CNN (Opinion)
By Juliette Kayyem
August 11, 2015
The
brutal rape and killing last month of Californian Marilyn Pharis, a
64-year-old Air Force veteran, was avoidable. That much we know.
One
of the suspects, Victor Martinez, was in this country illegally.
Martinez, well-known to both law enforcement and immigration officials
for a long list of criminal
charges, allegedly roamed the streets free from punishment because of
rules that prohibit local jurisdictions from notifying immigration
officials about the status of arrestees unless they have been charged
with a serious crime.
Ralph
Martin, the police chief of Santa Maria, where Pharis was killed, cast
the tragedy in terms of a failure at the federal level, saying, "I am
not remiss to say that
from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, there is a blood trail to Marilyn
Pharis' bedroom."
And
as a presidential campaign heats up and the issue of immigration takes
center stage, some are placing this case -- and last month's San
Francisco shooting of Kate
Steinle, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant -- at the forefront of
how we think about immigration policy. They say it is a problem of
"sanctuary cities."
But
to put all of our analysis on this single issue is misleading and too
simplistic. Certainly, the Santa Maria police chief knows that his
department had every capacity
to hold Martinez for previous unlawful conduct. This fact was made
clear by immigration officials in response to his statements -- they
added they indeed requested that Santa Maria officials hold Martinez for
previous violations but were never notified by
Santa Maria he had been released.
As
the details of this case get worked out, it is already clear that the
Pharis killing sits at the intersection of two dysfunctional systems:
our overburdened criminal
justice system, which cannot hold all those who come before it, and our
disjointed immigration system, which cannot keep track of all
undocumented immigrants.
The
common understanding is that immigrants are allowed to avoid
deportation proceedings in jurisdictions broadly known as "sanctuary
cities," that is places in which
authorities are not required to report undocumented immigrants to the
federal authorities. The term has been so vilified by its critics that
it may have come as a surprise for many to learn that Santa Maria is not
a haven for undocumented immigrants, according
to Martin, the police chief.
Let's pause here to explain the idea of "sanctuary cities."
What
is animating these cities -- some, such as San Francisco, which proudly
claim the moniker, and those that don't, such as Santa Maria -- is an
attempt to add some
humanity to a system that often deported those who had long ties to
their communities and with relatively minor offenses.
These
cities and states -- whatever label you give them -- determined that
the only practical way to stop aggressive immigration rules was to
provide a haven and to buttress
effective local law enforcement. Indeed, what drove these communities
was the documented reality that most sanctuary cities have less violent
crime, that members of immigrant communities are often the victims of
crimes and often too afraid to work with law
enforcement to implicate those in their midst, for fear of being
deported.
These
cases have included women who were victims of spousal abuse, and
employees forced to work in horrible conditions by unscrupulous
employers taking advantage of their
undocumented status. Thus, the most successful way to ensure that
people from these communities would come forward with information was to
offer them the promise that they would no longer fear being routinely
deported in the process.
But
it wasn't just heartstrings and community policing that motivated these
cities and states. Holding all unlawful immigrants who come before the
criminal justice system
was economically unviable; a city had to pay for the detention as it
awaited some determination by immigration officials of a detainee's
status. Many cities, dealing with financial stress and overburdened
prison systems, determined that they couldn't serve
as a replacement for a flawed immigration system and equally
overburdened immigration detention centers.
The
challenge in the tragic case of Marilyn Pharis, and in too many others,
isn't over ideology but resources. Martinez could have been held by
numerous agencies that
encountered him over the years, but all made the calculation that his
offenses did not rise to the level of incarceration or even deportation.
Were
they wrong? Of course, they were (though there is growing evidence that
immigration services did want to be notified in one case in 2014 when
Martinez was held, presumably
to start deportation proceedings. Instead, according to news reports,
local officials downgraded his charges, and he was soon on the street.)
But the solution isn't as simple as "deport them all."
With
a new national focus on immigration deportation rules, however, the
time is ripe to refocus efforts on our deportation rules. After all, as
we have seen recently,
there will be unlawful immigrants in even these kinds of cities who
need to be detained and processed through deportation proceedings.
Some
solutions are being tested now by the Department of Homeland Security,
which is trying to ease some of the tensions between local police
departments and immigration
personnel.
In
instances where the criminal conduct is egregious, such as a major
felony or repeated and violent crimes, and the unlawful status of the
criminal is known, the department
would promise to take possession immediately of the person to be
detained -- and pay for it -- to relieve local jurisdictions of the
burdens of immigration enforcement.
Under
this scenario, local jurisdictions that did not want to give the status
of someone picked up over to immigration officials -- say, someone held
over a relatively
minor crime and with ties to the community -- would not be forced to do
so. But, in those instances where the criminal is detained and charged,
immigration officials could immediately take possession instead of
putting the burden on local officials.
Horrible
cases sometimes make for bad policy fixes. Instead of focusing on this
notion of sanctuary cities, a notion that doesn't even apply in most
cases, there is another
way to move forward. It would recognize the priorities and needs of
local and state officials who must work with immigrant communities, and
the necessity of deporting those unlawful immigrants who pose a risk to
Americans' safety and security.
Unless
we see that both sides have a solid argument, we will swing wildly one
way, then the other, never achieving a balance that can suit us all.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment