Menlo Park: In Trump era, city weighs options, including sanctuary-city status

An interesting week and a half. A Monday night massacre at the DOJ, completely ignores the white nationalist who murdered 5 at a mosque, rolls out the Muslim ban that ignores Muslim countries that have Trump hotels, etc...

We ARE living in interesting times.

I favor a sanctuary city status.

Thank you to our neighbors who suggest this and are mobilizing for the city to take action. You can post your support on this thread, email Mayor Kirsten Keith at kkeith@menlopark.org and/or sign the online petition here: Web Link

Let's do this!

I am very much against bigotry, and support efforts to be diverse, supportive, and inclusive. BUT... isn't illegal immigration by definition illegal? We should focus on reforming our immigration policies to improve the legal immigration channels; our country is built on immigration, and we should embrace it. When we protect illegal immigration, we are creating exactly the problem we are decrying, in which families are broken, separated, and forced to act like "lesser" citizens. Additionally, illegal immigration is an affront to those who went through the trials of coming here legally.

We have a big responsibility to be compassionate, and welcome those who wish to join our great country, but PLEASE let it be done legally. Anything less is disingenuous chaos. Even in Mexico illegal immigration is a felony.

I'm in favor of being a sanctuary city in many ways, but adamantly opposed to fostering illegal immigration.

There are many different versions of Sanctuary City status. San Francisco's is one of the broadest.The man who killed Kate Steinle, with five deportations and seven felony convictions, no job, no family in the area, and no visible means of support, would, even now, not be turned over to Federal authorities. This is because San Francisco's ordinance only applies to those with outstanding warrants or violent (not sure how that is defined) felony convictions. I believe many other municipality's laws are less broad.

Do the legal residents of Menlo get to pick and choose what federal laws they want to follow and be covered by this sanctuary law? I would like to opt out of Federal Income tax payments; will the Mayor provide me shelter?

Bringing into the conversation a tragedy from a richochet a couple years ago (Kate Steinle) but ignorance of the tragedies since (ie.. the white nationalist who purposely shot and murdered 5 in a mosque this week,) really does point out a misplaced priority - instead of a sanctuary city, perhaps we should instead have a gun-free city.

Hey neighbors,

Below is a link to the text of the proposed sanctuary city ordinance. I basically took the SF ordinance and replaced "San Francisco" with "Menlo Park." There is an exception for anyone arrested for a felony offense (not just violent felonies, but any felony which is pretty darn broad) – it's in section 2.1.

Web Link

Please feel free to add comments to the doc and visit www.sanctuarysiliconvalley.org for more Q&A.

Best,

Jen.

Dear "Pick and Choose,"

I think the more relevant question is whether you want city employees to do the job of federal income tax collectors. The sanctuary city ordinance basically says that city employees should not do the job of federal immigration folks. City employees should focus on their jobs in the communities, and should take a neutral stance ("don't ask, don't tell") on community members' immigration status.

Ideally it would go without saying that city employees should be neutral with regards to immigration status, but given the current climate in our country such neutrality is not a foregone conclusion. Immigrant families in our community are scared and are less likely to participate positively in our community without an assurance that our city employees will not act as federal immigration authorities.

Happy to discuss more in person, feel free to reach out via the feedback submission form at www.sanctuarysiliconvalley.org.

Jan: thank you.

For folk reading this and perhaps making the mistake of thinking their is a lot of support for Trump and his isolationist, bigoted ideas... take a look at the diversity of those that oppose Trump.

Former GOP VP Dick Cheney (yes, THAT guy!) denounces Trump's plan to ban Muslim immigration in America; Cheney on The Hugh Hewitt Show said that the ban "goes against everything we stand for and believe in."

Stand up for American values. Do not let a few on the far fringe confuse the issues with noise, nor misrepresent how broad is the wide support against Trump policies.

Thank you Kate and thank you Almanac for allowing us to contribute to this report:

To the Council Members of Menlo Park,
California has already the laws in place that prohibit discrimination, hate crimes, harassment, or assault, and laws that oppose any attempts to undermine the safety, security, and rights of community members.
Our government laws, labor laws, education laws, healthcare laws, administrative laws, civil rights laws, criminal law, and Constitution all warrant safety and equity and prohibit malevolent conduct.

It is nice to reconfirm your intentions in a new resolution, but it seems a waste of time because:
1) our US and CA justice systems, our Attorney Generals, San Mateo County District Attorney Wagstaff, Santa Clara County District Attorney Rosen, and our local law enforcement agents advertise these laws and warrant these rights, but refuse to investigate our allegations when we report abusive, illegal and criminal conduct and demand victim’s rights.
2) Governor Brown has the power to Governor Brown has the power to veto discrimination cases against public agencies and obviously has used it. It would be nice to make any records public Web Link can- secretly-block-bias-5076600.php
3) The Office of Civil Rights no longer investigates complaints and/or give immunity to certain people.

This PDF report: “Department of Fair Employment and Housing: Underfunding and Misguided Policies Compromise Civil Rights Mission”, by former Oversight Committee members John Adkisson and Doroth Korber warned the Senate Rules Committee that the Governor might give immunity to public entities and public employees Web Link %20release.doc-FINAL.pdf (2 pages) Web Link %20housing%20final.pdf (99 pages).
4) Governor Brown and other officials continue to reduce crimes to misdemeanors, reduce deportation of illegal criminals, and release prisoners because our prisons are overcrowded, while we have to pay for self defense, identity theft, internet security, and damage caused by burglary, theft, break ins
5)American citizens no longer cannot find legal representation and cannot afford the high litigation costs to hold our deep pocket public entities and protected government employees accountable in court. Low income and undocumented residents seem to have a better chance to get legal representation
6)Law enforcement is never held accountable despite the numerous reports of abusive, illegal and sexual misconduct and the networking used to cover it up.
7)California has a broken justice system, no oversight, a backlog of complaints at the Judicial Review Board and a backlog at the Fair Political Practices Committee.

I appreciate your good intentions, but in my opinion good intentions only work when words deliver action. California has the laws in place, lets make sure the laws are enforced and apply to all Americans. We could also start by restoring honesty, responsibility, and accountability.

Thank you,

correction for typing error

5) American citizens can no longer find legal representation and no longer afford the high litigation costs against our deep pocket public entities,,,,,,

Actually, not paying income taxes is a good example of how a sanctuary city would work. If I don't pay my taxes, the IRS and the FTB can send me bills, seize my assets, or sue me in court, but they don't send the Menlo Park police to my door. Income tax enforcement is not the business of the City of Menlo Park. Immigration status is exactly the same.

Trump is changing the rules on the fly. His latest Muslim ban affects legal immigrants, including US permanent residents with green cards at jobs at major American employers (including Stanford and Facebook). We need to expand this sanctuary idea to include all city residents who are being oppressed by Trump and this group can change at any time. Don't be surprised if he comes after innocent US citizens next (who just happen to be gay or Muslim or outspoken or whatever else Trump's people don't like).

First they came for the syrians...

Yada Yada

Then no one was left to defend me....

-----

Love the almost daily stories of Trump voters who suddenly realize that Trump screwed them over. Today's was the syrian Christians who had their family members kicked out.

They were shocked.

Idiots. Karma ain't just a good idea, it's a truth.

@ Country Home

You write "Do not let a few on the far fringe confuse the issues with noise, nor misrepresent how broad is the wide support against Trump policies." I didn't follow this election that closely as I assumed, as many did, that Hillary was going to win in a landslide. This Reuters story had her victory probability at 90 %:

Web Link

Now that we have Trump as President, like it or not, how can you still claim that there is "wide support against Trump policies?" Many cite her 'popular vote' win but without California she would have lost the popular vote too. Perhaps the 'far fringe' are the California voters.

Seems to me the broad support voted and Trump won. Maybe I'm wrong. Educate me.

The registry prohibition is basically tilting at windmills. The council should spend their time on today's issues and oppose tomorrow's hateful laws when they come, when we know what we're dealing with.

If they do write an ordinance I hope it does not prohibit tracking demographic info including race and maybe religion that can be useful for other purposes including detecting inequities.

We already had a Muslim registry in essence from 2002-2011. NSEERS required men from a list of mostly Muslim countries to register and the Obama administration hung on to parts of it until this past December. It excluded the citizens and permanent residents city council is talking about protecting. I don't think it raised nearly the concern our new President's ideas raise, and I'm not sure why. It's not subtle but it was post 9-11 and excluded the sympathetic categories of women, children, citizens, and permanent residents.

"Seems to me the broad support voted and Trump won, Maybe I'm wrong. Educate me."

65 million is larger than 62 million. Ask any 1st grader.
Happy to help.


(see how it drives the trump-pettes crazy when they think of by how much ol' stubby-finger-trump lost the popular vote of Americans - they bring it up constantly; then they come up with some lame "waah, but this state doesn't count" silliness)

(only thing that drives them crazier is how much support the popular-vote-loser has lost every week since the election)

(republican friendly Gallup - daily tracker Web Link )

Let's start a registry of Menlo Park homeowners willing to house and feed illegal visitors. We'll show them how it's done! We can totally afford this. We're rich and have plenty of money for this righteous action.

Jen Mazzon - Will you be the first?

@Big Hearted Lib

You should use the word "undocumented" visitor. Illegal is such a nasty word to use in 2017.

"Let's start a registry"

See: Sophistry
soph·ist·ry
noun
the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.
a fallacious argument.

synonyms: specious reasoning, fallacy, sophism, casuistry

Dear "Big Hearted Lib,"

Yes actually there are some folks in East Palo Alto who are running immigrant rights workshops and asking for volunteers to sign up for training and providing safe houses. I attended the first workshop on December 19 (Web Link and signed up!

I need to follow up with the organizers of that meeting because I haven't received any further info about how to participate. I'm happy to meet with you in person and explore your idea further. Please contact me at jen [at] sanctuarysiliconvalley.org

Jen.