California bill would block inmate transfers to ICE custody

SAN DIEGO >> Among the inmate firefighters who battled massive California wildfires last year was Bounchan Keola, a Laotian immigrant who had been sentenced to 28 years in prison for a gang-related shooting when he was 16.

The state later turned him over to federal immigration authorities, and advocacy groups are again spotlighting his case in an effort to win approval of a bill that would prohibit state prisons from transferring inmates to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Keola was released by ICE in January but knows his future in the United States is fragile. He is a legal resident, having fled Laos with his parents when he was 2, but federal law allows the deportation of immigrants with certain criminal convictions.

Keola told reporters Wednesday that he felt “painfully betrayed by (the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation), thinking that this is what they do to people who risk their lives to protect peoples’ homes from wildfires.” Keola said he could be deported at any moment to Laos, “a country I have no ties to.”

California law prohibits local police and sheriffs from cooperating with federal immigration authorities for some crimes, but it doesn’t apply to the state prison system. California prison officials routinely cooperate with immigration authorities, advocates say, transferring released inmates to their custody to begin deportation proceedings.