Deportation-fighting fund asks Fresno to pay $300K. Will city pitch in this time?
An initiative that has helped 18 people avoid deportation is asking the city of Fresno for a $300,000 investment.
The Fresno County Legal Defense Fund (FCLDF) that started in 2018 has helped people like a Mexican father of U.S.-born children who has lived in the Central Valley for more than 30 years. He was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and was “erroneously sent to immigration court” for deportation proceedings. But after FCLDF stepped in, an immigration judge granted a motion to close the man’s case.
Now, the FCLDF’s steering committee is asking the city of Fresno to invest $300,000 to help provide legal representation to other immigrant families also being threatened with deportation, according to a copy of the request. The funding proposal, which was submitted to city leaders last week, includes examples of how the fund has already made an impact in the lives of Central Valley immigrants. The examples protect clients’ names.
The FCLDF’s steering committee asks the city to make the investment with money from the American Rescue Plan Act — though similar attempts to have the city chip in have failed in the past.
“Our vision is to keep families together and support them by providing due process to all,” Sukaina Hussain, deputy executive director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations Sacramento Valley/Central California, told The Bee in a statement. Hussain is on FCLDF’s steering committee.
Fresno Assistant City Manager Georgeanne White said regulations for the ARP funding won’t be released until mid-May.
“Until they are released and we know the allowable uses, it would be premature to speculate on any ARP investment,” White said. “Once the regulations are released, we will have a competitive process for funding requests submitted by community based organizations.”
Legal aid fund request vetoed before
The development of the legal aid fund was announced in November 2017 by community organizations. That was months after the Fresno City Council voted down a proposal to contribute public money to the fund in June of the same year.
Other cities, such as Los Angeles, have used public funding to invest in similar efforts. Instead, the Fresno City Council in February 2019 voted to establish a 15-member immigrant affairs committee with no funding.
In June 2019, the Fresno City Council passed a motion allocating $300,000 to the immigrant affairs committee. But a month later, then-Mayor Lee Brand vetoed the committee’s funding.
Fresno City Council Vice President Nelson Esparza said he hadn’t yet seen the written proposal, but was inclined to support “some version of it financially.” The request is one that the council would have to vote on.
If the request can’t be funded through federal money, it can be supported through the city’s general funds, he said.
“These folks who need help are our neighbors, co-workers, people who contribute a great deal to our community, including paying taxes alongside everyone else,” he said. “Investing a small amount has the potential to really go a long way in making a difference for some of these families.”
Families in need of help, he said, are “simply trying to navigate the federal bureaucracy in order to live their lives, raise their families, and remain members of our local community.”
‘We should be spending these dollars on providing critical services’
Councilmember Garry Bredefeld, who voted against funding the city’s immigrant affairs committee in 2019, said he won’t be supporting FCLDF’s funding request.
He said he’s opposed to providing funds for undocumented people. Plus, he said, there’s already some legal services in the community for this population.
“We should be spending these dollars on providing critical services, fixing roads, hiring more police officers and 911 dispatchers,” Bredefeld said in an email. “The City of Fresno would be misappropriating these dollars if they funded this but with this Council I have no doubt it would pass.”
Since FCLDF was established, it has received nearly $125,000 from private foundations’ grants, gifts and individual donations, according to the proposal. Of that, it has provided over $80,000 in support for legal representation to 18 individuals in the Central Valley.
The fiscal sponsor for the fund is Sierra Health Foundation: The Center for Health Program Management, which handles reimbursements and maintains financial records.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened the financial hardship of many immigrant families in the region, further exacerbating the justice gap,” the request reads.
Hussain said the “immigrant community is the backbone of the Central Valley,” and deserves the resource investment.
A mother who fled her abusive ex-partner in Mexico is another beneficiary of the fund.
“She and her three children now live in the U.S. without fear.”
This story was originally published May 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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