ICE program fails to win support in San Francisco

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in a 9-2 decision, passed a resolution in opposition to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Secure Communities program.

The resolution asserts that the program promotes racial profiling, engenders mistrust between law enforcement and the communities they police and “eviscerates” the Sanctuary City Ordinance. It urges the Sheriff’s Department, Juvenile Probation Department, and other city agencies to opt-out of the program.

Secure Communities allows state and local police check people’s fingerprints against the Department of Homeland Security immigration databases, automatically reporting immigration violations to ICE.

At the June 8 Board of Supervisor’s meeting where the resolution was adopted, District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar compared the program to Arizona’s SB1070 law, claiming that both, “unfairly target immigrants and communities of color.”

ICE touts the program as “a modernized approach to identifying and removing criminal aliens.” But many in San Francisco, including Sheriff Michael Hennessey, think it goes too far.

In a letter to state Attorney General Jerry Brown on May 18, Hennessey requested Brown’s assistance in opting-out of the coordination with ICE, stating that he felt it conflicted with local law, specifically Administrative Code Section 12.H2, which prohibits the use of city funds to aid in immigration enforcement.

“My department already has a system in place that reports individuals to ICE and I do not wish that it be replaced by Secure Communities,” Hennessey wrote. “My department currently reports foreign-born individuals arrested on a felony crime or found during the booking process to have a felony or previous ICE contact in their criminal histories.”

Brown’s response denied the Sheriff’s request, citing the benefit of “statewide uniformity” in immigration enforcement policy, adding that he felt t the program addressed “important and legitimate” concern.

“Because I think this program serves both public safety and the interest of justice, I am declining your request,” Brown wrote. “Prior to the Secure Communities program, the name, but not the fingerprint, provided by an individual on arrest was run through ICE’s database (…) using fingerprints is faster, race neutral and results in accurate information and identification.”

But some in the immigrant-rights community accuse the program of being anything but race neutral.

Mar said that Brown’s response to the Sheriff’s letter is legally meaningless and should be viewed in the context of Brown’s political aspiration of becoming California’s next governor.

“It really has no legal basis,” Mar said. “It’s based on his political belief that he supports the program.”

District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsebernd, who voted no on the resolution, said he did so because he had no other choice.

“The city of San Francisco does not have the ability to opt-out of the program. I do wish we could,” he said. “I don’t think it’s necessary in San Francisco, but this is a mandate imposed on us by the federal government and we are not in a position to oppose that (…) Jerry Brown said we can’t, we can’t do this.”

He added that there was “certainly a possibility of racial profiling” as a result of the program and that it “definitely challenges” the Sanctuary City Ordinance.

Some groups—including the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Policy Center—question the efficacy of the program in achieving its stated goals, particularly when it comes to prioritizing enforcement to high-risk individuals.

ICE has stated publicly that it has a three-tier system of prioritizing risk level, with “level one” being the highest, but according to an early press release, they admit that out of 111,000 individuals identified through Secure Communities only 11,000 were considered level one.

A press release by a coalition of community groups including Dolores Street Community Services, encapsulated the concerns of the community.

According to the release, “even if these members of our community are innocent, even if they were falsely arrested, even if they were in fact a crime victim instead of a perpetrator – there is no point of return once they are reported to ICE for deportation. San Francisco stands to lose many contributing members of society.”