Santa Ana, Calif., welcomed its first Latino police chief on Tuesday during a City Council meeting, then the city with an 80-percent Latino population opted to increase its revenue by deporting undocumented immigrants.
As MintPress News previously reported, since 2006, Santa Ana officials have allowed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to detain those suspected of being undocumented immigrants at the Santa Ana City Jail for a fee of about $82 per day. Despite protests in recent years, city officials have not only expressed an interest in continuing their financial relationship with ICE, but also hope to increase the immigrant detainee fee to $110.
The controversial detention practice has been criticized by immigrants rights activists for years, as individuals can be detained for up to 48 hours without a warrant — even if they are American citizens. This 48-hour period does not include weekends or holidays, which means many are detained for much longer than two days. As Theresa Dang, a representative of the Orange County May Day Coalition shared, more than 70 percent of the detainees do not have any criminal record.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Silvia Hernandez of Service Employees International Union’s Justice for Janitors campaign was the first to speak on the behalf of the residents opposed to the city of Santa Ana’s relationship with ICE. She demanded officials release the jail profitability report, as they pledged to do last year, and “increase transparency on the issue overall.”
Resident Joese Hernandez also spoke during Tuesday’s meeting, saying that the “shameful” detention practice is “forcing our kids to grow up fatherless and motherless.”
Some of members of the city council, such as Councilwoman Michele Martinez, agreed that the deportations are devastating to many in the Santa Ana community. Martinez also said the city has to think about the 100 or so employees who work within the jail system, while others pointed out that the ICE contract is keeping the city afloat, since the jail is still operating at a loss.
Martinez further explained that she has not seen the jail profitability report herself, and she encouraged city leaders to be “as transparent as possible” and to “give them the information that they need.”
Although immigrants rights advocates say the city council’s decision to raise the price for housing detainees is a step in the wrong direction, there is still time for the city to break its contract with ICE. According to immigrants rights activists, the city can break the contract anytime, as long as it gives ICE four-months’ notice. With more and more Latinos holding positions of power in the city, activists hope change will finally come.
After Police Chief Carlos Rojas took his oath of office, the new “top cop” made it a point to acknowledge the presence of immigration rights advocates in the audience, who were there to protest the city’s decision to contract with ICE officials in order to make up for some of the city’s lost revenue.
Though Rojas didn’t openly show support for one side or the other, he did point out that the detention program is an issue the city has to deal with. How exactly the city could make up for the lost revenue is not known, but Hernandez said, “[I]t’s definitely not okay with an all-Latino council, Latino mayor, chief, city manager that we participate in this business of legalized human trafficking any longer.”
“It’s not just a budgeting issue,” he said. “It’s a moral issue.”
Activist Scott Sink agreed, adding that he was “disturbed by the decision to directly participate in the deportation process.”
“Human families are not commodities for your business models,” Sink stressed.