The Brief

The city of Anaheim is looking to create an immigration legal defense fund for residents affected by ongoing ICE raids.

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously directed the city attorney’s office to move forward with searching and entering into an agreement with a nonprofit to provide legal aid. That fund could range from $50,000 to $100,000.

The city has had talks with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Defenders and the Public Law Center, according to city documents.

The idea is to connect families of detained loved ones to legal professionals within the first 24 to 48 hours of an arrest. Anaheim public information officer Mike Lyster told the council it’s a critical time for families.

“As you can imagine, most families, when we approach them, have a shell-shocked look,” Lyster said. “They have no idea what to do, what's next or even where to find their loved one.”

Lyster said he and city staff have responded to over 100 incidents involving immigration enforcement or suspected enforcement.

Why it matters

Tuesday’s discussion comes as families throughout Anaheim, like many Southern California cities, continue to see immigration enforcement since last summer.

City Councilmember Carlos Leon said that in times of crisis, immigrant families can be taken advantage of by bad actors.

“I know firsthand of families that say they were charged $20,000 to $30,000 and literally have nothing to show for it,” Leon said. “And families pay that because they're scared, because they don't know who else to call, and in that moment, any answer feels better than no answer.”

Leon said he would love for the city to help families connect to legitimate guidance.

City Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava questioned the defense fund amount and said the proposed funding seemed low.

“I don't anticipate this is going to end anytime soon. Anaheim has been hit a lot lately,” Rubalcava said. “I would even be supportive if we looked at a higher amount, so we don't have to come back to council. It just gives a little more room for support when our residents need it.”

Interim City Manager Greg Garcia said he thinks the $100,000 could go a long way. He explained the money isn’t meant to pay for a staff attorney to work on a set number of cases.

“Our focus is going to be on supplementing and enhancing the intake and counseling services at the front end,” Garcia said. “But I won't have that refined scope until we finalize the agreement with our nonprofit partners.”

What about Anaheim Contigo and other programs? 

In July, the city created the Anaheim Contigo program, which provides immigrant households with financial assistance for rent, groceries and other essentials. The city also posts timely updates on immigration enforcement actions in Anaheim.

Initial funding for grants through that program was $250,000. It has so far benefited 343 Anaheim residents, according to city documents.

Starting next month, the city’s housing department will launch the “Stay Housed Anaheim Program,” which will provide one-time emergency rental assistance of up to $3,000 to qualifying residents. The Anaheim Public Utilities will expand access to electrical and water bill assistance programs.

The Contigo fund balance sits at around $45,310 and will continue to be utilized for general expenses not covered by the rental or utility programs, like medical costs, phone bills and transportation.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles city employees cannot hold second jobs with federal immigration enforcement agencies.

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who represents District 7, introduced the motion to establish the policy, which was unanimously approved by the council on Wednesday, with one member absent.

“Families can trust the public servants that are employed with the city of Los Angeles to not be engaged in other employment activities that will compromise their work and their role and the level of trust that we need to exemplify here in this city,” Rodriguez said during the press conference.

When The LA Local asked whether there was any evidence that city employees had been moonlighting in immigration raids, Rodriguez and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto both said no. But they emphasized that the city needed to remain clear about such boundaries with federal agencies that have been rapidly recruiting to deliver on the federal government’s deportation promises.

Rodriguez first introduced the bill late last year after the Trump administration sent federal immigration agents to conduct raids and eventually deployed troops to quell widespread protests in Los Angeles.

During a press conference held at City Hall before the vote, Rodriguez said that the policy ensures city employees stay focused on LA’s priorities and values. She said the federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement conflicts with the responsibilities of the city’s public servants.

“Our employees are not going to serve dual masters,” Rodriguez said. “That is a critical step to building back whatever trust may have been lost in the last 12 months. We stand behind our immigrant communities. We stand behind the fact that local law enforcement is here to ensure public safety.”

The motion amends the city’s Municipal Code, building on an exemption for city employees taking outside jobs without prior approval from their department’s administrators. The previous code did not address whether city employees could work for federal immigration agencies, including law enforcement and administrative work.

Feldstein Soto, who joined Rodriguez at City Hall before the vote, said that Angelenos deserve to seek services from any city department with confidence that the person behind the counter “does not have an off-duty employer whose job it is to deport you or your family. And this ordinance ensures that’s the case.”

The policy applies to anyone working for the city full or part-time, as well as appointed officers and retirees returning for short-term work. It bars them from compensated work investigating, enforcing or assisting in civil immigration enforcement outside of their city employment.

Feldstein Soto said employees who violate the policy would face discipline and could be terminated.

Similar policies have been introduced in other jurisdictions, including one in February in the California State Legislature by State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez and Sen. Maria Elena Durazo. Rodriguez’s measure is among the first adopted by a city council in the nation. She said it is unique because it applies to all jobs, while some have focused only on restricting law enforcement employees.

“We’re making history here in the city of Los Angeles that is setting an excellent example for other communities and other cities to follow across the nation,” Rodriguez said.

At a protest this month outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Adelanto, advocates derided what they said are substandard conditions for the roughly 2,000 people imprisoned at the Adelanto campus.

Multiple protesters said the detention center would be more aptly described as a “concentration camp,” drawing parallels to some of the darkest moments in U.S. and world history.

For protesters who opt to use such a charged phrase to refer to immigrant detention, doing so isn’t just a matter of accuracy; above all, they seek to prevent further harm.

What life is like inside Adelanto

Current and former detainees say immigrants at the ICE processing center experience rotten food, inadequate medical attention and punitive isolation.

Immigrant rights groups have filed a lawsuit against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, seeking to “end the inhumane and illegal conditions” at this facility. The lawsuit describes Adelanto as an unsanitary place where “disease and illness are rampant.”

“Mold grows on bathroom and dormitory walls,” the lawsuit says. “Individuals across various dormitories [have] contracted an infectious skin disease called a staph infection — and more than a dozen detained individuals [have been] hospitalized.”

In recent weeks, two local fathers died following detention at the facility.

What is the state’s role at Adelanto?

California attorney general Rob Bonta, whose office is mandated to monitor conditions inside the state’s detention centers, filed an amicus brief last week bolstering the immigrant rights groups’ claims.

During inspections at Adelanto, Bonta said in a press statement, his team witnessed "shockingly inadequate medical care, a failure to accommodate people with disabilities, disturbingly unsafe and unsanitary conditions and a lack of basic necessities.”

Bonta also said detainees have reported “denied access to facility phones for prolonged periods,” which impeded their ability to contact their families and legal counsel.

What is the Trump administration’s position on Adelanto?

The federal government has denied claims of substandard conditions. In a press statement issued after the death of a detainee, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.”

“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay,” the statement continues. “This is the best health care tha[t] many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to expand its network of immigrant prisons across the U.S., even as the number of people who’ve died in ICE custody grows.

What protesters fear

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network staged its recent protest outside Adelanto, in partnership with sister organizations across Southern California. In a message to protesters ahead of the event, the group referred to the detention center in Adelanto as a “concentration camp for immigrants.” Out in the Mojave desert, others also made connections to the past.

“ I'm here today fighting for the fathers, the mothers and [the] community members who have been abducted,” said N. Suzuki, a member of Nikkei Progressives, an intergenerational community organization based in Little Tokyo.

“This is a moment in history, much like it was for Japanese Americans during World War II,” they added, referencing the U.S. incarceration of more than 120,000 residents of Japanese descent. “Solidarity from the masses is critical.”

N. Suzuki and Amy Oba carried a poster with an excerpt from Civilian Exclusion Order No. 69, a 1942 army directive forcing people of Japanese ancestry — most of them U.S. citizens — to leave their homes.

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Elisa Schwartz, a resident of the San Fernando Valley, traveled nearly 100 miles to join protesters in Adelanto. She also referred to the detention centers as “camps” and said that as a Jewish person, it felt “heavy” to be there.

Schwartz condemned the Trump administration’s rhetoric around undocumented immigrants, including efforts to paint them as a mass of criminals.

“I remember hearing this from my mother when I was a kid,” she said. “‘[When you] other people, you can start to hurt them. Once you start to hurt them, you herd them and you can destroy them.’ And this is what this is — make no mistake.”

Does it matter what Adelanto is called?

Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, backs protesters’ use of the phrase to refer to conditions inside U.S. immigration detention facilities.

Her book, published in 2017, looks at how the idea of concentration camps came into being; how these places led to extermination centers like Auschwitz in World War II; and what’s happened to the idea of “concentration camps” since then.

To write her book, Pitzer conducted research in two dozen countries, across four continents. She also spoke with current and former detainees from various camps, as well as guards. All this was anchored in years of archival work.

In One Long Night, Pitzer defines “concentration camps” as the mass detention of civilians “without due process or a real trial, on the basis of identity — usually political, racial, ethnic or religious” she told LAist.

When it comes to the mass detention of civilians, she added, “Who they are is more important than anything they've done.”

Pitzer said she’s not interested in forcing anyone to use the phrase “concentration camps” to refer to U.S. immigrant detention centers. Instead, she explained why doing so is valuable: As protesters at Adelanto aimed to convey, the phrase can help others “recognize that term as an escalation of the usual state of detention.”

Given that some 70,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned across the U.S., she added, “the current potential for harm is vast.”

Those who support the Trump administration’s mass deportation project might be inclined to say that undocumented immigrants are being detained because they crossed the border without authorization, Pitzer noted, and that “there is something that they've done.” But breaching immigration law is a civil offense, not criminal, she said. Plus, “historically speaking,” when governments detain civilians en masse, they devote a lot of time and resources to criminalizing them.

“In Nazi Germany, for instance, [the government] spent years criminalizing German Jews so that they literally could not be there legally. The whole goal was to turn them into ‘illegal aliens,’” she said.

In Pitzer’s view, “It's clear that people who are being rounded up [in the U.S.] are being detained because of skin color, because it's suspected that they're Latino.”

She pointed to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence in an ongoing case on immigration stops, wherein he gave federal agents the green light to continue making those stops based on factors like “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent” and “apparent race or ethnicity.” That text, Pitzer said, “starts to clarify why [detentions are] actually happening and why [this] does fit the definition of concentration camps.”

“When people hear the phrase ‘concentration camps,’ they get a little bit confused, and they immediately think of death camps and extermination centers,” she added. “But what they might not realize is that all around the globe ... there were many, many other camps that never became extermination centers. Yet, they were still terrible places.”

In Argentina, in Chile and in the Soviet Union, she said, “those early camps looked quite a bit like some [immigrant detention centers in] the U.S.”

Camps in each of those nations had their “own local cultural conditions,” Pitzer added. But many of their features — including the lack of access to medical care, sanitation and healthy food for detained civilians, and starting with “people being kidnapped off the street by masked gunmen” — are not unlike what’s happening in the U.S., she said.

Libby Rainey contributed to this story.