Passing legislation that would stop the double punishment of immigrants wouldn’t just help keep families together, it would offer a chance to help “alleviate the harms” of century-old laws rooted in anti-Asian racism, the UCLA School of Law tells California lawmakers. It urges the state Senate to pass the VISION Act, which would stop state officials from transferring immigrants who have already served their time in state prison over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for deportation.
“Based on the research summarized in our letter, we strongly urge the California State Senate to ensure that the legacy of racist immigration lawmaking is not allowed to keep harming Californians in the name of public safety concerns that have no empirical basis,” said UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CLIP) Faculty Co-Director Ahilan Arulanantham. “Every person detained or deported because of these transfers represents a devastating loss to our state and its communities.”
RELATED STORY: California bill aims to stop unjust double punishment of immigrants who have served their time
CLIP said in the letter to California lawmakers that “the conviction-based grounds of deportation that the VISION Act targets were motivated by racism and are grounded in a long history of racist immigration laws.” California lawmakers of the early 1900s were virulent supporters of racist law that “linked narcotics to Asian Americans and other racial groups as a way of justifying their deportation.”
CLIP points to one California lawmaker who claimed drugs were an issue in the state “because we have more orientals there, and orientals are great at this drug game.” That lawmaker, Rep. Arthur Free, “successfully advocated for the federal Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act of 1922, which became the first federal law attaching immigration consequences such as deportation to convictions for controlled substances.”
Asian communities still suffer the repercussions of these racist laws one century later. “Among California’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, the highest numbers of deportations between January 2017 and February 2022 came from the state’s Chinese (2,348), Indian (1,476), Filipino (547), Armenian (390), and Vietnamese (293) communities,” CLIP said. These harms have also moved beyond the communities originally targeted. CLIP further said that data has repeatedly shown that “cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities does not reduce crime; it does nothing to make us safer.”
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Handing immigrants who have served their time or have been ordered for release over to ICE—including on the day they’re scheduled to be freed to their homes and communities, like Sandra Castaneda—is cruel double punishment that someone born here doesn’t have to face. Cisneros had her sentence commuted by California’s governor and conviction thrown out in court. But on the very day of her release, she was cruelly turned over to federal immigration officials.
“The VISION Act offers a chance to alleviate the harms that California communities continue to experience at the hands of state and local officials and employees because of their race,” CLIP continued. “Given this history and the role that California continues to play in perpetuating this highly disturbing legacy, one of our report’s key recommendations is that California end all transfers from the state and local criminal system to federal immigration enforcement officials.”
While federal law prohibits deportation agents from using contractors to help them detain immigrants, ICE has been doing exactly this since at least 2016. When Gabby Solano was due to be released from state prison following her commutation, she was instead detained by ICE with the aid of contractors. Under a recent settlement, ICE has agreed to stop using contractors when an immigrant is released from state prison. That settlement affects ICE’s Los Angeles and San Francisco field offices; passage of the VISION Act would codify relief statewide.
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