Undocumented drug offenders should be reported
C.W. Nevius

Thursday, August 20, 2009



Supervisor David Campos' legislation saying undocumented juveniles must be convicted of a felony before they can be reported to federal immigration authorities sounds reasonable.
"It is a balanced, measured approach that is grounded in the values of San Francisco," Campos said Tuesday at a rally on the steps of City Hall.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

While supporters dial up cases of undocumented kids deported for fighting at school, the reality is that more than 70 percent of those in the juvenile probation system are there for drug-related offenses.

A conservative watchdog group called Judicial Watch, along with a private citizen named Charles Fonseca, are suing the city for failing to report names of undocumented youths who are arrested. They say the city violates a state law that requires police to tell federal authorities whenever they arrest a suspected illegal immigrant for any of 14 specified drug crimes.

"That's the whole point of this in the first place," said David Klehm, a civil attorney, who is working with Judicial Watch. "We aren't doing massive sweeps looking for undocumented youths. They've already got themselves in the radar screen by being arrested for drug offenses. The fact that they are undocumented doesn't mean they should be granted special status."

Campos has an understandable emotional attachment to this issue. He came to California as a 14-year-old undocumented immigrant and earned scholarships to Stanford and Harvard Law School. There's not a better reply to right-wing loonies who rail against San Francisco's sanctuary policy than Campos.

But this legislation opens the city to a new set of legal challenges - a point that's being hammered home by City Attorney Dennis Herrera, U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello, and others.

Sanctuary ordinance
Angela Chan, staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, says if a legal challenge comes to Campos' law, they will argue that the 1989 San Francisco sanctuary ordinance bars "the use of city funding or city employees" to aid immigration enforcement.

But Klehm says, "When the (state) law says you have to do something, you can't say yes, but another (city) law says we don't."

Campos has faced pressure to take the legislation even further, but he hasn't. He approves of rules that would notify authorities of felony arrests of undocumented suspects over the age of 18. And he's not trying to defend the city's previous practice of refusing to turn over illegal immigrants, even after they had been convicted.

"That was crazy," Campos said. "This is more defensible. The crux of the issue is treating children differently."

The problem, say opponents, is that in many cases police have no way of verifying whether these suspects are under the age of 18. By definition they are without documents.

Campos contends that violent offenders will either be detained in custody or tried as adults. And Chan estimates that the time frame, from arrest to conviction, is no more than a month on average, so the new policy wouldn't be setting suspects free for long periods of time while waiting for an outcome on their case.

Long delays
But legal officials - some of whom spoke off the record - scoffed. One said a year might be more likely.

"We are dealing with one of the most over-burdened systems in the United States," said Klehm. "Nothing in government happens in a month."

The surprise is how much agreement there is. Klehm agrees that there is no advantage to deporting "a hard-working young kid who got into a fight at school." The core issue of Klehm's lawsuit was that the state law is a drug enforcement effort, not an attempt to deport undocumented non-citizens.

Klehm wonders why Campos' law doesn't stipulate that federal officials would only be notified in felony drug cases. I would support that. Why wouldn't the Board of Supervisors?


cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.






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