Yesterday, the California Senate passed the TRUST Act. Known by some as the “anti‐Arizona immigration law,” it would limit California law enforcement’s cooperation with the federal Secure Communities program. The TRUST Act is positive news for California budgets, residents of the state, and police departments that practice community‐policing strategies.
The TRUST Act is an improvement for three main reasons:
1. The TRUST Act would limit immigration detainers to unauthorized immigrants convicted of a serious or violent felony. This is essential to continuing California cities’ successful use of community policing strategies that rely on informant and witness cooperation with police, even if they are unauthorized immigrants. If the possibility of deportation is increased with Secure Communities, fewer unauthorized immigrants and their legal families will go out on a limb to help police solve real crime.
2. The TRUST Act would lower the cost for local governments who object to the high cost of detaining suspected unauthorized immigrants. Food, guards, prisons, beds, and other amenities provided to suspected unauthorized immigrants are too expensive for many jurisdictions.
3. The TRUST Act frees those who haven’t been convicted of violent or serious felonies and would prevent imprisonment of American citizens like James Makowski.
Beyond the TRUST Act, Secure Communities should be discontinued. Secure Communities is a federal immigration enforcement program that links fingerprint records with government immigration and criminal databases. If ICE suspects an arrestee is an unauthorized immigrant, it issues a detainer to hold the arrestee so that ICE is notified when the arrestee is to be released, often delaying the arrestee’s release until ICE is ready—on merely a suspicion that the arrestee is an unauthorized immigrant. ICE then detains the arrestee, verifies he is unauthorized (occasionally they deport American citizens by accident), and deports him. Meanwhile, local police departments hold these suspected unauthorized immigrants past their release dates.