Trump fortunate the ‘Libby Schaaf Act’ died

It’s not every mayor who can have a proposed act of Congress named after her. But Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gained that distinction last year after she famously issued a public warning that she had received word that an immigration raid was imminent.

President Trump was so enraged that he turned toward Attorney General Jeff Sessions with cameras rolling and said, “You talk about obstruction of justice. I would recommend that you look into obstruction of justice for the mayor of Oakland, Calif., Jeff.”

What Trump was suggesting was such an absurd stretch of obstruction statutes that Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican with a history of immigrant bashing and racially charged remarks, offered up the “Mayor Libby Schaaf Act of 2018” to clarify the law. King’s HR5884 called for a prison term of up to 5 years for any government official who tipped off an immigration raid.

King got his news release and appearance on Fox News; co-sponsors proved more elusive. He attracted only seven, including two rural Northern California Republicans, Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (Sacramento County) and Doug LaMalfa of Richvale (Butte County).

No one should be more grateful than Donald J. Trump that King’s HR5884 went nowhere.

After all, Schaaf ’s warning that an immigration raid may be coming was nothing in comparison to what Trump telegraphed last week.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan had stated, however dubiously, that 800 immigrants with criminal records were able to avoid capture because of Schaaf ’s announcement. He compared her to “a

gang lookout yelling ‘police’ when a cruiser comes in the neighborhood.” Trump’s Monday tweet that ICE was about to “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States” within the next week was not only far broader in scale — it was delivered by the president who actually had the power to order it. He was more than the lookout yelling “police!” at the top of his lungs. He was broadcasting the government’s move to 61 million Twitter followers and every major news outlet in the nation.

So how would this play with King, the author of H5884, who in introducing the “Mayor Libby Schaaf Act of 2018” declared: “If you obstruct ICE, you are going to end up in the cooler.” Would Trump’s warning be a violation of the act? I reached out to King’s press secretary with that question, but he did not respond.

For Schaaf, there had to be a sense of head-shaking comeuppance in watching the president send the same signal for which he wanted her jailed. What, exactly, was Trump’s motive? Was it merely a bluff — a tactic that has come to define his presidency — to charge up his base on the eve of his re-election kickoff rally in Orlando? Was he under the delusion that merely tweeting those words would scare those without legal status to “selfdeport”? Or was he ready to act and confident that the warning would not disrupt the mass roundup?

In Schaaf ’s case, her intentions were clear. She wanted her community to be ready for what could be an ugly sweep that could trample on their rights.

“I come to my opinion not as an immigration policy expert; I don’t pretend to be such a thing,” she said by phone last week. “But I am a lover of justice and democracy and a leader who’s deeply rooted in my community.”

It’s also a personal issue for her. Schaaf had spent more than a year as a young attorney in the 1990s working pro bono on an asylum case of a client from El Salvador who had become a target of the military. The client’s 5-year-old son was killed in an arson fire that destroyed the family home.

“This asylum seeker would never have succeeded if he had not had a lawyer,” she said. “In the end, he was granted.”

Studies have shown that an asylum seeker with legal representation is at least 10 times more likely to have his or her petition granted. Perhaps the White House and Congress should be more focused on assuring the rule of law instead of separating families, putting kids in cages and sanctioning mass deportations. Perhaps they should be funding more judges and lawyers to sort out the refugee applications with diligence and dignity.

Now that would be a fitting measure to be titled the “Mayor Libby Schaaf Act.”

John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron