SF Supervisor Campos to seek funding to block deportations

Supervisor David Campos on Tuesday plans to propose spending $5 million to provide legal representation to immigrants living in the country without documentation who face deportation. It’s the first test of whether San Francisco officials will stick to their pledge to remain a sanctuary city when Donald Trump becomes president.

Campos spent much of Monday huddled in his office with Public Defender Jeff Adachi, immigration advocates and others to hammer out details. Campos is hopeful there will be a vote on the legislation by the Board of Supervisors by Dec. 13, his last scheduled meeting before being termed out of office and less than six weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

The president-elect has vowed to deport up to 3 million undocumented immigrants who have criminal records and decide later what to do with the rest of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country without legal standing. He has also pledged to strip all federal funding from sanctuary cities like San Francisco, which shield such immigrants from federal immigration agents. In San Francisco, that could total $1 billion a year.

Board of Supervisors David Campos Board of Supervisors David Campos Photo: Santiago Mejia, Special To The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Santiago Mejia, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close SF Supervisor Campos to seek funding to block deportations 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Immediately after Trump’s election, Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors were adamant that San Francisco would remain a sanctuary city despite Trump’s threats. There are an estimated 44,000 immigrants living in the city without proper documentation.

Campos’ legislation is the first concrete proposal to his fellow politicians to make good on that pledge. Backfilling a $1 billion loss of federal funds could be a challenge as city officials grapple with funding shortfalls caused by higher-than-expected pension costs and the failure of a proposed sales tax increase on the November ballot.

“This is part and parcel of being a sanctuary city, making sure we are prepared for what we know is coming, what the president-elect has said is coming,” said Campos, who as a child entered the country illegally with his family from Guatemala, but is now a U.S. citizen. “You can’t on the one hand say you’re going to defend sanctuary and then on the other hand not take concrete steps to make that happen.”

Deirdre Hussey, Mayor Ed Lee’s spokeswoman, said the mayor supports additional funding for legal support for immigrant communities, and he will review Campos’ legislation to ensure community-based organizations are funded sufficiently.

Campos wants to give $2.6 million to the public defender’s office to hire 10 attorneys, five paralegals and two legal clerks to represent detained immigrants facing deportation whose cases are assigned to the San Francisco Immigration Court.

Francisco Ugarte, an immigration attorney in Adachi’s office, said he wants attorneys at the immigration court every time new cases are heard.

“Somebody should not be fighting their case in handcuffs and in jail without an attorney,” he said. “That’s our goal.”

The California Coalition for Universal Representation, a coalition of immigration groups, recently published statistics showing that 68 percent of detained immigrants in California have no lawyer. Those who do have legal counsel are five times as likely to win their cases than those without it, it reports.

It’s unclear whether the money would be enough to provide representation for every detained immigrant. Campos said it should be enough to provide representation for at least 60 percent of them. Adachi said he is in talks with foundations, including the San Francisco Foundation and the Bigglesworth Family Foundation, to provide additional private money.

Adachi said other jurisdictions, including Santa Clara County and Oakland, have also expressed interest in helping. He said that coordinating the project will be a “Herculean effort,” but that New York City’s universal representation program provides a model for how to do it.

Campos’ proposal would give another $2 million to community legal groups to hire 13 attorneys and six education and outreach staff, plus provide for shared office space and administration costs. Their charge would be representing immigrants facing deportation who are not being detained and providing education about legal rights to other immigrants who don’t have proper documentation.

The rest of the funding, about $400,000, would go to nonprofits to staff a hotline and provide emergency legal representation in the case of immigration raids at workplaces, homes or elsewhere.

San Francisco is one of more than 300 sanctuary cities and counties nationwide. It adopted sanctuary status in 1989 to encourage undocumented victims and witnesses of crime to come forward without fear of deportation.

San Francisco has strict limitations on when federal immigration agents are notified that an immigrant living in the country illegally is in County Jail. In July 2015, an immigrant without proper documentation who had a criminal record and five previous deportations was released from San Francisco County Jail with no notification to federal agents. He allegedly went on to shoot and kill Kathryn Steinle as she walked on Pier 14 with her father.

Trump mentioned Steinle’s death regularly on the campaign trail as an example of a flawed immigration system. “My opponent wants sanctuary cities,” he said in July. “But where was the sanctuary for Kate Steinle?”

Proponents of sanctuary city status, though, say it’s crucial to ensuring that immigrants without proper documentation cooperate with police and also have access to health and education services, which benefit society as a whole.

Norma Ortiz, a 37-year-old resident who works as a cashier in Daly City, knows that firsthand. She came to the U.S. from Mexico illegally when she was 21 and was jailed in 2010 after calling police to report that the father of her son was abusing her. The man told police she was hitting him, and both were jailed.

Under the now-defunct Secure Communities Program, she was fingerprinted and that information was shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She was taken to an ICE holding cell and faced deportation, but obtained free legal representation from Ugarte and was released. She was able to obtain a U-visa for victims of crime and is now living in the country legally.

She said Monday the legal representation was essential.

“I didn’t know my rights,” Ortiz said. “He helped me legally, but also as a person.”

Ana Herrera, an attorney with Dolores Street Community Services, said that there are roughly 36,000 deportation cases in the San Francisco Immigration Court, and that 1,500 of those defendants are being detained while their cases proceed. The court hears cases from around the region, not just San Francisco.

Herrera said these numbers are likely to rise significantly under Trump, which is why passage of Campos’ legislation is needed as soon as possible.

“It’s a need we already have right now, and it’s only going to get worse,” she said. “We need to be prepared for everything.”

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf