Thread: 30% of S.F. juvenile offenders actually adults

30% of S.F. juvenile offenders actually adults
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

(09-16) 23:44 PDT San Francisco --

Nearly 30 percent of the felony offenders San Francisco juvenile justice officials have reported to federal immigration authorities since the city stopped shielding youths from deportation have turned out to be adults, authorities say.

The city's Juvenile Probation Department has referred 58 offenders to federal authorities since Mayor Gavin Newsom announced July 2 that the city no longer would protect youths from deportation under San Francisco's sanctuary law. The mayor took the step after The Chronicle revealed that the city was paying for flights home and $7,000-a-month group homes for underage, undocumented offenders, who as adults could face prison and automatic deportation.

Of those 58 offenders, authorities have concluded that 17 - or 29.3 percent - were adults, based on immigration records and the statements of offenders themselves, federal immigration officials say. Most of the 58 were being held on drug-dealing charges.

"It confirms our early suspicion that adults were taking advantage of the sanctuary policy in order to evade detection, responsibility and prosecution for criminal behavior," said Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney for Northern California.

Russoniello said adult illegal immigrants convicted of felonies face almost certain deportation, but San Francisco's previous policy of not reporting juveniles who had committed similar offenses to federal officials encouraged offenders to "game the system" and say they were underage.

Advocates denounce change

Advocates for the immigrant youths say that just because some offenders turn out to be adults does not mean the city should report all juvenile immigrant offenders to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

"We believe all youth in the juvenile justice system in San Francisco should be treated the same," said Renee Saucedo of La Raza Centro Legal, a Mission District law center for the immigrant community.

"Adults are legally required to be turned over to immigration, and that happens," Saucedo said. "But for fear of the system being abused, we are now going to treat minors the same way as adults. We don't buy it; we don't believe that immigrant youths should be treated any differently than other youth. We believe what the mayor is doing, his change in policy, is wrong. We see him caving in to anti-immigrant interests."

Saucedo added that "the benefits (of the sanctuary policy for juveniles) far outweigh the potential for abuse. ... San Francisco values people being able to live peacefully, regardless of whether they are immigrants."

Federal immigration officials say most of the offenders they have determined to be adults either admitted they were over 18 or had previously been caught crossing the border and the birth dates they provided then confirmed they are adults now.

Feds want access to jail

"There are people who are going to take advantage of the system," said Tim Aitken, field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention operations in San Francisco. "The key point is, we need to be able to do our job."

He said federal officials should be allowed access to juvenile hall and adult jail so they can check inmates' immigration status more easily.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, however, has balked at providing more access in the adult jail. He said that no law requires his agency to allow federal officials to screen inmates, and that the city's sanctuary ordinance requires San Francisco officials to have a legal basis for helping the federal government track down illegal immigrants.

The national head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julie Myers, asked Newsom to intervene in the dispute in a July 23 letter. "Absent access to this kind of information, ICE is unable to effectively identify criminal aliens in sheriff's custody and lodge the detainers necessary to prevent the release of these criminal aliens back into the San Francisco community," she wrote.

The mayor's office has yet to reply. Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Newsom, said the city is drafting a response.

Federal officials still happy

For all the back-and-forth over the issue, Aitken said, the city officials' revised policy of referring juvenile offenders is still an improvement over their former refusal to do so.

In July, City Attorney Dennis Herrera reiterated a 1994 opinion that nothing in the sanctuary city law provided protection for juveniles who commit felonies.

Among the 17 offenders found to be adults was Javier Martinez, who claimed to be 16 when he was arrested for drug dealing. Martinez was one of eight Hondurans the Juvenile Probation Department put in unlocked group homes in San Bernardino County who fled in June. When he was caught last month, he told juvenile authorities that he was really 25 and his true name was Jose Mendoza Cerrato.

He is now in adult jail after pleading guilty to a drug charge and is expected to be transferred to federal authorities when he is sentenced Friday.

Juvenile probation officials have said they are often forced to trust offenders when they say they are underage. They say that while courts can order dental examinations in an attempt to determine an offender's age, the findings are inexact.

Juvenile Hall less crowded

Probation officials feared that the Juvenile Hall population would spike after Newsom changed the city's policy and barred offenders from being put in group homes. In fact, the opposite has happened. The average population at Juvenile Hall this month has been 114, a 13.6 percent drop from the 132 in May.

William Siffermann, the head of the Juvenile Probation Department, said that such fluctuations are not unusual and that "this slight reduction cannot be attributed solely or directly" to the decision to turn over immigrant offenders for deportation.

The Juvenile Hall population had been steadily increasing since 2004, the year Newsom took office. That was also the year Juvenile Probation Department officials expressly prohibited staffers from reporting illegal immigrants to federal officials, a ban that the agency had observed for more than a decade.

Advocates for immigrant youths criticized Newsom and Siffermann last year when the Juvenile Hall population hit a 30-year high of 156. Authorities quickly acted to move offenders out of the lockup, including a youth held in a weapons case who was subsequently accused of murder.

Caring for immigrant youths takes up a disproportionate share of Juvenile Probation Department resources, because often they have no local relatives to whom they can be released. Housing youth offenders costs the city an average of $285 a day.

E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 12R47M.DTL

Hundreds of adult illegals also got sanctuary
Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

It turns out that San Francisco wasn't shielding just juvenile illegal immigrants from deportation if they committed crimes - City Hall officials have discovered that there are 372 convicted adult felons on probation in the city who weren't reported to the feds.

The findings were reported in an audit overseen by the city's incoming probation chief, Patrick Boyd, after Mayor Gavin Newsom asked for a review of how San Francisco's sanctuary law was being implemented in the wake of a series of Chronicle stories describing missteps in the handling of juvenile felony offenders.

City officials repeatedly claimed that adult illegal immigrant felons were being turned over to federal officials - unlike juveniles, who for years were protected under what authorities now concede was a misinterpretation of the sanctuary law.

Officers with the city Probation Department are supposed to include defendants' immigration status in their pre-sentencing reports to judges. But "that policy wasn't being followed," at least not by everybody, Boyd said.

And apparently, no one was checking.

"My talks with staff indicate that there was some real confusion about how the sanctuary law was to be implemented, and that the department hadn't done a good job of making it clear what the expectation was," said Boyd, who was appointed by the San Francisco courts in late July to head the department.

Last month, probation officers began spending nights and weekends going over the files of 6,500 felons who are on probation in the city.

About 700 were found to be noncitizens, and 1,200 more had a blank space next to the immigration status question.

Further review found that 372 were probably in the country illegally or had some type of problem with their immigration status.

The names have since been sent to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Newsom has been in scramble mode on illegal immigrant offenders ever since The Chronicle reported in June that the city was flying underage crack dealers to their homelands rather than handing them over for formal deportation, in possible violation of federal law.

The capper came when the paper reported that Edwin Ramos, an alleged illegal immigrant suspected of killing a father and his two sons on an Excelsior District street, had a juvenile record for assault and robbery but was never turned over to the feds.

With the city taking a hammering on the national stage, Newsom ordered up the review of adult felons.

"We saw it as a public safety issue, and took steps to rectify it as soon as we could," Boyd said.

Mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard said there had always been "a strong policy in place" - the problem was that it wasn't being "uniformly followed."

"Now, after the review, it will be," Ballard said.

Hopefully, before another bad headline hits the newsstands.

Lots of green: A former top aide to Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin being investigated in connection with $50,000 in questionable credit card and other charges may have used phony invoices to steer money from a mayor's account to an address linked to the aide, city records show.

Parin Shah was hired by McLaughlin when she rolled into office in 2007 on a Green Party platform. And he came with plenty of promise.

Shah was the onetime president of San Francisco's Commission on the Environment and was the lead organizer of the city's big U.N. World Environment Day in 2005.

But in February, Shah was fired from his Richmond job after McLaughlin and other city officials confronted him about some of the billings. He's now the target of a criminal probe by the Contra Costa County district attorney's office, but has not been charged.

Richmond billing records show that, in one instance, the city cut an $8,500 check to Generation Earth, a group on Sutter Street in San Francisco that once listed Shah as its director. The money was supposed to pay for "technical services" at the mayor's Green Golf Tournament, a fundraiser that never took place.

Other payments, city records show, were directed to such organizations as the West County Toxics Coalition environmental group, the Justice Matters education outfit and an arts program called Touchable Stories - all at the same Sutter Street address.

In addition, records show payments for plane tickets to New York and Illinois that the mayor told us she never authorized.

McLaughlin herself has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. But the records show that she signed off on some of the questionable spending.

For instance, a Dec. 24, 2007, bank statement shows McLaughlin's signature approving four payments of $2,750 apiece to San Francisco-based Community Toolbox for Children's Environmental Health, a charity at the same Sutter Street address that lists Shah as executive director on various Web sites.

"Once you establish a trusted relationship with an aide, you don't read all the sheets of documents they bring for you to sign," McLaughlin said.

Steve Bolen, Contra Costa County deputy district attorney, confirmed that prosecutors were investigating Shah but declined to provide details.

Harold Rosenthal, Shah's attorney, said as of Tuesday nobody had provided him with any city documents or laid out any of the allegations against his client.

"He has a long record of public service and is a good guy," Rosenthal said.

In the meantime, Shah has found new work as a policy director for an Oakland-based anti-poverty environmental group, Green for All.

Political high: The Harvey Milk Club political action committee held its endorsement meeting at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center on Market Street the other day - and from the sound of things, it was a real head spinner.

The lemony cake on the snack table was laced with marijuana, courtesy of the Access of Love cannabis collective.

It wasn't long before a number of unsuspecting attendees began feeling the effects. When finally told of the secret ingredient, one gentleman angrily demanded an explanation from club leaders.

"It's my birthday," shouted the guest who had brought the cannabis confection.

Our woozy source didn't stick around for the endorsements - he had to make an early exit.

EXTRA! Catch our Web page at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.


Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Phil can be seen on CBS-5 morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call them at (415) 777-8815 or drop them an e-mail at matierandross@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 12V1KS.DTL