Immigrant Justice

For the Criminal Justice Reform program, this past year brought many changes, including leadership transition and a new role alongside other Bay Area and California AAPI organizations to guide community investments supported by California’s new API Equity Budget.

We hired Carl Takei to lead the CJR program, who comes to ALC after spending 12 years at the ACLU working on a wide range of issues involving policing, prisons, and ICE detention. Carl is also a longtime leader of Tsuru for Solidarity, working with other Japanese American advocates and allies to close detention sites and support directly impacted communities. As the CJR program grows under Carl’s leadership, the program aims to reverse decades of funding cuts for non-carceral programs that can heal our communities, provide accountability for anti-Asian violence, and build cross-community solidarity, including by:

• Developing and delivering resources and programs that will help AAPI victims and survivors of violence exercise greater agency within the criminal legal systems in San Francisco and Alameda County;
• Working with community and criminal justice partners to pilot and research interventions that prevent violence and heal after harm; and
• Advocating for how the criminal legal system, including district attorneys and courts, can better meet the needs of AAPI communities and people who use non-dominant languages.

Throughout the year, we also continued to co-lead the statewide ICE Out of California coalition to secure support for the VISION Act (AB 937), which would have ended the double punishment of immigrants and refugees by ensuring that when they are finish their sentences, are ordered released, or have their charges dropped, state and local authorities will not transfer them into ICE detention. We worked tirelessly with partners to hold community meetings, forums, and workshops to build momentum for the VISION Act. We also launched a Home, Not Heartbreak photo and essay series, in order to weave individual advocacy campaigns into the broader fight for the VISION Act. The coalition’s hard work sent the VISION Act all the way to the Senate Floor this year–the furthest such a bill, with protections for immigrants and refugees who are incarcerated, has ever gotten in the legislative process. Though the VISION Act fell short by three votes on the Senate Floor this year, the coalition plans to introduce revised legislation to end ICE transfers in 2023.

After more than 15 years at ALC, Angela Chan transitioned to the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office leadership team in early 2022. We’re thrilled to continue to work with Angela, including in addressing police violence in our communities and in the statewide movement to end ICE transfers. Angela led the CJR program at ALC since its inception in 2006 as the Juvenile Justice & Education Program, establishing many of the values and close community partnerships that continue to shape and guide our work today.

Spotlight

After a year-long investigation into Siskiyou County’s disturbing treatment of Asian American residents, we filed a class action lawsuit in the Eastern District of California against Siskiyou County officials and the Sheriff’s Department for threatening, targeting, and intimidating Hmong American and other Asian American community members in an effort to isolate them and drive them out of the region. The lawsuit, led by four Asian American community members, details how county officials have waged a systematic campaign of racist hostility and persecution, including restricting Asian Americans’ right to water and executing unlawful traffic stops, search and seizure practices, and property liens that are blatantly aimed at Asian Americans, and perpetuates a longstanding history of anti-Asian laws and policing in the region. As the suit details, more than 150 years ago, white settlers in the county passed a series of resolutions opposing Chinese immigration to Siskiyou and openly discussed the so-called “Chinese evil.”

Today, Siskiyou County is home to fewer than 45,000 people, of whom 85% are white and 1.6% are Asian. Many Asian American residents in Siskiyou County are Hmong and came to the U.S. as refugees. Still, as the complaint details, Siskiyou County officials and the sheriff have made their intentions explicit in public meetings and documents, from targeting Asian American drivers at a rate 12 times greater than the Asian American driving-age population to creating a humanitarian crisis that disproportionately deprives Asian American residents of water needed for health and hygiene and protect themselves from wildfires.

Our investigation, alongside the ACLU of Northern California and Covington & Burling LLP, found:

• Over 28% of the traffic stops conducted by the Sheriff’s Department in 2021 were of Asian American drivers;
• An Asian American in Siskiyou County is about 17 times more likely to be pulled over by the Sheriff’s Department than a white individual, and the median stop length for Asian American drivers was 56% longer than for other drivers;
• The Sheriff’s Department stops Asian Americans during the day, when a driver’s race is more readily visible, at a nearly 60% higher rate than at night; and
• Over 80% of property liens issued by the county have been issued against Asian American residents, many of which are more than double the assessed property value.

Earlier in the year, we also supported a case to uphold preliminary injunctions against two of the discriminatory water ordinances. In her ruling, the judge wrote that “the passage of time has erased neither the concerning language County officials used to describe their purposes nor the racial animosity Hmong people in Shasta Vista have faced.”

With a wide array of community members, advocates, and immigrant rights attorneys across the Bay Area and nationally, ALC’s Immigrant Rights program seeks to end the incarceration and deportation of immigrants and refugees through free direct legal services, class action and impact litigation, and narrative change campaigns.

We represent Southeast Asian, Black, Latinx, and other immigrants of color across California who are directly impacted by the intersecting harms of the U.S. criminal legal and immigration systems. Many of these community members are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated in the state prison system and facing threats of double punishment through ICE detention and deportation, even after serving their time, being granted parole, or having charges dropped. In the past year, as we’ve fought for our clients’ freedom and reunification with their loved ones and communities, we’ve supported them in national and statewide campaigns and storytelling projects that are helping more and more people unpack the racist motivations behind “good vs. bad immigrant” narratives and organize for systems that honor and nurture second chances and people’s full humanity. Several community members are now home, like Vithea Yung and Yeng Lee. Still, others, like Phoeun You, have been devastatingly separated from their families and deported to countries they’ve never known, and our advocacy for their pardons and return home continues.

Our direct representation and impact litigation cases are also exposing the anti-Asian and anti-Black roots of the country’s immigration laws and policies, as well as the ways in which ICE detention and deportation undermine the constitutional rights of everyone, regardless of our race, national origin, or immigration status. For example, even after Sandra Castaneda’s conviction was vacated and an immigration judge ruled ICE had no justification for detaining her, the agency has appealed that ruling and the results of her bond hearing. We’re continuing to fight alongside Sandra for her permanent freedom and an end to ICE’s inhumane targeting.

Meanwhile, alongside partners like ACLU of Northern California and pro bono counsel Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and Sidley Austin LLP, our clients have won settlements holding ICE accountable for violating Californians’ civil and constitutional rights and exposing how California’s prison system is conspiring in these violations. Gabby Solano was the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against ICE in which we reached a settlement agreement that prohibits ICE from illegally using private contractors to arrest someone and transfer them to ICE from prison. ICE is also paying Brian Bukle, a U.S. citizen, $150,000 for illegally arresting and detaining him for 36 days. As Brian has explained, “[California Department of Corrections] and ICE continually harm Black and immigrant families whether or not we are U.S. citizens.”

As our Immigrant Rights team continues to grow, we are thrilled that Jenny Zhao is now serving as program manager and leading the team’s efforts. We’re also deeply grateful for Anoop Prasad’s leadership and continued partnership. After working at ALC since 2010, Anoop transitioned out of his longstanding role as the team’s program manager last year, setting a tremendous foundation for community lawyering, narrative change, and collaborative campaigns. We’re looking forward to continuing to partner with him and support his work as he takes on new roles in the movement for racial justice and immigrant rights.

Spotlight

In early August, we finally welcomed our client Sophea Phea home after she was deported to Cambodia and separated from her family for 11 years. We first met Sophea six years ago at a legal clinic in Phnom Penh, and continued to work with her to apply for a gubernatorial pardon three times. She was finally granted a pardon in June 2020, which ultimately allowed her to reopen her deportation order and restore her lawful permanent residency. This year, Sophea was able to surprise her family in Long Beach. As the first deported Cambodian community member to come home through a pardon, Sophea continues to fight for her community through state and federal campaigns to end deportations and keep Southeast Asian families together.