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San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey sent a formal letter to state Attorney General Jerry Brown today asking that state officials not turn over data on anyone booked into a San Francisco jail to federal immigration authorities.
Hennessey is trying to get his department to opt out the federal program where fingerprints of those booked, including low-level offenders, are automatically sent from a state database to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. San Francisco data is supposed to start being turned over June 1.
special to The Chronicle
Hennessey: Let us opt out.
Hennessey warned that the information could be used to deport people who received a traffic citation but failed to show up in court, or other minor offenses. He called the program “excessive” and blasted the secrecy of federal immigration authorities, saying on two occasions they have refused to tell him what happened to individuals transferred from San Francisco jails to federal immigration custody.
“I don’t think that’s the kind of collaboration we want,” Hennessey said during a morning rally on the City Hall steps. “ICE has a history of deporting U.S. citizens by mistake.”
Hennessey told Brown that providing the comprehensive data violates San Francisco’s sanctuary city ordinance. The city already directly provides immigration officials with information on foreign-born individuals arrested for a felony or found to have a prior felony in their criminal history.
Rather than the 2,000 people a year San Francisco officials refer to immigration authorities under that program, the figure would jump to 35,000 to 40,000 a year, the sheriff said.
However, Mayor Gavin Newsom said there was no legal way to opt out of the program unless the city simply refused to share data with the state, which he warned would create a city overrun with crime.
“There is no opting out,” Newsom said. “If you’re not going to provide that basic information, there’s real and unintended consequences to that.”
Brown’s spokeswoman, Christine Gasparac, said the state Department of Justice has “no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws…we are advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.”
Federal officials have said that their program is focused on serious felony offenders, not someone like an ice cream cart vendor without a city permit.
Hennssey’s move comes after six members of the Board of Supervisors backed a nonbinding resolution that would urge local law enforcement officials to opt out of participating in the federal Secure Communities program, which is being rolled out across the United States. The program is already in place for numerous counties in California that have sanctuary cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Alameda.
Supervisor David Campos said the Secure Communities program would actually make San Francisco less safe by discouraging illegal immigrants who were victims or witnesses to crimes from going to police out of fear of deportation.
Campos called on Newsom, who consistently expresses his backing for the sanctuary city ordinance, to denounce the federal program, saying: “It’s inconsistent. You can’t have it both ways.”
Newsom took exception to that.
“The whole idea of sanctuary city was never designed to protect criminals,” Newsom said. “It was to keep people safe and to make our communities safer. You do that by encouraging people to go to their community clinics and get immunizations, by going to school and getting an education and by reporting crimes that may occur in the community. None of that is impacted by Secure Communities. To say that actually creates fear in the community and is hurtful to the sanctuary policy, and I find it rather unfortunate that the supervisor would be creating conditions where he’s misleading the public.”
