Thread: CA: Santa Cruz city leaders asked to take stand against ...

April 10, 2007


Santa Cruz city leaders asked to take stand against immigration raids
By Shanna McCord
Sentinel staff writer
SANTA CRUZ — City leaders want to prevent illegal immigrants from being rounded up and shipped back to Mexico.

A proposal before the City Council today would prohibit using city funds or resources to assist immigration enforcement by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcment. The feds rarely ask for local help but the proposal's advocates want to be prepared if they ever do.

The policy, written by Councilman Tony Madrigal, was created in response to the countywide raids that took place in September, an operation dubbed "Return to Sender" The effort resulted in the arrests of 107 undocumented residents from Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Hollister.

"This resolution sends a message that Santa Cruz values its immigration community," Madrigal said. "We don't want immigration officials to come into our community to tear apart families like they did in fall 2006"

The policy comes on the heels of an uptick in crackdowns statewide since December. More than 300 illegal immigrants were arrested last week in San Diego and Imperial counties.

With the policy, Madrigal wants to stop local police from helping federal agents arrest illegal immigrants. But federal officials, who investigate and arrest illegal immigrants nearly every day in Northern California, say they seldom call for aid from local law enforcement agencies. In many cases, police are not notified when a federal investigation is taking place in their town.

"It's pretty rare," police Lt. Rick Martinez said. "The investigations are all federal, so we don't really have a need to help"

Federal officials don't expect their work to be impacted by the proposed Santa Cruz policy.

"Our responsibility is to enforce the laws enacted by Congress, and we will continue to do that," immigrations spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. "We recognize that local law enforcement have a unique mission and a unique role in the community"

Kice said most immigration-related arrests involve human smuggling, money laundering, tax evasion, false documents, gang violence and sex offenses.

The illegal residents arrested in September were among a group of criminal aliens and foreign nationals who had been served deportation orders but failed to follow them, Kice said.

Madrigal, a member of a countywide committee called Stop the Raids, has gathered support from outside the city for the new immigration policy, including the Santa Cruz County Immigration Project in Watsonville.

Doug Keegan, program director of the Immigration Project and committee member, said the September immigration raids were "very damaging" to the local community, separating many families.

Keegan, who estimates up to 20,000 illegal immigrants live in Santa Cruz County, sees the city policy as a possible deterrent to future raids.

"These people are not criminals," he said. "They may be undocumented, but other than that there's no other cause to be deported. They're eking out a living and otherwise law-abiding citizens"

The council will vote on the immigration policy at its meeting today, which begins at 3 p.m.

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archiv ... 4local.htm

I just read an article about a sanctuary city in N.J. We have some States and towns following the laws our Federal government won't enforce, and then we have these.

This is horrible! We are fast becoming a divided Country, in more ways than one.

If this continues, I don't see a very good future for our Country...any foreigner that wants to come here, will think we no longer value our Country, and I fear what kind of people will end up here.

Another thing....any town that has tried to get rid of the illegals and enforce laws..gets sued by the ACLU......why isn't the ACLU helping American citizens in sanctuary cities? Oh...that would be too American for that org.

Someone should find a lawyer that would sue the City for not following the laws.

"They may be undocumented, but other than that there's no other cause to be deported.

Being "undocumented" is reason enough!