Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Five
Law
School
Deans,
46
Profs
Urge
Gov.
Brown
on
TRUST
Act
Top
legal
experts
push
for
bright
line
between
broken
federal
deportation
policies,
local
law
enforcement
Today,
51
leading
legal
scholars
issued
a
detailed
letter
to
California
Governor
Jerry
Brown
regarding
the
TRUST
Act,
a
bill
that
seeks
to
limit
deportations
and
rebuild
community
confidence
in
law
enforcement.
In
the
letter,
the
experts
urge
the
Governor
to
uphold
a
key
feature
of
the
bill
as
currently
written
by
ensuring
that
prior
brushes
with
the
nation's
broken
immigration
system
do
not
cause
immigration
"holds"
in
California's
jails.
The
legal
scholars
urge
against
holding
individuals
simply
because
they
have
"prior
removal
orders"
or
"re-entry"
offenses.
The
letter
explains
that
these
stem
entirely
from
the
nation's
profoundly
broken
immigration
system.
They
outline
several
devastating
flaws
in
the
nation's
immigration
system
that
result
in
unjust
deportations,
including:
Serious procedural defects in the immigration court system. An unworkable immigration court system, with many long-time residents ordered deported without their knowledge or coerced into signing away their rights. Inadequate relief from deportation in current U.S. immigration law and policy. Unjust federal policies that prevent immigration judges from considering all of the circumstances of a person's case, including family ties
Key signatories of today's letter include Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Irvine School of Law; Christopher Edley, Jr., Dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law; Kevin Johnson, Dean of the UC Davis School of Law; John Trasvia, Dean of the University of San Francisco School of law; and Frank H. Wu, Chancellor & Dean of the UC Hastings College of the Law; Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel of the ACLU of Southern California (Law school affiliations included for identification purposes only). The letter comes on the heels of prominent TRUST Act endorsements from 28 California Members of Congress and the Police Chiefs of San Diego, Chula Vista, and National City. "We need immigration policies that uphold the principles of family unity and due process. As a first step
toward fixing the injustices of our immigration system and advancing common-sense immigration policy across the nation, I urge the Governor to sign the TRUST Act as currently written," said Bill Ong Hing, Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco. "Due to this nation's failure to establish a reasonable immigration process, many people who came to the United States for a better life and have deep family ties here have been swept up in a wave of aggressive enforcement with few legal options. Caught in a deeply dysfunctional system where judges' hands are tied and fundamental violations of basic due process principles are rampant, many are deported. They return to be reunited with their loved ones and contribute to this country. Channeling resources to deport them again after trivial or wrongful arrests undermines our values," remarked Allison Davenport, a Lecturer and Clinical Instructor at the International Human Rights Law Clinic of UC Berkeley's School of Law. The TRUST Act would ensure that people arrested for low-level, non-violent offenses are not held for extra time at local expense in response to costly "hold" requests issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), often without probable cause that a person is deportable. Such holds have unfairly trapped citizens in local jails for an extended period of time, including survivors of domestic violence and other crimes, and many aspiring citizens arrested for issues as minor as selling food without a permit. ###