California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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TimothyC
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California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by TimothyC »

Priscella Vega for the LA Times wrote:State not backing down after judge rules sanctuary law doesn't apply in charter cities



Despite an Orange County judge’s ruling this week that California’s so-called sanctuary protections for immigrants who are in the country illegally are unconstitutional as they apply to charter cities, state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Friday that the state would continue to uphold its laws.

“Preserving the safety and constitutional rights of all our people is a statewide imperative which cannot be undermined by contrary local rules,” Becerra said in a statement. “We will continue working to ensure that our values and laws like the California Values Act are upheld throughout our state.”

Jennifer Molina, press secretary for the attorney general’s office, declined to comment on the likelihood of an appeal.

Huntington Beach on Thursday became the first city to successfully challenge the California Values Act, also known as Senate Bill 54, after Orange County Superior Court Judge James Crandall affirmed that the law violates its local control as a charter city — one governed by a charter adopted by local voters.

Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael Gates said the ruling makes California’s 121 charter cities — which include Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose and San Francisco — exempt from SB 54, authored by then-Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles). The law in many cases prohibits state and local police agencies from notifying federal officials about the impending release of immigrants in custody who may be deported.

“This is a significant victory for the rule of law, the [California] Constitution, the city’s charter authority and other charter cities,” Gates said in a statement Friday. “We will continue to hold Sacramento accountable for unconstitutional state law overreaches. The city of Huntington Beach will not allow Sacramento to violate its constitutionally protected rights.”

Huntington Beach joined a wave of Orange County opposition to SB 54 that started in March when the City Council in Los Alamitos — another charter city — passed an ordinance to opt out of the law. Since then, the Orange County Board of Supervisors has voted to join a federal lawsuit against the measure, the Costa Mesa City Council has adopted a resolution opposing the law and the city of Fountain Valley has signed on to a law group’s brief supporting the federal case.

The Newport Beach City Council also passed a resolution opposing SB 54 and authorized filing a legal brief supporting the federal lawsuit. Newport Beach, which also is a charter city, hasn’t filed such a brief, but City Atty. Aaron Harp said Friday that it still intends to.

Orange County’s other charter cities are Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Irvine, Santa Ana and Seal Beach, according to the League of California Cities.

Crandall said Thursday that “the operation of a police department and its jail is a city affair. For the state to say one size fits all for policing isn’t going to fit everybody.”

California Deputy Atty. Gen. Jonathan Eisenberg contended that municipalities can exercise other forms of autonomy, saying there is an “important need” for a uniform public safety law.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa), whose 48th Congressional District includes Huntington Beach and parts of Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, issued a statement Friday commending Huntington Beach for its victory.

“This court case was a huge setback for supporters of sanctuary policies,” said Rohrabacher, who urged various city governments to challenge the mandate. “This law was forced down the throats of Californians and dramatically undermined their safety and security. If cities and counties want to cooperate with ICE or other federal law enforcement, they have a right to do so, and I support the judge’s decision.”

Vega writes for Times Community News. Times staff writer Hillary Davis contributed to this report.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Yes, roll your eyes at those who stand up for the oppressed in the face of the Trump regime and its allies' campaign of ethnic cleansing.

California is right. This is one of the very rare cases where I will say that I do not care what the law says, or how a judge interprets it. Civil disobedience and refusal of immoral orders are legitimate tactics to oppose ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity. I would sooner see California face Trump's troops on the battlefield, than see them back down on this point.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by Zaune »

It may yet come to that if he's in a particularly bad mood.

But for all that, I can see points on both sides here. Sanctuary laws are at best a band-aid solution, and an easy target for the Lawful Stupid and the Lawful Bigoted. An infinitely better solution would be to bring the barriers to entry down to a saner level, if necessary by creating a special "jobs that white people are too proud to do" visa.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Zaune wrote: 2018-10-02 02:27pm It may yet come to that if he's in a particularly bad mood.

But for all that, I can see points on both sides here. Sanctuary laws are at best a band-aid solution, and an easy target for the Lawful Stupid and the Lawful Bigoted. An infinitely better solution would be to bring the barriers to entry down to a saner level, if necessary by creating a special "jobs that white people are too proud to do" visa.
Of course it would. But in the absence of a Congress and President that will pass reasonable, humane immigration policy, civil disobedience is sometimes the only avenue left. Its not a solution, its a stop-gap, but its about all we have right now.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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Fair. Although I bet it wouldn't take much to sell the latter on some actually quite reasonable immigration reforms by weaponising his own racism and snobbery against him and playing up the "white people are too proud to pick cotton" angle. You might have to live with something that was explicitly called the "N****r Work Visa" in official documents for the rest of his term in order to keep the straight-armed salute lobby quiet, but progress is progress.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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Why is it that these Charter Cities get to ignore state law ?
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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One thing that I will never condone is the creation of laws which cities, provinces, states, or municipalities can opt out of. The result is an unfair patchwork of double-standards, injustice masquerading as "sovereignty" or "local government", and ultimately toothless laws and a less-united country.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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I'd be more than happy if SB 54 was struck down. It doesn't do anything to actually stop ICE from going into towns and cities in California. All it does is prevent County Jails or State Prisons from calling up ICE and saying 'Hey, we know you're looking for this individual, and we're about to cut him loose, come grab him if you want him.' Now, instead, ICE and other Federal agencies have to then go, track down that individual out in the world, vastly increasing the danger for all involved, for the individual they're looking for, for the agents who know have to go and grab him, and the public at large. Instead of showing up at a Jail, where the individual is already in custody and just swap handcuffs on him, now you got to go out, find him and grab him there, when you don't know if he's armed or not.

I'm also not a fan at all of states going 'Screw you, Federal Government, we're not gonna follow your laws.' We saw that with Arizona actually trying to enforce immigration laws on their own and that got slapped down hard.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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Agent Fisher wrote: 2018-10-02 06:22pm I'd be more than happy if SB 54 was struck down. It doesn't do anything to actually stop ICE from going into towns and cities in California. All it does is prevent County Jails or State Prisons from calling up ICE and saying 'Hey, we know you're looking for this individual, and we're about to cut him loose, come grab him if you want him.' Now, instead, ICE and other Federal agencies have to then go, track down that individual out in the world, vastly increasing the danger for all involved, for the individual they're looking for, for the agents who know have to go and grab him, and the public at large. Instead of showing up at a Jail, where the individual is already in custody and just swap handcuffs on him, now you got to go out, find him and grab him there, when you don't know if he's armed or not.
I think you perhaps overrate the danger posed by undocumented immigrants to law enforcement, and underrate the danger that they will be in if they're detained and deported (often back to countries where they will likely be killed if they return).

You are also not considering other aspects of the problem. For example, if undocumented immigrants know that being in police custody potentially means getting handed over to the Brownshirts in ICE, they are less likely to come forward to report a crime or turn themselves in for a crime, and more likely to resist arrest. Both of which harm public safety.

Edit: the point is well-taken about the dangers of allowing states to violate Federal law, and normally I'd strongly agree with you. But we are seeing tens of thousands of children being locked in cages, hundreds of thousands or millions of law-abiding people being threatened with deportation without due process, many to situations where they will die... and something has to stop it. So this is one of those rare cases where I will support states or individuals in violating an immoral law, just as I would have supported those who chose to violate the Fugitive Slave Act, for example.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-10-02 06:26pm
Agent Fisher wrote: 2018-10-02 06:22pm I'd be more than happy if SB 54 was struck down. It doesn't do anything to actually stop ICE from going into towns and cities in California. All it does is prevent County Jails or State Prisons from calling up ICE and saying 'Hey, we know you're looking for this individual, and we're about to cut him loose, come grab him if you want him.' Now, instead, ICE and other Federal agencies have to then go, track down that individual out in the world, vastly increasing the danger for all involved, for the individual they're looking for, for the agents who know have to go and grab him, and the public at large. Instead of showing up at a Jail, where the individual is already in custody and just swap handcuffs on him, now you got to go out, find him and grab him there, when you don't know if he's armed or not.
I think you perhaps overrate the danger posed by undocumented immigrants to law enforcement, and underrate the danger that they will be in if they're detained and deported (often back to countries where they will likely be killed if they return).

You are also not considering other aspects of the problem. For example, if undocumented immigrants know that being in police custody potentially means getting handed over to the Brownshirts in ICE, they are less likely to come forward to report a crime or turn themselves in for a crime, and more likely to resist arrest. Both of which harm public safety.

Edit: the point is well-taken about the dangers of allowing states to violate Federal law, and normally I'd strongly agree with you. But we are seeing tens of thousands of children being locked in cages, hundreds of thousands or millions of law-abiding people being threatened with deportation without due process, many to situations where they will die... and something has to stop it. So this is one of those rare cases where I will support states or individuals in violating an immoral law, just as I would have supported those who chose to violate the Fugitive Slave Act, for example.
And I think you're overestimating just who ICE is looking for at jails. They're not looking for illegal aliens who came across the border looking for work as a laborer. They're looking for known gang members and felons who have Deportation orders on them. But if they're caught up for a minor crime, which burglary and a host of other formerly jailable offenses are, they're cited, given a court date and usually cut loose cause there isn't enough space in the jails to hold them. So, now, someone with violent felonies in the past, with a deporation order, gets hooked for burglary, cited, released, and ICE still has to go find them and catch them.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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Maybe in the past. But now? This is the ICE that rounds up little kids, pulls them from their families, and puts them in cages. Then detains any other relatives who show up wanting to care for the child. I sure as hell don't trust them to show restraint in who they detain.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by madd0ct0r »

the USA is so weird:

Federal law, excpet states cna ignore them
State law, excpet charter cities and counties can ignore them
county law, unless its federal land...
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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The US is based on the idea that powers not granted to a higher level of government are reserved and exercised by the lower level of government, retaining as much power as possible as close as possible to the people. This is the total opposite of most countries, but it's pretty self consistent. The problem is the US and most state constitutions intentionally failed to define what most powers meant. This is why the US federal constitution doesn't have 300 articles like some do, but it also leaves a huge amount of scope for lawsuits.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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Sea Skimmer wrote: 2018-10-09 03:03am The US is based on the idea that powers not granted to a higher level of government are reserved and exercised by the lower level of government, retaining as much power as possible as close as possible to the people. This is the total opposite of most countries, but it's pretty self consistent. The problem is the US and most state constitutions intentionally failed to define what most powers meant. This is why the US federal constitution doesn't have 300 articles like some do, but it also leaves a huge amount of scope for lawsuits.
Yeah, generally how it works is that stuff will carry on mostly without incident, until... let's say, to draw a parallel to this specific case...

Part of the government is trying to enforce an unpopular law. State A passes a law saying they won't abide by it. Since normally federal law overrules state law, this means the state is in the wrong, right? Nah. What it means is it goes to court and a judge gets to decide whether the state can challenge the government on this specific point. If the state can get away with it, that sets a precedent that other states can defy the government on this specific point of immigration law.

It helps that it's the Justice Department trying to enforce the law rather than Congress in this case, as executive branch departments don't actually *make* the law-- they only decide how to interpret/implement their enforcement of the law. Which in practice does mean that they write a lot of regulations, but still.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by Highlord Laan »

The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-10-02 06:43pm Maybe in the past. But now? This is the ICE that rounds up little kids, pulls them from their families, and puts them in cages. Then detains any other relatives who show up wanting to care for the child. I sure as hell don't trust them to show restraint in who they detain.
You act like republicans see that as a bad thing.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

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Highlord Laan wrote: 2018-10-09 08:45pmYou act like republicans see that as a bad thing.
Some of the saner ones probably do... just not quite bad enough to justify voting for someone else.
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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Highlord Laan wrote: 2018-10-09 08:45pm
The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-10-02 06:43pm Maybe in the past. But now? This is the ICE that rounds up little kids, pulls them from their families, and puts them in cages. Then detains any other relatives who show up wanting to care for the child. I sure as hell don't trust them to show restraint in who they detain.
You act like republicans see that as a bad thing.
Uh... no? I'm well aware that the Republican Party is near-unanimously supportive of ethnic cleansing, or at least okay with tolerating it.
Zaune wrote: 2018-10-10 05:58am
Highlord Laan wrote: 2018-10-09 08:45pmYou act like republicans see that as a bad thing.
Some of the saner ones probably do... just not quite bad enough to justify voting for someone else.
No doubt, but at some point, it ceases to matter why you're a collaborator- the results are pretty much the same.
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"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

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Re: California AG not backing down over sanctuary city ruling

Post by bilateralrope »

Sea Skimmer wrote: 2018-10-09 03:03am The US is based on the idea that powers not granted to a higher level of government are reserved and exercised by the lower level of government, retaining as much power as possible as close as possible to the people. This is the total opposite of most countries, but it's pretty self consistent. The problem is the US and most state constitutions intentionally failed to define what most powers meant. This is why the US federal constitution doesn't have 300 articles like some do, but it also leaves a huge amount of scope for lawsuits.
Doesn't the US operate mainly by an overly broad interpretation of the interstate commerce clause ?

Now that the Supreme Court has a conservative majority, I'm wondering how long before some "states rights" lawsuit narrows that interpretation and how badly things will come crashing down when lower courts have no choice but to enforce that precedent on the flurry of lawsuits filed as a result.
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