(Los Angeles) The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California today called on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to vote “no” on renewing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s (LASD) fundamentally-flawed 287(g) agreement with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency – originally adopted in 2005.

The LASD 287(g) agreement with ICE gives the Sheriff’s deputies in L.A. County jails the powers of federal immigration agents, enabling them to question the immigration status of inmates and select inmates for referral to ICE. The 287(g) agreement has led to racial profiling of inmates, resulting in the illegal detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and residents, and the diversion of resources away from the actual work of the Sheriff’s department to the work of federal immigration enforcement. Rather than expend its resources on identifying serious criminal offenders in the jails for removal, many of those identified in L.A. jails for referral to ICE are individuals who committed traffic infractions or misdemeanors. In its five years in L.A., the program has eroded public trust in law enforcement and community safety, and must be immediately terminated.

“It is time for 287 (g) to be part of our past,” said Hector Villagra, legal director of ACLU/SC, who addressed the Board of Supervisors urging them to vote against the agreement. “We should not move forward with a flawed program that leads to racial profiling and harms our community.”

Today’s vote from the county supervisors is whether to renew the 2005 policy. In 2009, ICE required every jurisdiction in the country with 287(g) agreements to adopt a new standardized agreement, which created expanded roles and responsibilities for local law enforcement agents to enforce immigration law. LASD refused to sign the new agreement and ultimately ICE agreed to allow the previous 287(g) agreement to be renewed.

An October 2009 study for the Board of Supervisors by the Police Assessment Resource Center found that 28 percent of those referred to ICE through the program had only been charged with minor misdemeanors or infractions, such as joy riding, fare evasion, driving without a license, and minor municipal code violations.

“The L.A. 287(g) program turns our Sheriff’s deputies into surrogate agents of the federal government. Immigration law is not the business of our local police and Sheriffs – public safety and security is,” said Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU/SC Staff Attorney. “The 287(g) program in L.A. has only served to further chip away at public trust in law enforcement, while funneling hard-working law-abiding immigrants, and sometimes U.S. citizens, into an immigration pipeline.”

The ACLU/SC has stood firm in its opposition to the 287(g) program, because it has led to illegal racial profiling and civil rights abuses while diverting scarce resources from traditional local law enforcement functions and distorting immigration enforcement priorities. A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) confirms what the ACLU/SC has long known.

The report documented startling lapses in the 287(g) program nationwide in following its priorities, and providing necessary oversight and training. The report found that although the mandate of ICE’s 287(g) program is to identify noncitizens who pose a threat to national security or are dangers to the community, less than 10 percent of noncitizens identified through 287(g) were serious criminal offenders and almost half had no involvement in crimes of violence, drug offenses, or property crimes.

It also found that the program lacked sufficient training for officers and a lack of safeguards against racial profiling and other civil rights violations. For example, the report revealed that officers are only given four weeks of training as compared to the 13 weeks that ICE agents receive. In many instances, the officers had no bilingual skills and could not communicate with people they were interviewing.

Under L.A.’s 287(g) program, in 2007, LASD referred Pedro Guzman to ICE, resulting in his illegal deportation to Mexico. Guzman, a U.S.-born citizen, spent three months struggling to survive before his family was able to find him. While the ACLU/SC fought vigorously to get the government to help in the search for Mr. Guzman, something they refused to do, Mr. Guzman ate out of trash bins, lived on the streets and was left to fend for himself in Mexico, a country he had never even visited.

Date

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - 12:00am

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LOS ANGELES, Calif. – In response to multiple reports of continued retaliation by guards at the Men’s Central Jail against detainees who report wrongdoing, the ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California, together with Disability Rights California and the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, today filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking a protective order for inmates detained there.

“Retaliation against prisoners for cooperating in investigations of official wrongdoing isn’t uncommon, but the retaliation at issue here is so extreme – multiple credible accounts of beatings, stomping and shattered bones – that I haven’t seen anything to equal it in 17 years of prison litigation around the country,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “These witnesses must have the court’s protection.”

The motion asks the federal court to order that all officers and agents of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department be prohibited from punishing inmates for communicating with the ACLU. Additionally, the order asks that the sheriff’s department be required to post their anti-retaliation policy throughout the jail, as well as thoroughly investigate any claims of retaliation.

The ACLU and ACLU/SC are the court-appointed monitors of conditions within the jail. In May the ACLU released a damning report detailing the culture of violence and fear in Men’s Central Jail, a dungeon-like, overcrowded facility where prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and the use of excessive force by deputies is routine.

“For two years we have been trying to work with the sheriff’s department to end the practice of deputies’ retaliating against prisoners for talking with the ACLU,” said Peter Eliasberg, ACLU/SC managing attorney. “However, the problem has just gotten worse, so we had no choice but to seek relief from the court.”

With approximately 20,000 detainees, the Los Angeles County jail system is the largest and most expensive in the nation, costing nearly $1 billion a year to operate. Men’s Central Jail is nearly 50 years old and currently houses an average of 4,500 detainees. Almost 80 percent of them are simply awaiting trial – in other words, they are presumed innocent and have yet to get their day in court.

Sheriff Baca has acknowledged that many are also mentally ill, often stating that he runs the largest mental facility in the nation. “These detainees are especially vulnerable to deputy violence and intimidation," said Melinda Bird of Disability Rights California.

Date

Friday, October 8, 2010 - 12:00am

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Mayor Villaraigosa was joined today by LAUSD Deputy Superintendent John Deasy, Board Member Yolie Flores, lawyers from the ACLU-SC, Public Counsel, and Morrison & Foerster, LLP, as well as teachers from Gompers Middle School to discuss the details of the settlement agreement in Reed v. State of California, et al., a class action suit that claimed the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to a quality education was being violated by the disproportionate impact of teacher layoff at their schools. The Mayor’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools brought this problem to the attention of the ACLU/SC and Public Counsel, who assembled a legal team and filed suit on behalf on the affected students and their families.
“I created the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools not only to turn around our District’s lowest-performing schools, but also to be a catalyst for system-wide change,” said Mayor Villaraigosa. “When I saw our most vulnerable schools in our most impoverished communities losing up to two-thirds of their teachers, I knew that I had to stand up and fight. Today, we can claim a civil rights victory and it’s a victory that resonates across the country. This settlement is proof that we are willing to acknowledge problems and tackle them head on. This is about fairness and equality, and when it comes to guaranteeing that for our child
The approved settlement will fully protect up to 45 Targeted Schools in the event of layoffs. The Targeted Schools include 25 underperforming and difficult-to-staff schools that have suffered from staff retention issues and that have demonstrated growth over time based upon several measures of school-wide teacher performance and overall academic growth. In addition, up to 20 new schools will be selected based on the likelihood that the school will be negatively and disproportionately affected by teacher turnover. The schools that make up the Targeted Schools will vary over time based on retention and performance data. This settlement also protects schools throughout the LAUSD by ensuring that no school is impacted by layoffs at a rate greater than the District average.
“This settlement agreement is historic in so many ways,” said LAUSD Deputy Superintendent John Deasy. “We have assured the rights of youth, especially our most vulnerable youth and have limited the impact of RIFs across our entire school system. Further we are now beginning the long needed reform to our antiquated approach to dealing with critical budget reductions. It is my hope that we will not need to implement these reforms because California will honor is basic obligation to fund schools better than prisons.”
The agreement also includes a number of other reform-minded components directed at the targeted schools, with the aim of retaining teachers in schools that traditionally have high teacher turnover to improve the overall growth and success on those campuses. The settlement implements an intervention program for targeted schools that includes teacher effectiveness provisions, a collaborative effort to fill teacher vacancies as quickly as possible (including those that occur mid-year), retention incentives — including financial bonuses — for teachers who remain at a targeted school beyond a certain number of years, plus further incentives if that school experiences growth as measured by the school’s value-added score. Similar incentives are structured for principal retention.
“This is a proud moment for our Board of Education,” said Board Member Yolie Flores. “We have signaled, once again, our commitment to putting the interest of children first. The ACLU lawsuit effectively created the conditions for us to challenge the rules that historically have not served students well and that instead protect the interests of adults. For this we are grateful.”

Date

Thursday, October 7, 2010 - 12:00am

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