The idea, spurred by advocates for immigrants, is simple: Conviction of some crimes that carry a potential penalty of at least a year in jail can put an immigrant on the radar for deportation. That’s true whether the immigrants charged with violations are in the country legally, with student visas or green cards, or illegally.
By making sure that most of its ordinance violations carry penalties of less than a year — a sentence rarely given for them anyway — the city could help immigrants who commit petty offenses lay low.
If the council approves the changes, the most serious offenses — including repeat domestic violence offenses and assaults that cause injury or target officers — would retain the potential one-year jail sentence.
“The goal is that we ensure people are receiving appropriate punishment for their crime — and that we are not unnecessarily flagging people for deportation or punishing the homeless for low-level offenses,” Hancock said in an interview.
Some immigrant advocates say the proposed restructuring doesn’t go far enough, suggesting it would be smarter to make even the top category of offenses subject to a maximum 364 days in jail to help keep offenders off the federal radar. ... Sightings of plain-clothes agents in the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse’s hallways have made at least a handful of domestic violence victims and crime witnesses — and possibly more — reluctant to show up to court or aid prosecutions, city officials say.
The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency long has relied on laws that allow it to seek automatic deportation based on certain offenses in a person’s criminal background. Aside from major crimes, the guideline is that an offense that carries a potential penalty of a year or more and which ICE decides to classify as an “aggravated felony” meets the threshold.
But ICE in recent years often has erred in low-level offenders’ favor, putting them at ease.
“The fear right now is that all that discretion has now gone out the window,” Gonzales said.
She said city officials have been slow to react to immigrants’ concerns, only taking the threat of ICE agents showing up to the courthouse seriously once the Meyer firm filmed the agents and released the video in February.