Crime

Sanctuary Cities Undermined by Police Officers Working with ICE

WASHINGTON INFORMER — New Mexico, California, Philadelphia, Chicago. These are some of the city, county and state governments that have attempted to protect immigrants from local law enforcement working with immigration authorities by becoming “sanctuary” locations.

Published

6 years ago

March 22, 2019

Oakland Post

By Katherine Lewin, Special to The Informer via DiversityInc

New Mexico, California, Philadelphia, Chicago. These are some of the city, county and state governments that have attempted to protect immigrants from local law enforcement working with immigration authorities by becoming “sanctuary” locations.

These sanctuary cities are meant to protect immigrants from a myriad of injustices, including holding people in jail on local charges past their release date at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who want to pick them up for deportation.

Last month, leaders of Bernalillo County, New Mexico’s largest county, learned that the sanctuary policy was being disobeyed from inside the jail.

Staff at the Bernalillo County jail in Albuquerque were letting ICE officers use its database and informing them when a “person of interest” was being released. Staff members let immigration officers walk into the private areas of the jail and even use the county computers to look up names, birthplaces and addresses. No staff member has been disciplined.

Bernalillo County is not the only sanctuary having this problem. Immigration officials have informal relationships with local police. The American Civil Liberties Union reported that a detective in Orange County, California, regularly looked up license plate information for an immigration officer.

While the immigration officers say that sanctuary cities make the streets less safe, studies have shown that the majority of immigrants follow the laws and commit less crime than native-born Americans.

However, unauthorized immigrants make up less than four percent of the total U.S. population and make up less than six percent of the total US prison population. State-based studies have also shown that immigrants are both much more likely to be targeted and convicted of a crime but commit far less crime than native-born Americans.

A study by the Cato Institute, which uses figures from Texas in 2015 as a case study to look at how crime rates compare among immigrant and native-born populations, showed that the rate per 100,000 residents in each subpopulation was 899 for undocumented immigrants, 611 for legal immigrants and 1,797 for native-born Americans.

“As a percentage of their respective populations, there were 56 percent fewer criminal convictions of illegal immigrants than of native-born Americans in Texas in 2015,” author Alex Nowrasteh wrote in the study. “The criminal conviction rate for legal immigrants was about 85 percent below the native-born rate.” The data shows similar patterns for violent crimes such as homicide and property crimes such as larceny.

Another study, published in March 2018 in the journal Criminology, looked at population-level crime rates to see if places with more undocumented immigrants have higher rates of crime. The answer: no.

States with more undocumented immigrants tended to have lower crime rates than states with smaller shares in the years 1990 through 2014.

“Increases in the undocumented immigrant population within states are associated with significant decreases in the prevalence of violence,” the study found.

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Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

Published

6 days ago

March 28, 2025

Oakland Post

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Activism

Group Takes First Steps to Recall District Attorney Diana Becton

The group, called “Recall Diana Becton,” says they have lost faith in her prosecution decisions and her lack of transparency. On their social media post, they say: “We the victims of crime, their families, local business owners and employees, as well as residents of Contra Costa County, have reached our limit and are initiating the recall of District Attorney Diana Becton,” the notice states. “We are increasingly concerned about the persistent cycle of unaddressed criminal activity. We are frustrated by her continuous empty promises to victims and their families that justice will prevail while she permits criminals to roam free.” Becton, 73, is a former judge who was appointed district attorney in 2017 by the Board of Supervisors and then won election in 2018 and again in 2022.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

Diana Becton has served at the Contra Costa County District Attorney since 2017. Richmond Standard photo.

By Post Staff

After gathering more than 100 verified signatures, a group led by crime victims delivered a ‘notice of intent’ to the offices of Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton seeking her recall.

The group, called “Recall Diana Becton,” says they have lost faith in her prosecution decisions and her lack of transparency.

On their social media post, they say:

“We the victims of crime, their families, local business owners and employees, as well as residents of Contra Costa County, have reached our limit and are initiating the recall of District Attorney Diana Becton,” the notice states.

“We are increasingly concerned about the persistent cycle of unaddressed criminal activity. We are frustrated by her continuous empty promises to victims and their families that justice will prevail while she permits criminals to roam free.”

Becton, 73, is a former judge who was appointed district attorney in 2017 by the Board of Supervisors and then won election in 2018 and again in 2022.

Becton has seven days to respond. According to the East Bay Times, her office spokesperson said her “answer will be her public comment.”

After Becton responds, according to the Contra Costa County Elections Office, Recall Diana Becton must then finalize the petition language and gather signatures of a minimum of 10% of registered voters (72,000) in 160 days before it can go on the ballot for election.

She is the third Bay Area district attorney whose constituents wanted them removed from office. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was removed from office in 2021 and last year, Pamela Price lost her position in a recall election.

Of the top 10 proponents of Becton’s recall, three are the families of Alexis Gabe, Thomas Arellano, and Damond Lazenby Jr.

In each of those cases, the families say Becton failed to pursue prosecution, allowed a plea deal instead of a trial in a slaying and questioned the coroner’s report in a fatal car crash.

Some political science experts suggest that, in the Bay Area there may be a bit of copycat syndrome going on.

In many states, recalls are not permitted at all, but in California, not only are they permitted but the ability to put one into motion is easy.

“Only 10% of registered voters in a district are needed just to start the process of getting the effort onto the ballot,” Garrick Percival, a political science professor told the East Bay Times. “It makes it easy to make the attempt.”

But according to their website, the Recall Diana Becton group express their loss of faith in the prosecutor.

“Her lack of transparency regarding crime in this county, and her attempts to keep her offenders out of jail have left us disheartened,” the recall group wrote.

Petitioners say they are acting not just for themselves but other crime victims “who feel ignored, exasperated and hopeless in their pursuit of justice for themselves or their loved ones.”

KRON TV, The East Bay Times, and Wikipedia are the sources for this report.