The settlement still allows for shackles during appearances for an initial hearing (known as the master calendar) where there are large numbers of detainees appearing in court at the same time. Such hearings are usually brief and typically used for scheduling and other administrative matters. The settlement allows detainees to request that shackles be removed or loosened for medical reasons and prohibits detainees from being chained together. The government also agreed to pay $350,000 in attorney fees and court expenses.
Although the settlement applies only to the Northern District of California, an attorney for the ACLU, Julia Harumi Mass, thinks it will have a lasting impact throughout the entire agency. In an interview with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko, Harumi Mass opined that ICE officials from now on will “think twice before overusing restraints elsewhere.”
Harumi Mass also noted that immigration cases are civil cases, not criminal, and in criminal courts, routine shackling is prohibited.
In December 2011, ICE tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, but U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg rejected the motion.
In a statement released by ICE and reported by the SF Chronicle, the agency reaffirmed its commitment to “preserving the dignity and welfare of all those in our custody,” while maintaining the security of courthouse visitors and staff. “[The settlement] affords the agency the flexibility to do both.”