San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city places it in the bullseye for an attack from an emboldened Donald Trump administration.
This time, however, lawyers and community advocates have seen the playbook, and have already begun steeling themselves.
“This is the second time around … and he’s got more ideas, apparently,” said Bill Hing, the founding director of the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic. “So we have got to prepare for the worst.”
Changes to the immigration system
Hing predicts immigration advocates will face both ideological and procedural challenges.
Take domestic violence cases, for example. People escaping domestic violence currently make up the majority of cases successfully handled by Hing’s clinic. These cases will soon become more difficult to win, as Hing expects the federal attorney general appointed by Trump will hold a narrower definition of what justifies political asylum that excludes both domestic violence and gang violence.
“You would think the law is the law,” Hing said. “But, in fact, the attorney general has the ability to impose a certain interpretation of the law.”
The rate at which immigration cases are scheduled and processed may also be ramped up with “rocket dockets.” Federal mandates could require courts to come to quicker decisions that give newcomers less of an opportunity to prepare their defense, Hing said.
Moreover, newly appointed conservative judges are unlikely to exercise their “prosecutorial discretion” to allow people without a criminal background to stay in the country, regardless of their formal asylum status, Hing continued.
On the ground, Hing doesn’t foresee Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents patrolling the streets, checking documents. But the president does have the power to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows about 500,000 undocumented adults who entered the nation as children to remain here.
This could mean a rolling effort to find people as their DACA status expires, and add them to a growing immigration-court docket. With bail typically set between $5,000 and $10,000, Hing anticipates that many former DACA recipients will be detained and unable to pay bail.
In an effort to “embarrass the city,” ICE agents may begin more diligently looking through criminal records and “hanging around” San Francisco courthouses. Meanwhile, Hing said, everyday people will be encouraged to call in others they suspect to be undocumented immigrants, and raids on employers will occur without notice.
These are just the predictable changes. “There’s probably things that we haven’t dreamed of that they’re going to come up with just to make life miserable for people,” Hing added.
‘The promise of San Francisco’
Information is immigrants’ key weapon against challenges to their right to stay in the country, advocates say.
Even before the election, coalitions were preparing to disseminate “know your rights” workshops and connect people to legal aid. There are already plans to once again ramp up the citywide Rapid Response Network hotline managed by Mission Action, according to executive director Laura Valdez.
But more resources — and, thus, partnerships with state and local governments and philanthropic centers — will be needed to meet the growing demand for support, Valdez cautioned: “We can’t just be a sanctuary city in name alone.”
In addition to legal services, this will mean finding funding in an already tight budget for other “safety nets.” Social workers, food banks, and employment opportunities for undocumented people who lose their jobs are required if the city wants to live up to what Asian Law Caucus executive director Aarti Kohli calls “the promise of San Francisco.”
Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie’s experience as a nonprofit director could bode well for cooperation between San Francisco’s leadership and its community organizations, said Jane Pak, co-executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Transitions organization.
As the country waits for Trump to take office, advocates warn San Franicscans not to fall prey to fear.
While immigration lawyers say Trump’s administration will undoubtedly involve “smart” people who understand how to manipulate the system, they know from past experience that not everything the president proposes will come to fruition. Notably, in 2017, Trump was blocked from cutting off federal funds to police in sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with ICE enforcement.
“Many of their ideas are based on this false assumption that there are no legal rights for human beings in this country,” said Francisco Ugarte, manager of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Immigration Defense Unit. “And there are.”
Trump’s “outrageous” claims are often merely a tactic to gain votes and cause division, Ugarte continued. The reality, especially in a city like San Francisco, in which 35 percent of the population is foreign-born, is that “people won’t just jump on board with mass deportation.”
A silver lining to being the target of the president’s ire, Ugarte added, is that it could bring the city together: “Local political alliances and party politics … seems a little bit less important, with the threats that we’re facing.”
“This administration is undoubtedly going to pose new challenges and have new tactics,” Ugarte said. “But many of the ideas that came out of the Trump administration were so extreme, so far-fetched, and so cruel, that I think a lot of us — if not every one of us — has confidence that we’ll be able to pose significant challenges to their goals.”
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