Santa Clara County, California, supervisors plan to vote on renewing funding to more than a dozen local nonprofits that have aided undocumented immigrants facing deportation or at risk of facing deportation since Donald Trump’s inauguration last year. One innovative action has been the creation of the Rapid Response Network, which alerts local groups when an immigrant has been apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):

Among the nonprofits helping North County residents is Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto (CLSEPA), which received $320,000 in county grant funds this year and recently opened up a new office on Fairchild Drive in Mountain View. Reports from the county say that as of December, the nonprofit provided "direct representation" to 86 unaccompanied minors and families with children who were in expedited deportation proceedings in the San Francisco Immigration Court since June. All of them were Latino, with many from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. "Many of these children and families have fled violence and abuse in Central America," according to the staff report.

Supervisors designated $3.5 million for local groups last June to provide services to immigrant residents, including “Known Your Rights” trainings and legal defense aid. With Trump and acting ICE director Thomas Homan vindictively targeting California over its pro-immigrant policies, protecting immigrant residents is as important as ever. In one recent Northern California raid, half of the immigrants swept up by ICE had no criminal record at all: