Guidelines for how law enforcement should handle illegal immigration
ANOTHER VIEW:
California’s dug-in opposition to the Trump administration is headed toward one of its most defiant showdowns. It’s a test of this state’s humane resolve to protect immigrants living in the country without legal permission and the White House’s shrill attack on a powerless community.
There are reasons for concern, but on balance a state bill, SB54, is on the right track in setting standards for a sanctuary state. California’s grassroots politics have generated a welter of local protections, while Trump has denounced the idea, giving Sacramento a role to clarify the rules as a wholesale White House crackdown takes shape.
The confusion and rhetoric underline the need for statewide guidelines that better serve law enforcement and immigrants. It’s a supercharged atmosphere with San Francisco a poster-child example of this hostile war, one that both President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions bring up repeatedly.
Kathryn Steinle was killed allegedly by an immigrant with a felony record and history of repeated deportations yet who was released from jail in San Francisco without officials notifying federal authorities. He was later arrested for shooting Steinle on the waterfront. The purposeful miscommunication should never have happened, and the city has taken steps to make sure it won’t again.
The proposed law, authored by state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, would prevent a recurrence along with setting more general standards. It directs local law enforcement to refrain from cooperating with federal authorities in most cases but with a Steinle-linked proviso. If a judge issues a warrant, border agents would be told when a prisoner linked to a serious crime is being released, making the individual a candidate for deserved deportation.
The workings of the bill are one matter, and public perception is another. A UC Berkeley poll last week showed California residents are uneasy on the topic. Notifying the feds of the immigration status of each person who comes in contact with law enforcement was unpopular by a narrow margin. But refusing to tell border authorities when a suspect is due for release was opposed by a 53-to-47 percent edge. Cooperating with federal authorities has its place, even in immigrant-friendly California.
That’s the dilemma the state bill is designed to answer. It passed the state Senate largely along party lines with Democrats in the majority. It goes next to the Assembly and eventually to Gov. Jerry Brown, who hasn’t taken a stand yet. Opponents include law-enforcement leaders worried that dangerous offenders might be released, a concern that the proposed law must take seriously.
Along with balancing California’s mixed views, the bill also faces the Trump team’s ultra-hard-line positions in another divisive area. Construction bids for the border wall poured in last week. The White House continues to appeal its court losses on a policy barring immigration from a blacklist of foreign countries. Trump policymakers, including Sessions, insist that federal law rules the lives of roughly 11 million people living here without papers.
There’s a legal dimension that’s starting up. Just as the Steinle case drew attention, so has San Francisco’s response in the furor over a Trump-backed crackdown on sanctuary laws. City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit to stop cuts that Republicans have threatened if the immigrant protections aren’t dropped. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra joined the suit.
California, which has the largest share of immigrants living in the country illegally, can apply the brakes, but it needs to find a way that is fair and supportable by state residents. The pending bill contains the ingredients to do just this by protecting both law-abiding immigrants from fear of deportation and the general public from dangerous offenders.
From opposing health care and climate change policies backed by Trump, California is plotting its own course, one that answers local reality. That’s the measure of responsibility and human concern that a sanctuary state law should provide.
These are fun times for Washington. After all, there’s nothing the inside-the-Beltway crowd likes to talk about more than palace intrigue. And no administration has offered up more palace intrigue than that of Donald J. Trump. Washingtonians rush to their computer screens every morning — and, yes, a couple of dozen still rush to their front door to grab the paper — to see who’s on top: Is it still Steve Bannon? Or Jared Kushner? Or Gary Cohn, Dena Powell or Kellyanne Conway? And whatever happened to Reince Priebus?
Welcome to our very own “Game of Thrones” — much more exciting, and much more real, than HBO’s version. The scorecard changes daily, if not hourly, but for the moment, at least, it looks like the forecast is: Kushner rising, Bannon falling.
In his favor, of course, Kushner has a powerful “Trump” card: his wife, the first daughter. He’s also known Trump longer. He’s probably as rich as Trump. And he dresses better than Bannon. (But then again, who doesn’t?) All of which has catapulted Kushner up the chain of White House influence to where he’s now in charge of bringing peace to the Middle East, handling relations with Mexico and China, ending the war in Iraq, reinventing government and maybe washing dishes after every state dinner.
Bannon, meanwhile, architect of the disastrous double-failed Muslim ban, is clearly in growing disfavor. Like a United Airlines passenger, he was yanked and dragged from his seat on the National Security Council. He opposed, and lost on, the Cruise missile launch against Syria. He was called on the carpet by Priebus.
A scrappy in-fighter, Bannon’s not going quietly. “I love a gunfight,” he reportedly told associates. Privately, he’s called Kushner a “cuck” and, even worse, a “Democrat.” But his attempts to fight back were cut short this week when he was thrown under the bus by none other than Donald Trump himself. In a blistering interview with the New York Post, Trump dismissed Bannon as “a guy who works for me” and pretended he hardly knew him. “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the Post, adding, “I’m my own strategist.” (Trump actually met Bannon in 2011.) Whether Bannon survives or not, it’s still a stunning fall from grace for a man who, just 10 weeks ago, was touted by Time as “the second most powerful man in the world.”
All of which, again, makes for breathless cable news coverage and delicious gossip at Washington dinner parties. But, in the end, what difference does it make? Not one heck of a lot. Yes, we’d see a less-explosive, more mainstream, establishment policy agenda with the Kushner/Cohn faction in charge. But, in the end, the president is still Donald Trump, and in the last week we’ve seen even more evidence of how woefully ill-equipped for the job he is.
By one count, Trump has changed his position on 10 major issues in the last 10 days. Some big, some small, but all count. He announced plans to kill the Export-Import Bank; now he supports it. He called NATO obsolete; now he says “it’s no longer obsolete.” He vowed to fire Fed Chair Janet Yellen; now he’s considering leaving her on the job. He accused China of “raping” the United States by currency manipulation; now he says it’s no big deal. He once praised Vladimir Putin; now he condemns him. Last week, he wanted Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to stay in power; this week, he vows to dethrone him. At one time, Mexico was going to pay for the wall; now American taxpayers are. Under Obama, monthly unemployment numbers were phony; now they’re real.
Seriously, it’s hard to keep up with the daily flip-flops, knowing that everything could change again tomorrow. It’s also hard to reconcile Trump’s make-believe world with reality. “We are truly making America great again,” he tweeted this week, citing a whole list of supposed accomplishments.
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