Wisconsin State Senate Committee To Vote On Anti-immigrant SB 275 Bill Behind Closed Doors

The Wisconsin State Senate Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform announced that it will take a paper vote behind closed doors on anti-immigrant SB 275 bill on Thursday.

By H. Nelson Goodson

Hispanic News Network U.S.A.

November 1, 2017

Madison, WI - The Wisconsin State Senate Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform (CLRR) will conduct a closed door paper ballot whether to move forward with the anti-immigrant SB 275 bill known as the "Sanctuary City Bill" on Thursday, according to an announcement by the CLRR committee. The SB 275 bill is sponsored by State Senator Stephen L. Nass from La Grange, Wisconsin.

The SB 275 bill if approved by the State Senate would force law enforcement agencies to abide by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE) detainers, which a U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled are not legal binding to hold someone without probable cause (Galarza v. Szalczyk 2014).

The Galarza v. Szalczyk (2014) federal case in Pennsylvania became a landmark decision to declare that ICE detainers are merely requests and had no legal standing. Ernesto Galarza from New Jersey who is of Puerto Rican decent and U.S. Citizen  was held illegally for three days in 2008 at the Lehigh County Prison over the constitutional limit due to a ICE detainer request. 

The SB 275 Relating to: prohibiting local ordinances, resolutions, and policies that prohibit the enforcement of federal or state law relating to illegal aliens or immigration status, authorizing certain elective officeholders to commence an enforcement action, providing a reduction in shared revenue payments (between $500 to $5,000 per day in penalties), and creating governmental liability for damages caused by illegal aliens.

A federal judge in California place an injunction on President Donald Trump executive order that threaten to cut federal grant funding to sanctuary cities, county and municipalities, if they refused to enforce federal immigration laws, which enforcement is reserved for the federal government and not the states. The New York Times reported in April 2017 that, federal "judge, William H. Orrick of United States District Court, wrote that the president had overstepped his powers with his January executive order on immigration by tying billions of dollars in federal funding to immigration enforcement. Judge Orrick said only Congress could place such conditions on spending.

"The ruling, which applies nationwide, was another judicial setback for the Trump administration..."

Senator Nass's SB 275 bill was created as a copycat bill from Texas and based in an incident that happened in California involving the July 1, 2015 fatal shooting incident of Kathryn Steinle who was shot and killed in San Francisco by Francisco Sánchez, an undocumented immigrant who was a convicted felon who was previously deported five times by ICE. Nass blamed the San Francisco District Attorney's office for refusing to prosecute a drug charge. Sánchez was released by ICE after serving a third prison term for entering the country illegally. San Francisco is a sanctuary city.

What Senator Nass failed to understand is that the federal government including ICE failed to apply the stiff sentences for re-entering the country illegally. According to ICE, if a person enters the country illegally, the first violation is a federal civil offense, which a person gets deported at a cost of more than $10,000 per person, the second re-entry violation is a federal offense with a penalty of 5 to 10 years in prison and a third violation, an undocumented immigrant can get a federal prison term of 20 years in prison. So, who actually is at fault in the Sánchez case, it was the failure of the federal government and ICE including the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security not to fully apply the law and prison terms for re-entering the U.S. and not the local, county of state governments as Senator Nass's argument to propose the SB 275 in Wisconsin attempts to imply.

Luz Sosa, a Community Organizer for Acción Ciudadana de Wisconsin, Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, candidate for the Milwaukee County 12th Supervisor District and H. Nelson Goodson, a journalist and immigrant rights activist testified in October against WI State Senate proposed anti-immigrant SB 275 bill https://youtu.be/dWEwDdHKUOY