Irvine officials are joining a growing list of Orange County cities offering support to immigrant families impacted by deportation raids as Anaheim leaders look to potentially refill their aid fund and start to offer legal assistance.
In Irvine, city council members are looking to launch a $100,000 fund and hire an intake officer to help connect immigrant families with lawyers and provide some immediate legal representation.
Irvine Councilwoman Betty Martinez-Franco, who brought forth the proposal with Mayor Larry Agran and Councilwoman Melinda Liu, said ICE was racial profiling people and illegally detaining them and that the city needed to stand up for Latinos that work in the city.
“As a person, I cannot see someone taking a mom out of their children’s hands when they are dropping them to school. A child going to school – a high school – taking them by force, a veteran – punching him and taking him to jail. That’s not how we do things in America,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Let’s call it how it is. They are coming for brown people who speak Spanish, who work for privileged people here in Irvine.”
Councilman James Mai, who comes from an immigrant refugee family, said he empathizes with some of those facing deportation, but immigration defense is not a city matter.
“The city is not a legal defense fund for federal immigration proceedings. Our cities exist to provide police, fire, infrastructure, Planning and Public Safety, not to interfere with federal enforcement actions, regardless if we think they’re right or wrong,” he said.
Mai added his nonprofit reaches out to support immigrant families that have had someone deported and that local nonprofits should be the ones supporting these people.
Meanwhile, Anaheim City Councilman Carlos Leon is calling for a discussion on launching a legal aid fund for families impacted by deportation raids as well as replenishing their current aid fund aimed at helping impacted families with rent and utilities.
“I know that we refer residents to the Public Law Center and Orange County Justice Fund. I’m grateful that those partnerships exist, but I want to make sure that those referrals are actually translating into timely representation,” he said at Tuesday’s Anaheim City Council meeting.
If Anaheim officials move forward with Leon’s request, they would be the latest city in Orange County to launch a legal aid fund for families impacted by deportations behind Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and now Irvine.
Last year, Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, along with community organizations and nonprofits, also launched the $1.5 million OC Liberty Fund intended to help immigrant families navigate the legal system.
[Read: Immigration Legal Aid Funds Grow in Orange County]
The efforts come after news reports of ICE leasing space at an office park in Irvine and at the federal building in Santa Ana.
Irvine officials on Tuesday said they have not been able to confirm who has leased that space in the city.
Irvine Launches Immigrant Aid Fund
On Tuesday, Irvine City Council members voted 5-2 in support of hiring an intake officer and launching a $100,000 fund to help connect immigrant families to lawyers. Mai and Councilman Mike Carroll were the dissenting votes.
The money would be used to cover intake screenings and immediate term representation and the program would focus on people impacted by roving deportation patrols and not people detained in target enforcement actions with a judicial warrant, according to a staff report.
It would not cover long term lawyer representation.
Mai said ICE has operated in Irvine multiple times, they have taken criminals out of the neighborhood he lives in and questioned how the city would provide legal advice to people facing deportation that have committed violent crimes.
“Over the past five years, I’ve seen four brothels. I’ve seen a birthing house, and I’ve seen human traffickers being pushed out from there,” he said. “ No one in our neighborhood says, ‘hey, that’s wrong of you ICE to come and get them.’ We want them out of there, because we have children around here.”
“I fully support them going after these people. I don’t support them in other actions,” Mai continued.
Most of his colleagues argued the proposal was about protecting due process rights, not violent criminals or interfering with federal enforcement actions.
Agran said the city can expect a scaling up of federal deportation efforts with an increase in federal funding for ICE.
“That calls for stepping up our commitment to due process,” he said at the meeting.
“This is the bedrock of our entire American democracy, with the rule of law that people just don’t get picked up and carted away without a chance to be heard, without a chance to be connected to representation.”
He added there have been seven or eight incidents involving 13 people in the city that have been sent to detention centers.
Liu, an immigrant, said the effort is aimed at protecting the basic rights of people who live or work in Irvine.
“Imagine if you go to a different country and they can just sweep you up and do whatever to you. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re a country of law and order,” she said.
“Thirteen people have been detained in Irvine that we know of and I’ve heard that there could be more that we are unaware of because obviously they’re not giving us all the information. It is very concerning.”
Franco, who said she was once undocumented, emphasized that starting to offer legal support was not about defying federal law or obstructing enforcement, but rather about ensuring people know their rights and creating trust.
Councilwoman Kathleen Treseder said it was a matter of public safety and that there was a lot of fear in the community especially for certain groups of residents.
“Especially if we have a history of ICE coming in and taking folks violently while they’re masked and with no warrant, in some cases, throwing them into a van and driving off and we cannot find where they’ve gone. We don’t even know who they take,” she said.
“That is a crisis of safety for our city, and it affects how folks live in our city.”
The fund is also expected to take donations – a request by Councilman William Go.
Anaheim Contigo
So far, Anaheim officials have spent over $213,000 of the $250,000 they allocated in July to support impacted immigrant families with rent, utilities and other needs through the Anaheim Contigo initiative.
Joe Perez, the city’s Human and Neighborhood Services manager, said some of the challenges with the assistance are limited funding for each person, its short term assistance and that the fund is allowed to cover legal costs for families.
“Behind rent, legal expenses are now burgeoning as a high need for our clients,” he said at the meeting.
Most of the money, close to $162,000, came from the city’s housing trust fund – kickstarted with tens of millions of dollars from Disney – and was spent on helping those families cover rent.
Over $51,000 came from the city’s general fund and was spent on helping cover other household expenses, according to city staff.
The fund has helped 331 families and city staff expects the remaining close to $36,000 will be spent in the next two to three months, Perez told council members at Tuesday’s meeting.
It comes on the heels of officials using tens of millions of dollars in one-time revenue sources to address a roughly $64 million budget gap to last year as staff reported a decrease in hotel tax revenue.
When officials allocated the $250,000 for the fund, council members directed staff to use money from the housing trust given to them by Disney and if they couldn’t, then move around money from different departments.
[Read: Anaheim Gives Immigrant Aid Fund a $250K Boost]
The housing trust fund dollars can be used towards eviction protection grants, building affordable homes and downpayment assistance for homebuyers.
Mike Lyster, a city spokesman, said the real time updates they put up on the Anaheim Contigo website regarding immigration enforcement actions is some of the city’s most important work.
“Since June, we have gone out on more than 100 actual incidents or potential incidents to detail what happened or to dispel speculation or inaccurate information,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Lyster said there has been a recent shift from roving deportation raids to more targeted enforcement efforts after recent killings in Minnesota by federal agents.
“We have not seen any confirmed enforcement in Anaheim for the past two weeks, and we have not seen roving enforcement since late January,” he said.
“I do need to be clear that this can change at any time.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org.