Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/orange-county-probation-department/)
Two supervisors claimed Sacramento is using misleading statistics to justify a shift of prisoner parole and probation responsibilities to counties. Orange County appears to be the only large county in California to withhold the data.
Assembly Bill 899, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed last week, mandates that records for those in the juvenile justice system remain confidential “regardless of the juvenile’s immigration status.”
When 14-year-old Alex was placed in deportation proceedings in 2012, his mother, Marisa, feared he would be immediately deported. That didn’t happen.
Juveniles placed in deportation proceedings by ICE are turned over to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and placed in facilities throughout the country. It’s a process that’s been questioned by attorneys, mental health experts and youth advocates.
The day Marisa’s 14-year-old son was taken into custody from Orange County’s juvenile hall by immigration authorities in the summer of 2012, she set about trying to get answers.
Advocates say U.S. immigration officials routinely violate the constitutional rights of juveniles by interrogating them in juvenile detention before informing them of their rights.
Over the past several years, probation departments across California, from Orange County to Sacramento, have significantly overhauled the process used to determine when and if the agency should contact immigration authorities if a juvenile in custody is suspected of being undocumented.
A mother says that if she’d had a better understanding of her son’s juvenile justice proceedings, the information would have guided her decisions in court in the spring of 2012 when he was found delinquent for carrying a weapon – a pocket knife – on school grounds.
Alex had landed in Orange County’s juvenile hall after bringing a pocket knife to school in 2012. Since, he’s lived on a slippery slope toward deportation.
For years, legal scholars and immigrant youth advocates have clashed with probation departments regarding the disclosure of confidential information about undocumented juveniles to federal immigration authorities without a court order. Part one of a four-part series.