County to sue over immigrant treatment
SAN DIEGO >> Last year the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to support President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against California over its “sanctuary state” laws.
Now, the county supervisors plan to sue the Trump administration for how it is treating certain immigrants. The county board voted in closed session Tuesday to pursue legal action against the administration over its handling of asylum-seeking families.
Before October, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement connected asylum seekers with sponsors or family members in the United States while they waited for the legal asylum process to play out. It was called a “safe release” program. Now, federal policies have changed and asylum seekers are being processed by ICE and then released into communities such as San Diego without any resources, leaving thousands of migrants all but stranded.
The suit aims to reimburse the county for the cost of serving asylum seekers and to compel the federal government to re-implement a “safe release” program, said Dianne Jacob, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors.
“We are intent on sending a strong message to the administration that this unacceptable,” Jacob said. “It’s wrong that the federal government is dumping on San Diegans not only from a cost standpoint and a humanitarian standpoint, but this is also a federal issue and the feds need to be held accountable and do their job.”
The lawsuit will be officially filed in about 30 days, Jacob said. She did not say how many supervisors voted for it Tuesday.
After the safe release practices ended in October, a coalition of more than two dozen local nonprofits known as the San Diego Rapid Response Network set up a temporary shelter for migrant families.
The network has provided humanitarian aid and transportation assistance to more than 5,200 migrants — mostly families with young children — since November. But the network’s shelter had been forced to change locations five times, until January, when the county allowed an old courthouse downtown to become a shelter for asylum seekers until the end of this year.