I asked Ballard if the Mayor’s Office would provide me with a copy of this memo, seeing as it’s already been leaked to the Chronicle.

“No,” Ballard said. “ But Supervisor Campos has a nearly identical memo. Perhaps he'll give it to you.”

(No, Nathan, I don’t think that Campos, as an elected official and an attorney, intends to violate the rules around the city’s attorney-client privilege, any time soon. Unlike the Mayor’s Office, it seems.)

“So, are you concerned that the city has preemptively been placed in legal jeopardy from nativist groups?” I asked Ballard. “Or was that the whole point?”

“The Campos bill paints a target on us and puts our entire Sanctuary City policy at risk.” Ballard replied.

San Francisco's immigrant youth send a message about Newsom's current policy towards youth.

Campos, for his part, told me that he was “shocked to see that a confidential memo would be leaked and released in that fashion.”

“It’s an elected official’s obligation to protect the city, and elected officials also have a fiduciary duty,” said Campos said, who is also an attorney and a member of the California Bar Association, which, as Campos notes, also has strict rules governing attorney-client privilege.

“The points I raise in the memo,” Campos said, referring to the contents of the now infamous leaked memo “talk about possible legal challenges to this legislation and the sanctuary ordinance in general. And legal challenges are a reality, any time you try to do anything about immigration.”

"It's interesting that we are talking about fear of being sued, when San Francisco has a long and proud history of facing legal challenges when we believe that we are correct, added Campos, who is confident his legislation will survive any such challenge.

Pointing to the city’s willingness to fight for same sex marriage, domestic partner benefits and universal health care, Campos observed that, “The very same people who say that they are afraid of being sued, here, had no problem defending those issues.”

So what is the difference between fighting for due process for immigrant kids and fighting for these other issues?

“Perhaps it is not so popular to defend the right of an undocumented child as those other issues,” Campos said. “But that does not negate the fact that we are right on this issue. We should stand up for what is right and we should not be afraid of litigation. If we had caved in to fear, we would never have same sex marriage, domestic benefits or universal health care today.”

Too bad the Mayor's Office doesn't appear to be willing to fight for the right of immigrant youth in San Francisco to have a fair hearing before being deported for crimes they may not have committed.

Campos also noted that while the Chronicle devoted thousands of words to spelling out fears about the possible legal argument against his legislation, it only devoted one sentence to mentioning another legal memo that makes a compelling argument for reforming the city’s policy on immigrant youth.

This other legal memo, which isn’t confidential, was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Asian Law Center, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, Legal Services for Children, and the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee.
(For the sake of space, I’m referring to this other legal memo as the ACLU memo, though it was prepared collaboratively by the five abovementioned groups.)

Released at Campos’ press conference, the ACLU memo notes that Newsom’s revised policy exposes the city itself to lawsuits, including violating state laws preserving youth confidentiality rights.

“That legal memo from civil rights’ organizations points out that if the city fails to act, it is facing a very real legal threat,” Campos observed.

This 20-page ACLU memo summarizes concerns about the current policy of the city’s Juvenile Probation Department’s (JPD)—a policy that Newsom ordered last summer, the day afterannouncing his gubernatorial run.

As the ACLU points out, Newsom’s shift requires that, “minors be reported to federal immigration agents for deportation based on suspicion regarding a minor’s immigration status and an accusation of wrongdoing, before there has been any finding of guilt or innocence.”

The authors of the ACLU memo note that they repeatedly shared their concerns with the Mayor’ Office, JPD, and the City Attorney’s Office about JPD’s current policy, which, as they note, “ was crafted behind closed doors and hastily adopted in 2008 without a public hearing.”

“ Yet, the Mayor’s Office and JPD have rejected our invitation to work collaboratively with community partners to ensure that the youth are not refered for deportation based on a mere accusation or an unfounded suspicion, and to protect the City from exposure to liability for erroneously referring a youth who is actually documented for deportation,” the ACLU memo states.

The ACLU memo argues that the JPD’s current policy exposes the city to lawsuits, undermines confidence in the police, subverts core values, ignores differences between adults and minors, and violates the charter and city law.

“In its haste to respond to media stories, the Mayor’s Office ad JPD acted precipitously, usurping the role of the Juvenile Probation Commission under the City Charter, and failed to abide y the measured approach embodied in the City of Refuge Ordinance,” the ACLU memo contends.

It recommends that youth should not be referred to ICE, until the following five conditions are met:

“The youth has been charged with a felony, and not a misdemeanor or status offense; the youth’s felony delinquency petition has been sustained; the youth has undergone immigration legal screening by an immigration attorney; JPD has a comprehensive language access protocol to minimize the risk that youth will be erroneously referred to ICE because of language barriers; and the probation officer makes a recommendation to the court and the court agrees that ICE should be notified based upn an individualized determination, which takes into account the nature of the offense, availability of suitable caregivers, offense history, previous illegal entries, and other relevant factors.”

“Given the stakes, it is critical for the City to rebuild trust I immigrant communities and to restore our commitment to fairness and due process,” this ACLU memo observes.

Meanwhile, Campos feels that the Chronicle is “losing a lot of credibility by letting Jaxon Van Derbeken cover this, because he’s already shown his true colors on this issue, and we know where he is coming from.”

(This year, Van Derbeken received a check and an award from the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies for his sanctuary coverage.)

Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus disagrees with Ballard’s claim that the Campos legislation puts the city’s entire sanctuary ordinance at risk.

“It’s a false ultimatum,” Chan said, noting that the city will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of its sanctuary status in October, and that there are over 100 sanctuary cities in the United States.

‘They are still standing and so are we,” Chan said. “And even if our ordinance was put at risk, there’s a chance that we have not had a sanctuary city over the last year, when we report to ICE youth who may or may not have reported a crime.”

A large crowd turned out to support Sup. David Campos's legislation to extend due process to undocumented kids.