BART offers immigrants safety, not sanctuary
Directors vow not to help government crackdowns
BART directors declared Thursday that their transit system is welcoming to all immigrants, riders and employees alike, but stopped short of calling it a sanctuary.
The new Safe Transit Policy, approved in an 8-1 vote, says that people of all immigration statuses, sexual orientations, races, religious affiliations and other identities will have their dignity protected on the trains and in stations.
“The idea was to make sure that anyone who’s paying for their ticket, regardless of their national origin or documentation status, has the right to a safe ride and doesn’t need to feel intimated that our BART Police Department will ask them for documentation on where they live based on how they look,” said Director Lateefah Simon, coauthor of the policy.
It also says that — unless a court order, state law or federal law mandates it — BART employees and police officers won’t cooperate with immigration investigations, ask for someone’s citizenship status or give federal agents access to suspects in custody. The policy says it “does not confer any additional rights upon any party.”
Director Debora Allen, the lone no vote, said the resolution doesn’t protect immigrants beyond current practices. She said she opposed it because one section that bars the use of a federal verification program for job applicants went against her oath of office.
“This started out to be a very bold sanctuary policy,” Allen said at the meeting in Oakland. “It turned out that to pass such a policy by BART would defy federal laws and regulations and would have put billions of dollars in federal funding at risk.”
People living in the region without legal authorization and their advocates flooded the BART Board of Directors meeting Thursday to applaud the declaration, saying public transportation is vital for immigrants and their families to get to work and school. They said concerns about being detained and deported by law enforcement while in transit are prevalent in the community.
“The fear has been really palpable,” said Saira Hussain, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which supported the policy. “For immigrant, lowincome communities and people of color, BART is a lifeline to get to city centers and essential for their daily lives.”
She and other immigration attorneys said the policy is in line with jurisdictions that have declared themselves sanctuaries — even though this one shuns the term. And its many clauses that require transit employees to obey court orders and laws are common in sanctuary declarations, Hussain said.
Although the BART Police Department has a number of rules on the books about helping federal immigration agencies — such as notifying the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for “holds” of suspects who may be here without legal permission — Carlos Rojas, the transit police chief, told The Chronicle those policies are not enforced in practice.
Rojas said that after reviewing records for recent years, he could only find one instance in which officers engaged in any kind of immigration action. It was an arrest based on an immigration-related warrant, and it happened more than five years ago.
Also Thursday, in a 5-4 vote, BART directors repealed an ordinance, instituted last year but never carried out, that prohibited riders from taking up more than one seat during rush hours. The agency will instead try a pilot version of the rule on a section of transit line in eastern Contra Costa County and may do a marketing campaign encouraging passengers to be courteous.
Some directors had voiced concerns that the rule could lead to discrimination and police use of force against homeless people sleeping on trains.
The board also approved BART’s nearly $2 billion budget — a process that took a small fraction of the time spent debating the immigration and seat-hog issues — and raised paper ticket fares by 50 cents, which will begin in 2018. A new 50 percent discount will be offered to riders ages 13 to 18 as well.