Alameda County gets U.S. grant to hire officers

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday announced $98 million in grants for law enforcement agencies throughout the nation, including one in the Bay Area.

The Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office was among 179 recipients of funding to hire new officers, through a program that prioritized cities and states that cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The county will get $1 million to add eight new officers. Several of its neighbors declined the opportunity to apply for the grants.

San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, New York City and Los Angeles were all absent from the list of jurisdictions that were awarded funds from the Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Pro-

“I applaud their commitment to the rule of law.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on the grants to jurisdictions that cooperate with immigration authorities

gram, which doles out money annually so that local policing agencies can beef up their ranks.

Chicago received $3.125 million, the same amount offered to Houston and San Antonio. The Sacramento Police Department got $1.875 million.

Sessions said in the announcement that 80 percent of this year’s grant recipients had agreed to work with federal officials in their jails.

“I applaud their commitment to the rule of law and to ending violent crime, including violent crime stemming from illegal immigration,” Sessions said, harking back to President Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign.

San Francisco, which did not apply for any money, sued the Trump administration in August for threatening to withhold money from sanctuary cities that refuse to assist with deportations.

An official in Mayor Ed Lee’s office noted that San Francisco does not meet two requirements of the program — its police department does not have a full staff of 1,971 officers, and it does not share people’s immigration status with the U.S. government.

By contrast, Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern responds to federal immigration officials when they ask whether a specific inmate is in his custody. The county also discloses the inmate’s release date, but not the exact time, spokesman Ray Kelly said.

Its policy has prompted criticism from immigrant rights advocates, some of whom were angered by Sessions’ announcement.

“The Trump administration is hell-bent on coercing local police to implement its racist agenda,” Lorella Praeli, director of immigration policy and campaigns at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“By funding local police departments that agree to target immigrants, President Trump is making communities less safe,” Praeli added. “Hundreds of thousands will now be reluctant to report incidents of domestic violence and other crimes because they are scared of being detained or deported.”

Ahern was jubilant after the awards were announced Monday afternoon.

“Our programs are getting recognized,” he said, attributing the grant to his office’s transit crimes unit, which patrols BART, AC Transit buses and Interstate 880, and to community sports programs run by his deputies.

Ahern stressed that his office complies with the state’s Truth Act — which requires local law enforcement agencies to notify inmates when federal immigration officials have requested to transfer them for deportation — and the Trust Act, which prevents California jails from putting immigration holds on lowlevel offenders.

Contra Costa County, which has a $6 million annual contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house immigration detainees at its West County Detention Facility in Richmond, did not apply for an award this year.

Kelly, the Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office spokesman, said the grant still has to be approved by the county Board of Supervisors, where it might hit resistance.

“The tension in Alameda County is that is has a set of sanctuary city policies that are generally immigrant friendly, but the sheriff has always decided that his policy is going to be fairly significant cooperation with ICE,” said Santa Clara University law professor Pratheepan Gulasekaram, who specializes in immigration law.