The Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus recently joined with the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology-Border Criminologies to publish "Turning the Golden State into a Sanctuary State: A Report on the Impact and Implementation of the California Values Act (SB 54)".
As "Centre" implies, that's the University of Oxford, in England. You'd think they have enough to worry about with Brexit and the U.K.'s own ungainly and failed immigration and assimilation policies without getting into California's sanctuary policies.
The report speaks beatifically about SB 54, the so-called California Values Act (CVA), whose sole purpose is to render it nearly impossible for state or local authorities like police and sheriff's departments to cooperate with federal authorities in any way, including, most importantly, in the way alien criminals are dealt with. In essence, the CVA encourages those enforcement agencies to turn a blind eye toward federal removal policies by declining to honor immigration detainers, and even going so far as to refuse to provide information to federal agents such as release dates so that the alien criminals may be promptly taken into custody rather than released back into their communities.
In doing so, the CVA appears to most reasonable people to be a violation of the plain language of Sections 1373 and 1644 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits official interference in communications to or from federal authorities over the immigration status of aliens.
Some readers may point out that a California federal judge has said that all this sanctuary business is hunky-dory as far as he's concerned. That's true. Meanwhile, the federal government has appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and although I don't really think that court will disturb the judge's ruling given its own progressive leanings, what is abundantly clear is that federal judges in California and other liberal enclaves on the West Coast — and the Ninth Circuit itself, for that matter — have a long and dishonorable history of being overturned by the Supreme Court when cases finally wend their long, tortuous way upward. So I'm inclined to think that this judge may not really care that his ruling defies credibility, or even that it may be overturned since in the intervening many months (or even years), what he says prevails.
The practical effects of the CVA have been disastrous. Many individuals have been needlessly injured or murdered by aliens released to the street by misguided enforcement organizations in the state. Some of the circumstances involved have been brutal and horrific.
Sadly, a number of those slain by illegal aliens released to the streets have been police officers and sheriff's deputies (see, e.g., here, and here). Some other lucky few officers have escaped with their lives. One of the illegal aliens (with a long history of prior drug convictions), who was later arrested and tried for the murders, profanely declared he didn't "f-ing regret it" and went on to threaten the jurors.
One would think this pattern of mindless (and needless) violence might generate resistance on the part of California enforcement agencies, once they realize that their own officers are going to be primary targets and victims of alien criminals who have been encouraged to believe they can violate laws with impunity by myopic sanctuary policies. At least a few of those agencies have, and this is the genesis of the primary complaint in the report:
This report also finds many LEAs [law enforcement agencies] attempted to neutralize the effect of SB 54 by exploiting an exception in the law. Under SB 54, LEAs can only provide release date information to ICE or CBP if detainees meet certain criminal history related requirements, or if the information is already available to the general public. Twenty-four out of fifty-eight, or 41%, of Sheriff's Departments have taken advantage of this latter exception by posting on their department websites release date information for individuals in their custody in advance of their release, upcoming court hearing dates and locations, and detainee personal information including city of residence and occupation.
Bravo! I hope they keep on doing it, and that more join them. What's that motto on the side of many police cars? Oh, that's right, it's "To Serve and Protect". What better way to do that than to see alien criminals removed from American communities, instead of releasing them to offend again.