May 13--Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to end a controversial program that places immigration agents inside county jails to determine whether inmates are deportable.
The Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to sever the county's contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which allowed ICE agents to work daily inside jails and trained jail employees to assess the immigration status of inmates.
Immigrant advocates have sharply criticized the program, known as 287(g), since it began 10 years ago, with some saying that it encouraged racial profiling and resulted in deportation orders for people who were in jail for minor offenses.
"We need to move on," said Supervisor Hilda Solis, who co-sponsored the motion to end the program. Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sheila Kuehl also voted to end it.
Supervisors Don Knabe and Michael D. Antonovich opposed the motion, warning that dismantling 287(g) would limit's ICE's ability to identify deportable criminals and "protects convicted gang members, drug dealers, sex offenders and other felons."
Under the 287(g) agreement, federal immigration agents have been stationed inside the Twin Towers jail alongside jail employees trained by ICE. Each month, they interview dozens of inmates about their immigration status. Those who they determine to be deportable may be apprehended by waiting ICE agents once they are released from the jail.
Tuesday's vote immediately ends the county's contract with ICE. But although immigration agents will no longer be stationed permanently inside the jails, they will continue to work with jail officials.
On a separate motion, the board voted 4 to 1 to support Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell's cooperation with a new ICE jails program that was created by President Obama last fall.
Under the new initiative, known as the Priority Enforcement Program, immigration agents have access to the fingerprints of every person booked into local jails.
Under the program, ICE agents can request that jail officials notify them when an inmate who they believe is deportable is going to be released. According to Solis, agents may also be given access to the jails for short periods to conduct interviews with inmates.
The new initiative replaced an earlier program known as Secure Communities, under which immigration officials often asked jails to hold inmates beyond the length of their jail sentence so they could be transferred into ICE custody.
An Oregon judge last year found that practice to be unconstitutional, and many counties, including Los Angeles, had stopped cooperating with ICE's so-called detainer requests.
In the current fiscal year, local authorities have rejected 4,230 requests out of 58,500, according to data provided by ICE. Close to half of the denials, or 2,069, came from the Los Angeles area, the statistics show.
Many immigrant advocates have criticized the new program. During Tuesday's hearing, protesters erupted in chants of: "Sheriff, listen, immigration is not your business!"
Kuehl, the lone supervisor voting against the motion expressing support for the new program, said she believed it would lead "to the same kind of lack of distrust in the community."
Solis, who co-sponsored the motion in support of the new program, said the sheriff would be empowered to make sure ICE was notified of the release of only the most serious criminals. If the new program proves too onerous, she said, "we can always opt out."
Marsha Catron, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not comment on the board's decision to end the 287(g) contract. But in an email she said: "We are pleased that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted to express its support for the new Priority Enforcement Program."
"We will continue to work with the Sheriff's Department and local elected officials to implement PEP in a way that supports community policing and public safety while ensuring that ICE takes custody of dangerous criminals before they are released into the community," Catron said.
The board voted after an emotional, two-hour hearing that featured testimony from immigrants who said their loved ones had been wrongly ensnared in 287(g), as well speeches from supporters of the program who said they have lost family members in crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally.
"We can't take a chance that a criminal that we have let out of the street will not commit another crime, victimize another person, kill another deputy," said John March, whose son, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy David March, was allegedly killed by an immigrant in the country without permission during a traffic stop in Irwindale in 2002.
The debate spilled onto the sidewalk after the board meeting ended. There, Rabbi Jon Kleinman, who opposed 287(g), got into a shouting match with Don Rosenberg, who supported it. Rosenberg said his son was killed when an immigrant in the country illegally hit him in a car accident in 2010.
"This law is not going to bring back your son," Kleinman said.
"No, but it will protect others," Rosenberg retorted.
