Today, Explained - The United States vs. California

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

Donald Trump takes his first trip to California as president tomorrow. Making matters awkward, his administration sued the Golden State last week over SB 54, a law that limits how much the state helps federal immigration agents. KQED reporter Marisa Lagos explains the legal battle, and Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims talks about being stuck in the middle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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he had to take a train. So what took so long? California's leaders are in open defiance of federal law. They don't care about crime. They don't care about death and killings. They don't care about robberies. They don't care about the kind of things that you and I care about. Well, you know, Trump has a very tortured relationship with California.

Marisa Lagos covers California politics for KQED in San Francisco. She says this tortured relationship began early in the Trump presidency, like week one. This really started with Trump's now sort of infamous immigration executive order, which, I mean, I think by the end of January, early February, a bunch of those executive orders had been signed. And we saw as part of those executive orders had been signed. And we saw as part of those executive orders, there was language seeking to strip law enforcement funding from any sanctuary jurisdiction. After that, California sued the federal government, like a lot. The attorney

general of California has now sued the Trump administration, I want to say like two dozen times over a wide range of issues, immigration, environmental, yeah, you name it. And then California doubled down. The state's got a bunch of sanctuary cities. All it means essentially is that local law enforcement and local elected and public officials are not going to use their own resources to help promote immigration and customs enforcement. So they're not going to go out on raids. They're not going to, you know, arrest people themselves for being undocumented.

That's kind of it. But late last year, the California legislature passed SB 54, which really severely limits local law enforcement's ability to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And essentially became a sanctuary state. And then the mayor of Oakland took it one step further. The last weekend in February, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a good blue Democrat in the dark blue Bay Area, issued a really unusual warning, told basically the public that she had on good authority that

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was planning to conduct some raids and essentially told people that they should prepare to protect themselves legally to get legal advice. Yesterday, I learned information from multiple sources that there is potentially an ICE activity planned in the Bay Area. It is not my wish to panic people, but to ensure that they're prepared with information. And that was met with, you know, I would say fire and fury, to use another term, by the Trump administration. The acting ICE director came out and accused her of protecting, you know, criminals and really led to some swift reaction from the Justice Department. As in, Attorney General Jeff Sessions dropped by the state last week

to promote the fact that he would be suing it. California absolutely appears to me as using every power it has, powers it doesn't have, to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I'm going to use every power I have to stop that. And it came out right before he got here that the federal government was filing a lawsuit essentially against the entire state challenging its sanctuary laws under the supremacy clause. So basically this idea that if the federal government has purview of something, you know, they have the right

to enforce it or to carry it out and states can't kind of trample on that right. Yeah. This is, I would say, the latest volley in an ongoing legal battle between California jurisdictions and the Trump administration over these sanctuary and immigration laws. But I think it is going to be really interesting to watch. A lot of people have tried to make some ties between this and the Arizona law, which was sort of the opposite, letting local police put themselves into immigration and customs enforcement.

The law there in Arizona was SB 1070, right? Really controversial. Oh, yeah. But I think what the state will argue is, well, this is different. We're not saying the feds can't do their job or we want to do it for them. We're just saying we're not going to participate. And so, you know, I think it's anyone's question where this might go legally, but it certainly doesn't help the existing tension between the Trump administration and California. Since you report on California politics,

I'm wondering where does popular opinion sit? I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of sanctuary laws. I've seen some polling that, you know, over half of Californians do support at least some of what the state's doing in terms of protecting undocumented immigrants. But like anything in California, this is a big state, so it really depends on where you are and who you talk to. Along the coast, I think you're going to see a lot more support for immigrants. But like anything in California, this is a big state. So it really depends on where you are and who you talk to. Along the coast, I think you're going to see a lot more support for

immigrants. And these laws, I think if you go inland or to more, you know, rural areas, people may not be quite as sympathetic. But I mean, let's be clear, there's no movement to throw out any of the lawmakers who have initiated these laws. Are people being picked up by ICE just for being undocumented? Or is it always tied to some sort of violent crime or being arrested for a felony or misdemeanor or something like that? Well, I think that depends on who you ask. ICE insists that even though their priorities have changed and they're not solely focused on violent criminals anymore, that that's really where they put their resources. But, you know, we've heard a lot of

stories about people, for example, one just last week in the Central Valley, where a group of, you know, Latino looking men walked out of a grocery store and got stopped by ICE agents. And one, two of them were undocumented and got arrested. And they insist in those situations that we're not targeting, you know, what they say, illegal aliens. We're just, you know, we're just asking people who are, who are illegal for their papers. Well, how do you know that, right? If it's not racial profiling, I think that's what the advocates would say. On the other hand, we have seen a lot of these raids, including the one that Mayor Libby Schaaf warned of, at least on its face are aimed at targeting people who may have some sort of criminal record. I don't know that they're always going to be violent criminal records, but at least something that they have been in contact with the criminal justice system. is that by not letting, you know, their agents go into jails and meet people at the door,

you know, when they're coming out, that, you know, the state is pushing these raids into communities where there will be more collateral damage. So it's kind of interesting, because I think both sides are, again, using it politically. And the people caught in the middle are, of course, undocumented immigrants. Marisa Lagos covers California politics for KQED. And she also hosts a podcast for KQED called Political Breakdown. When your state government's fighting with your federal government, things can get really confusing, especially if your job is to listen to both of them.

The Sheriff of Fresno County, California, is coming up in just a hot minute. This is Today Explained. I had to go to Home Depot this weekend and I was sitting there in the parking lot taking a look around and what did I see? A mattress firm. And I was like, this makes total sense. That right there is America's neighborhood mattress store. Then I got to work this morning, and I googled mattress firm, hit the maps, and there were several more mattress firms in the District of Columbia. Consider walking into your local

neighborhood mattress firm. I certainly am. What I know is that I'll find mattress experts there, and I really appreciate expertise. Go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to see what deals are happening right now. Unless you're, you know, operating heavy machinery, then it can totally wait. Mattress Firm offers 120 night sleep trial to ensure perfection and 120 night low price guarantee. So you know, you paid the perfect price. Again, go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to learn how your sleeping could be improved. Fresno County sits about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles in the Central Valley of California. Politically, it sits somewhere between Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Sometimes

it goes blue. Sometimes it elects Devin Nunes. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited Sacramento last week, hundreds of protesters were there waiting for him, but so was Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims. She made the trip up to Sacramento to shake his hand. Well, it's important to us. I mean, he's the chief law enforcement officer of the nation. And so anytime that he visits California and when I get invited, it is an honor and it is important because he hears from us directly what our thoughts and ideas are. Lately, the sheriff has been stuck between a federal government that wants her to work with ICE officials to notify them when undocumented immigrants end up in her jail cells and a state that's telling her to just not do that.

I don't think it's the role of the state legislature to tell local law enforcement which other law enforcement agency they can and can't talk to. And remember, we are not talking about our hardworking immigrants out there who are not committing crimes. We're talking about people who commit crimes, get arrested and get booked into local jails. And to put it into perspective, that's not a lot of people. In my jail, my population is about 3,000 people. And there are about 90 of those that have immigration holds. That's only 3% of my jail population. So that's not a lot of people. And they've created this law now where a percentage of those people I can't talk to ICE about,

which means they're going to get out. They're going to get back out into our community. And that doesn't help me keep my community safe. I wonder, though, I mean, I think the reason the issue has become so polarizing in the country is because you also hear about things like SB 1070, where police might pull you over for a broken taillight and all of a sudden you're being deported. Is it fair that a lot of people are feeling scared right now? That's a fair concern. In California, sheriffs are responsible for not only running the jails, but also frontline

law enforcement. Our frontline law enforcement does not get involved in asking anyone what their immigration status is. And that's important to me because we need victims to report when they've been victimized. And if we did that, that would truly undermine the trust between law enforcement and our community. The false narrative out there is be afraid of law enforcement because you're going to be deported. And that's absolutely not true. Frontline law enforcement in California did not get involved in that. In fact, I've really tried to

put the word out through our, especially our Spanish speaking media. If you're a victim of a crime, I can help you be here legally. I can recommend that the federal government issue a visa to you for being involved in reporting and helping to prosecute your offender. That's up to three years. You can be here legally. There's a lot of rhetoric out there that says, you know, for instance, if you want to work with ICE, you're anti-immigrant, which is absolutely not true. It sounds like you believe that undocumented immigrants and everyone else in Fresno can live together harmoniously, as long as they're not committing crimes.

I truly believe that. And I just think when people sit down and talk and understand each other's positions, things can be worked out. However, once the goal is no matter what, we don't want you talking to ICE, that didn't leave me much wiggle room. But at the same time, you met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He works for a man who kicked off his presidential campaign by saying, the Mexicans are bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're bringing rapists. Do you ever feel caught in the middle of kind of like this really polarized, unhealthy fight that doesn't really have anything to do with what you're doing in Fresno? That's a perfect description of how I feel.

And frankly, as I talk to other sheriffs in the state, the way that the position we're all in, we're stuck in the middle. I mean, we raise our right hand and we swear to uphold the Constitution of both the state of California and the United States of America. And that's where the conflict comes in. We are truly stuck in the middle. But to really, let's have some clarity to the issue here so that we aren't trying to guess or expose ourselves to unnecessary liability or putting people rotating back into our communities that may be risky. You know, I haven't lived in California in a minute, but I was most recently living in New York, and it was pretty controversial how ICE would sort of approach finding some undocumented immigrants there. There were stories about ICE showing up to a church that a lot of undocumented immigrants attended at a service. There were stories about ICE kind of waiting outside courtrooms for people who were coming in for their trial dates. Is stuff like that happening in Fresno? Because I feel like that's also part of what drives this to be sort of this passes, the unintended consequence is going to be ICE going out in the community at two businesses to take people into custody when they could have done it in a safe, secure environment like our jail. And now that's exactly what's

happening in California. So my feeling is California kind of created this issue that's going on right now because the collateral damage is going to be, they're going to do their jobs anyway. They're going to find a person they're looking for. And if there's anyone else around with them that are here illegally, they're going to be swept up also. The governor actually admitted when he signed this bill that he's not stopping ICE from doing their job. You know, they're going to do their job anyway. And they are. Margaret Mims is the sheriff of Fresno County, California.

I'm Sean Rommesferum. This is Today Explained. The end of an episode feels like a good place for a confession. I have never been to a mattress firm, but I'm going to change that tonight and get back to you tomorrow. In the meantime, check out mattressfirm.com slash podcast to find out how you can improve your sleep.