Federal government grants to local law enforcement agencies loom large in California’s battle to become the first “sanctuary state.”

A bruising fight over federal police funding is taking center stage in the battle over whether California will become the nation’s first “sanctuary state.” The California legislature is poised to enact Senate Bill 54, a state proposal that is the strongest legislative effort yet to enshrine sanctuary protection in the state by curbing local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration officials. But the Trump administration has threatened that if California passes the act, the state will be cut off from a range of law enforcement grant money. California Democrats, meanwhile, have declared that any move to cut off the spigot of federal policing funds is an attempt at blackmailing the state, and are promising to fight for every dollar. Lost in the conversation, however, is a question few have raised, let alone answered: Is the federal money necessary for public safety? Take, for instance, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which is one of the programs California risks losing access to if the sanctuary state bill is passed into law. An initiative of the 1994 omnibus crime law, former President Bill Clinton said the program would address “years of virtual neglect of the illegal immigration issue.” SCAAP provides reimbursements to local jails. The money allows municipalities to partially bill the federal government when detaining immigrants — specifically those in the country without legal authorization, who have been previously convicted of at least one felony or two misdemeanors. In exchange, local authorities must inform Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials of potentially removable individuals. The funds cover pre-trial and post-conviction costs of detention for state-level offenses, unrelated to federal immigration charges. While the program, which dispersed over $50 million to California county sheriffs in the 2016 fiscal year, the most of any state, has been portrayed as a necessary program for law enforcement, some experts are skeptical. Angela Chan, an attorney and policy director with Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, said that the stream of money to county sheriffs meant that state law enforcement was effectively profiteering from ICE. “The feds aren’t reimbursing them for anything the sheriffs aren’t already spending money on, like the salaries of the jail deputies,” Chan said. “They’re making money off ICE, and it’s unconscionable, really.” In other words, the program encourages local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants without legal authorization to be in the country. The federal government will only provide reimbursements — which become de facto extra funding — only for detaining those people.



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“What that means is that if I’m a law enforcement agency and I run a jail and have to fund that jail, the federal government will pay me if I arrest an undocumented immigrant for a felony, but not a citizen,” said Lena Graber, a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “So the incentives are really disgusting.” “What that means is that if I’m a law enforcement agency and I run a jail and have to fund that jail, the federal government will pay me if I arrest an undocumented immigrant for a felony, but not a citizen,” said Lena Graber, a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “So the incentives are really disgusting.” In a research paper studying SCAAP, legal scholar Anjana Malhotra argued that the program has become an integral part of immigration enforcement’s machinery because it enlists “untrained state and local law enforcement officials throughout the country as a front line for criminal and civil enforcement of immigration laws.” Local law enforcement agencies questioned and referred some 1.65 million suspects under the federal reimbursement program over a five-year period, Malhotra found. Malhotra also called attention to a number of ways SCAAP encourages fraudulent billing requests and provides incentives for questionable correctional tactics. A 2012 California state auditor report found nearly 2,000 faulty alien records submitted through SCAAP, in addition to several attempts to bill the government for the detention of legal permanent residents. In New Jersey, as part of an effort to seek reimbursement funds under the program, correctional officers in Morris County waived Miranda rights and forced individuals under detention to disclose their immigration status or face solitary confinement.

Graphic: The Intercept