Secure Communities Is Optional In California
By Roque Planas, Huffington Post Latino Voices
Harris told local law enforcement Tuesday they didn’t have to comply with the controversial fingerprint-sharing program used to rope undocumented immigrants into deportation proceedings, arguing that in practice Secure Communities targeted non-criminals and made immigrant communities distrustful of the police, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“Secure Communities has not held up to what it aspired to be,” Harris said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I want that rape victim to be absolutely secure that if she waves down an officer in a car that she will be protected … and not fear that she’s waving down an immigration officer.”
The directive prompted Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to say Wednesday that he will no longer hold low-level criminal suspects for federal authorities.
Baca had previously been one of the program’s most vocal supporters, and a prominent opponent of the Trust Act. The bill, which Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed in October, would have limited California’s participation in Secure Communities by requiring the state to disregard federal requests to detain immigrants in many cases. San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced a revised version of the Trust Act on Monday.
“The last thing we want is victims to be…
This article was first published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.
[Photo by Patricia Montes Gregory]