Immigrant and Civil Rights Orgs Urge Rejection of Zine/Smith Motions

Special Order 40 Press Conference
Monday, April 14, 2008
11 AM @ LAPD Parker Center
150 N. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles

Contact - Manuel Criollo
323.243.9304

Immigrant and Civil Rights Organizations Urge Mayor Villaraigosa and LA City Council to Reject Councilmember Zine and Smith’s Motion to Dismantle Special Order 40

Los Angeles, CA. The Labor Community Strategy Center, the Mexican American Political Association and Hermandad Mexicana Lationamericana and other civil and immigrant rights organizations will hold a press conference in front of the LAPD headquarters at Parker Center to urge Mayor Villaraigosa and L.A. City Council to strongly reject Councilmember Zine and Smith’s motion to amend Special Order 40.

The “tough on crime” posture of many City leaders is fostering right wing anti-immigrant conservative forces in the region. It’s twisting the tragedy of violence in the streets and advancing policies that will weaken civil liberties and give LAPD carte blanche to racially profile Chicanos, Latinos, immigrants and young people of color.

Mayor Villaraigosa, L.A. City Council and Chief Bratton − Maintain and Expand Special Order 40. Make Los Angeles an Immigrant Sanctuary City! We want to recognize that many city leaders and the leadership of LAPD have been very vocal in their support to sustain Special Order 40, which is an important base line of unity. There is already troubling collaboration between ICE, LAPD, LASD, and the L.A. County District Attorney against suspected immigrant gang members and the communities they live in. While Mayor Villaraigosa’s March 27th letter to ICE concerning the negative impacts of workplace raids is an important statement, we strongly oppose any open ended invitation for ICE to crack down on so-called “immigrant criminals” as suggested by his letter. It has been well documented that during the mass “anti-immigrant crime” sweeps led by ICE in October of 2007, scores of people taken into custody were collateral arrest of immigrants innocent of any offense. We urge an unequivocal and sound rejection to the Zine/Smith motion, to assure all immigrants that they will not be targeted but protected inside the borders of the City of Los Angeles.

We Believe that Black and Brown Unity Must Be Built to Oppose the Growing Criminalization of Racialized Poverty and the Mass Incarceration of Black and Latino Communities – A Root Cause of the Violence in our Communities. We understand and empathize with the family of Jamil Shaw II, all life is precious and any loss of our young people is a tragedy. We believe that this type of violence is rooted in the accepted institutionalized racism, poverty and the growing criminalization that our communities and young people experience daily. One of the main culprits is the ballooning prison system that encourages racial antagonism between Black and Brown youth, as their number swell in segregated prison cells across the state. That tensions is tragically playing out in our streets and neighborhoods. The Zine/Smith amendment of Special Order 40 will unleash a heighten police presence and harassment of whole communities, an experience that both Blacks and Chicanos have known all but to well.

The gang database is the most racially subjective, secretive and punitive tool of local police enforcement. An open ended policy such as the Zine/Smith Motion which claims to target suspected “undocumented” gang members will have negative impacts on heavily populated immigrant and Latino neighborhoods. Policy experts have documented that the criteria local police agencies use to identify so-called gang members is highly subjective and racially driven. For example, in 2003 its been documented that approximately 47% of African American men in Los Angeles County between the age of 21 and 24 had been logged into Los Angeles County gang databases. The worst aspect of this process is its secretiveness – the vast majority of people logged into a gang database have no knowledge of their presence in the database.

We Want a 1,000 More Jobs, 1,000 Less Police! 1,000 More Librarians, 1,000 Less Police! 1,000 More Buses, 1,000 Less Police! From our perspective the growing anti-immigrant climate in the Country is closely related to the prioritization of police expansion and the over reliance on suppression and incarceration. The adaptation of these negative policies by the City of Los Angeles is reflected in the upcoming 2008-2009 budget discussions. We urge Mayor Villaraigosa and the LA City Council to support the reconstruction of the social safety net, help build healthy and environmentally sustainable communities and not to maintain and expand the police force “at any cost.” The real victims of the current prioritization will be Black, Latino and immigrant communities who bear the brunt of the social costs of unemployment, escalating cost of living and dwindling social services, further pushing our people into a vicious cycle of hopelessness, violence and mass incarceration.

Where does Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, stand on Immigration Reform?

Many in Los Angeles are wondering.

“Don’t forget immigration reform,” wrote USC professors Dowell Myers and Manuel Pastor in a 22 March 2008 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. The well-respected Myers and Pastor make the case that the first step towards immigration reform, and through it continued economic prosperity for the United States, involves changing perceptions towards immigrants. Immigrants, they contend, should not be “viewed as a problem to be solved but [as] an asset to our regional future.” The question is: “Where does Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, stand on immigration reform?”

Myers and Pastor explain why Los Angeles has to play a leading role in the debate: “We in Los Angeles County have a special interest in this topic: One-third of our residents are immigrants, and nearly half of our labor force is foreign-born. Two-thirds of our youth are the children of immigrants, 90% of them U.S.-born. …our region's economic resilience depends on how these immigrant families and their children fare in coming years.”

Myers and Pastor call for “business, community, labor, and government leaders to focus attention on our immigrant and regional future,” since “clearly we cannot wait for Washington, we must start this conversation now in Los Angeles.” Ever since Antonio Villaraigosa was elected Mayor of Los Angeles in 2005, expectations have ran high that he would stand up for issues of importance to Latinos (not to mention all Angelenos). So what happened?

With the Mayor’s Office silent, and immigration a hot election year issue, Washington has gone on the offensive. In February 2008, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security conducted a brash, foolhardy workplace raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises (MSE) in Van Nuys, California. The company, owned by Israeli immigrant and American citizen Avi Wazana, had been in substantial compliance with federal laws regarding employment eligibility, and had even received assurances from ICE that they would not raid his company.

Very little media attention has been paid to this immigration enforcement, one of the most dramatic raids Los Angeles has seen in the past 25 years. MSE, a fast-growing and award-winning manufacturer, had been committed to manufacturing in the U.S. and had even moved jobs to the U.S. from overseas -- the reverse of the outsourcing that we have seen around us the past decade. The results of this reckless, wanton enforcement were sudden, and invoked a dramatic economic and social impact. At the caprice of the federal government, an $80 million business was nearly paralyzed and potentially destroyed. Over 140 innocent workers were arrested and hundreds of others lost their jobs. Dozens of Americans were detained illegally against their will in a mass detention.

While an upstanding corporate citizen has been mercilessly thrown into chaos, there has been no attention paid to the impact that continued enforcements of this kind would have on the social and economic fabric of Los Angeles, for certainly more are in the works. We have heard almost nothing from the Mayor on the subject, even though it is well known that our city has developed a deep economic dependence on immigrant labor. The majority of workers in various labor-force segments are undocumented. It is commonly accepted that approximately one million people living in Los Angeles County are undocumented; they include rank and file workers, managers, skilled employees, and entrepreneurs alike.

The Mayor has already stated that jobs and the economy are the biggest challenges Los Angeles faces. The economy of our city depends on a harmonious and stable business environment. An intensification of immigration enforcements by ICE, given the prevalence of undocumented workers in Los Angeles, could lead to an economic disruption our city has not seen in decades. Why should the people and the economy of Los Angeles suffer solely because the Bush Administration wants to look "tough" on the issue of immigration? National opinion polls suggest that most Americans support the integration of undocumented workers into the economy and granting them permanent status. Mayor Villaraigosa should stand up for the city and call upon the Bush Administration to discontinue these senseless enforcements in Los Angeles until such time that the federal government has enacted comprehensive reform of immigration laws.

Many commentators have drawn attention to the Mayor's political aspirations at the national level. In light of immigration having become such a high profile issue this election year; it is ironic that our Mayor has been silent on the very issue that is of paramount importance to our city. Has Mayor Villaraigosa lost his sense of judgment and responsibility where our city is concerned? For the Mayor to remain silent and complicit while these immigration enforcements damage the social and economic landscape of Los Angeles borders on gross negligence at best and a betrayal at worst. It is also at odds with a sincere position supporting comprehensive immigration reform. Both the workers and employers of our city have expected more and it is high time that the Mayor started to deliver.