An Inside View of a Controversial City Council Issue: Secure Communities

Lots of folks in the community know about the City Council’s vote last week on a resolution related to the federal immigration program called Secure Communities. Even though the council has voted, the controversy around the issue seems to be continuing. 

Though I obviously have a position on this issue and would not pretend to be without bias, I also saw how it played itself out from a very close-up vantage point and would like to share some observations. From this example, I hope the community will learn something new about how city politics operates.

In a nutshell, the Secure Communities program is a federal program implemented by an agreement with the state, which requires each county sheriff to send fingerprints of every person they book into their local jail into a national immigration database. 

If the fingerprints trigger an alert in the federal immigration system, the Department of Homeland Security asks the jail to keep the identified person, even if the local jail has determined that the person would otherwise be released.

The Santa Cruz County Jail routinely complies with these detention requests. Homeland Security’s statistics show that more than half the people detained and deported from Santa Cruz County were “non-criminals” as labeled by Homeland Security itself. It also seems clear that the folks held and deported under this program are routinely not given access to legal counsel.

 A group of local residents concerned about the rights of immigrants sounded the alarm about this program and rallied in support of state legislation that seeks to modify the state agreement so counties in California would have the option of participating in the Secure Communities program or not. 

Their primary arguments are:

1) Local law enforcement resources should be used in dealing with serious crime and avoid using local resources to enforce violations of federal civil law, which is what most immigration violations are.

2) The previously mentioned point that many non-criminals are being punished.

3) That families can be broken up by Secure Communities, because some families contain both citizens and undocumented immigrants, and when one of the family members is deported, this can often mean depriving a child of his/her parent.

4) The fact that local law enforcement is inadvertently helping the federal authorities deport non-criminals means that many immigrants will avoid engaging with or cooperating with the police in any situation, thereby hampering local public safety and local efforts at dealing with crime.

Those opposing City Council action on this item made the following arguments, mostly in emails sent to the City Council:

1) This is a federal and state issue and should not be taken up by the City Council.

2) If people are in this country without legal documents, then they should expect the consequence of deportation if they are caught in any way.

3) We need to give law enforcement every possible tool to fight crime, and the Secure Communities program is a tool that removes criminals from our community.

4) Immigration enforcement and the local impacts of this enforcement are very complicated and should not be acted upon unless council members have more information than was presented before and during the council meeting.

Now for some details that are not so well known.

 1)  A single council member placed this item on the agenda, even though at least some of the coalition members supporting the item were not sure the item was ready for the council agenda. Also, coalition members had not yet had one-on-one meetings with most of the Santa Cruz City Council members at the point the item was placed on the agenda (a week before the City Council meeting). And council members typically have only about three or four days to review the materials before a council meeting and were provided a very limited amount of background information.

2) The Board of Supervisors had adopted a resolution in support of the state legislation related to Secure Communities a couple of weeks earlier, and that resolution had been passed unanimously. However, the draft resolution presented to the Santa Cruz City Council (drafted by the coalition with Madrigal’s participation) had additional language that suggested a more formal effort at limiting our city's police participation in the Secure Communities effort. This language was understandably problematic for the city police department and among some council members, because it appeared to exceed the scope of the council's authority and made independent judgments through the resolution as to what criminal offenses should be covered under the program.

3) Representatives of the coalition, concerned about the police department’s perspective, asked to meet with Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark to discuss the police department’s concerns.  I attended this meeting to learn more about them. Based on issues raised at this meeting, the coalition made a couple of significant changes to the resolution. (These changes in no way resulted in police department support for the resolution, but the coalition made a real effort to address the concerns. The police department does not take explicit positions on political items like this one.)

4) About 30 to 40 supporters of the resolution attended the council meeting, with many speaking in favor. At the same time, a much smaller number of key people from neighborhood groups such as Take Back Santa Cruz weighed in with their opposition to the resolution, both by email and by attendance at the council meeting. With scant public information available prior to the meeting to educate these groups, the discussion was polarized into two camps: those concerned about public safety impacts and those advocating for immigration reform. 

5) The issue of public safety and fighting crime was a top concern for a majority of voters in the most recent city election. Recent violent crimes and Measure H funding for police were highlighted during the campaign that elected new city councilmembers.

6) At the council meeting, I proposed a variety of options for handling this issue including the idea that the council could refer the item to the Council’s Public Safety Committee for further investigation before a full council vote. This last idea was never formally considered or voted on.

Put together, these six points seem to have shaped the outcome. The lack of public education regarding this item and very limited coordination and outreach prior to having the item on the agenda weakened the effort and reduced the chances for success.

The new language that went beyond the Board of Supervisors resolution triggered some concern from neighborhood groups, police officials and several councilmembers (including me). 

The fact that the police department meeting took place so late in the game created additional confusion about whether or not the police department had strong concerns about the resolution—and the changes to the resolution came too late to undo that confusion.

The influence on the City Council of groups with a singular focus on fighting crime is significant.   Some of the recently elected councilmembers were caught in a genuinely difficult bind because the issue of local public safety impacts and a discussion of national immigration policy appeared to mix in a way which clouded the details of the Secure Communities issue.  And, after suggesting a variety of options, I failed to push forward the one option that might have delivered a more collaborative, informed and successful outcome—the referral to the Public Safety Committee.

If you are looking for the part of this article that criticizes those of my colleagues who approached this issue differently than I did, you might as well stop reading. You won’t find it. I have real respect for all my colleagues and I value my positive working relationship with each of them even as we have disagreements on particular issues. I’ll simply say I’m disappointed in the outcome and disappointed that I did not advocate for a path that might have led to a better outcome. 

Finally, a couple of personal reflections ... I don’t think this issue will go away for the city simply because the City Council voted on it last week. This is a very big issue among members of the immigrant community in Santa Cruz County and among their allies. Community organizing will continue.

As an elected leader in Santa Cruz, who has been approached by local residents asking me to help correct an injustice, I think it is totally appropriate for me and other local officials to try to have some impact on this issue. I am hopeful my colleagues will join me in this effort – even if they are unable to support a City Council resolution.

It is clear that the Secure Communities program has value and it is equally clear that it is not working properly in many instances—including instances right here in Santa Cruz.

 And I believe there is common ground between groups focused on local crime-fighting and groups focused on justice for immigrants. I hope we can work together to find that common ground and help bring about needed change.