Keep Bailing

A new policy, set to start on June 1, will no longer require the San Francisco County Jail to detain illegal immigrants who have been arrested for petty crimes (i.e. shoplifting, disorderly conduct, drunk in public) until U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials come to take custody of them.

San Francisco will be the first county in California to implement this type of policy.

No laws are being broken with this policy as there are no requirements for local jails to hold illegal immigrants. Rather, it will be reinforcing San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance, which does not allow local officials to assist ICE unless a felony is involved.

Federal officials have managed to work around the sanctuary city policies with a program called Secure Communities, where ICE monitors fingerprint data obtained at booking and putting “detainers” on potential illegal immigrants.

For now, sheriff’s deputies are holding low-level criminals until ICE agents come to collect them. As soon as the policy takes effect, though, those inmates will be released with a citation, the same as a U.S. citizen.

ICE spokeswoman, Virginia Kice, called Sheriff Hennessey’s decision to release inmates unfortunate.

“ICE detainers are an effective tool to ensure that individuals arrested on criminal charges, who are also in violation of U.S. immigration law, are not released back into the community to potentially commit more crimes,” she said.