You know what the big bad U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency does when it wants local law enforcement to had over information about a criminal in custody? It sends a fax.
A fax! The inmates can hear that little fax coming in from down the hall. No notification needed.
But really, what era are we living in?
According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, if his department decides it wants to hand over said information, it responds via email. You know, like a normal entity participating in the year 2021. Which brings me to my next complaint.
Why is the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office communicating with ICE at all?
Several immigrant advocates had the same question at a June 22 Board of Supervisors forum where Brown gave his little compliance report on how many county jail inmates were released into ICE custody after already serving the time for their crimes. In 2020, 12 inmates found ICE on the other side of their jail cells, waiting to scoop them up and cart them away to a new cage.
While members of the Board of Supervisors patted their sheriff on the back for a job well done, advocates pushed back—telling them that any collaboration between a local law enforcement agency and ICE causes ripple effects in the community that go beyond the justice system. For instance, undocumented immigrants cite a fear of deportation as a reason they don’t seek out public health care.
They don’t trust government entities with their personal information. Hey, I know there are some conservatives out there in North County who can empathize with that!
Well, that’s just one of a long list of other reasons, including a lack of access to medical insurance due to their undocumented status and the cost of health care (which is ridiculously high, on that everyone should agree).
Plus, advocates argued: If someone has already paid their penance to society, why should they have to do it again? CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy) policy intern Jennifer Cervantes called it a “two-tiered system of justice where individuals are punished twice simply because they are immigrants.”
The truth is also that CAUSE employees/interns made up at least half of the callers who spoke during the Zoom public comment. And I guess 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson was not impressed, because he told the advocacy organizations that their advocacy message was all wrong!
It’s only bad people who are getting deported, he said.
You see, advocacy organizations—who see themselves as immigrant advocates—aren’t seeing the right story! The story Nelson sees is one where the Sheriff’s Office and ICE are working together to protect our community against criminals. That’s apparently the story he thinks advocacy organizations should be telling.
The story I see is why Nelson isn’t working for a nonprofit as an immigrant advocate.
People who have served the time for their crime are supposed to be released to restart their lives no matter what their crime was. And that’s not what’s happening in the case of this whole collab between law enforcement agencies, which are actively working to prevent certain people from restarting their lives.
And those certain people happen to be undocumented immigrants.
The canary knows all of the stories. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 1-8, 2021.