Damian Dovarganes / AP file
High school student Claudia Rueda, 17, center, is arrested by Los Angeles Police officers for failing to disperse, as protesters blocked the intersection of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Twin Tower Correctional Facility in Los Angeles Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012. Students demanded the passage of Assembly Bill 1081, also known as the Trust Act.
By Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News
California?s governor late Sunday vetoed a bill that would have allowed local authorities to free undocumented immigrants from custody despite requests by immigration officials to hold them for possible deportation proceedings.
The controversial practice has long been criticized by immigration advocates who say the federal requests, known as detainers or holds, cast a wide dragnet that ensnared even those who had committed minor crimes or no offenses. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement had said the program was instrumental in helping enforce immigration laws and in getting violent offenders off the streets.
In his veto message, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. said he could not sign the bill as written because under it ?local officers would be prohibited from complying?with an immigration detainer unless the person arrested was charged with, or has been previously convicted of, a serious or violent felony.
?Unfortunately, the list of offenses codified in the bill is fatally flawed because it omits many serious crimes,? he said. ?For example, the bill would bar local cooperation? even when the person arrested has been convicted of certain crimes involving child abuse, drug trafficking, selling weapons, using children to sell drugs, or gangs. I believe it's unwise to interfere with a sheriffs discretion? to comply with a detainer issued for people with these kinds of troubling criminal records.?
Brown noted he would work with lawmakers to improve the legislation and said undocumented immigrants ?play a major role in California's economy,?with many performing low-wage jobs that others don't want.
?Comprehensive? immigration? reform -- including a path to citizenship -- would provide tremendous economic? benefits and is long overdue,? he wrote. ?Until we have immigration reform, federal agents shouldn?t try to coerce local law enforcement officers into detaining people who?ve been picked up for minor offenses and pose no reasonable threat to their community.?
Immigration activists denounced Brown?s veto, comparing?it to Arizona?s controversial immigration law that includes a provision forcing those stopped by police to show their immigration papers.
"By vetoing the Trust Act Governor Brown has failed California's immigrant communities, imperiling civil rights and leaving us all less safe. The President's disastrous Secure Communities program is replicating Arizona's model of immigration enforcement nationally, causing a human rights crisis. Immigration and Customs Enforcement strong-armed the Governor to defend its deportation quota instead of defending Californian's rights,? Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said in a statement. ?On this sad day, we renew our commitment to fight to keep our families together despite the Governor and the President's insistence on seeing them torn apart."
Alvarado was referring to ICE?s ?Secure Communities? program, under which the FBI shares fingerprints of those arrested with federal immigration authorities who check to see if the person is not legally in the U.S. or if they can be removed due to a criminal conviction.
ICE says it prioritizes the deportation of those who present the most significant threats to public safety, and that it has deported more than 147,400 convicted criminal undocumented immigrants, including more than 54,200 individuals convicted of violent offenses such as murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children, under the program.?
In a statement last week, ICE Deputy Press Secretary Gillian Christensen said the agency doesn?t comment on pending state legislation.
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?The identification and removal of criminal offenders is ICE?s highest priority and over the past three and half years, ICE has been dedicated to implementing smart, effective reforms to the immigration system that allow it to focus its resources on priority individuals,? she wrote in a statement, noting that the Department of Homeland Security would continue to exercise prosecutorial discretion for certain people who came to the U.S. as children and other individuals who were ?low priorities.?
?The federal government alone sets these priorities and places detainers on individuals arrested on criminal charges to ensure that dangerous criminal aliens and other priority individuals are not released from prisons and jails into our communities,? she added.
Several counties and cities have enacted ordinances that limit police cooperation with federal immigration authorities, The New York Times has reported.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat?who sponsored the legislation, told The Times that they were ?trying to bring some sanity and clarity to a program that I frankly think has gone rogue.?
?We want police to distinguish between the woman selling tamales and the gang member who has a record,? he said.
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