Former lawmaker Rocky Barilla responds to sheriffs’ criticism, says police helped draft the "non-controversial" legislation 31 years ago
Sixteen Oregon sheriffs signed a letter in August urging Oregonians to vote yes on Ballot Measure 105 to repeal Oregon’s sanctuary status law.
This state statute prevents local law enforcement agencies in Oregon from using their resources to enforce federal immigration laws.
According to the sheriffs’ letter, it also prevents local law enforcement from pursuing perpetrators of immigration-related crimes such as identity theft and encourages “illegal immigrant criminals” to settle in Oregon. Their letter also called the opposition’s arguments that the law makes Oregon safer and that its repeal would lead to racial profiling “nonsense.”
Street Roots asked the lawmaker who authored Oregon’s sanctuary law 31 years ago to respond to some of the claims made in this letter. They’re the same arguments proponents of the measure use when trying to convince voters to support it.
On Oct. 11, we sat down with former Rep. Rocky Barilla on the Oregon House floor, where in 1987 he proposed the law while serving as the state’s first elected Latino legislator.
At the time, Barilla said, Latinos were frequent victims of strategic racial profiling. Local law enforcement agencies often set up roadblocks and conducted traffic stops in Latino neighborhoods, checking those who looked Hispanic for proof of citizenship.
Barilla became aware of Oregon’s profiling problem when he moved to Salem in the 1970s. After graduating from University of Southern California School of Law in Los Angeles, he took a job at Marion-Polk Legal Services in Salem and began to hone his skills in immigration law.
In 1977, a U.S. citizen named Delmiro Trevino sought Barilla’s services after Polk County sheriff's deputies humiliated and harassed him in an Independence restaurant while they interrogated him and his friends about their immigration status. Barilla filed suit and later credited the case as being the catalyst for the bill that today stands as the nation’s oldest sanctuary law.
Barilla represented South Salem for one term and two months in the Oregon Legislature before losing his re-election bid and moving to California with his wife. He went on to work for the California Teachers Association for more than two decades. Since retiring eight years ago, Barilla has reinvented himself as an author, spending much of his time in the Bay Area, writing novels.
We read claims from the sheriffs’ letter to begin our interview, followed with Barilla’s responses.
Sheriffs’ letter: Certainly, immigration-law violations are federal offenses. But they are precursors to other crimes illegal immigrants routinely commit in their efforts to conceal their illegal presence – crimes, like identity theft, that harm everyday Oregonians at the local level. Such crimes are well within local police and sheriffs’ purview. But Oregon’s "hands off" sanctuary statute works to keep law enforcement from pursuing many of the people who commit them – for the very reason that they are here illegally, and innocent Oregonians pay the price.
Rocky Barilla’s response: One, those are not logical conclusions. As I’ve read the studies, immigrants have a lower crime rate than normal citizens. No. 2, the law specifically allows local police to enforce criminal laws. I want people to feel safe. I want local police to arrest people who steal. Saying there’s a cause and effect with immigration status and more crimes – that hasn’t been brought up by the statistics.
Sheriffs’ letter: Mollie Tibbetts’ recent murder has refocused attention on the violence and heartbreak illegal-immigrant criminals can visit on Americans and their families. Tibbetts’ killer "was here because our government neglected its responsibility to keep him out," writes Agnes Gibboney (whose son, Ronald Da Silva, also was murdered by an illegal immigrant). Oregon’s sanctuary statute not only compounds that neglect, but issues a de facto invitation to illegal immigrants to settle in our state.
Barilla’s response: These are isolated incidents. They’re atrocious, I am sorry. I want to make sure anybody – immigrant, non-immigrant, U.S. citizen – gets punished by the criminal system if they commit a crime. Especially murder. The law specifically says that local police can enforce criminal laws. I had local police help me draft this, help me with the wording – they supported the bill. It was non-controversial. It was a bipartisan-supported bill.
Sheriffs’ letter: Another pro-sanctuary argument is that the statute’s repeal would make illegal immigrants afraid to report crimes. … More nonsense. Can any sanctuary supporter, cite a single instance of an illegal immigrant being deported for reporting a crime?
Barilla’s response: Absolutely. People are being arrested under the new administration and (U.S. Attorney General Jeff) Sessions in courthouses, on school grounds and hospitals. We’re arresting grandmothers at 6 a.m. in the morning. That creates a chilling effect in people trying to cooperate with local police and district attorneys.
There are no sanctuary places where this is not happening. The current administration is more concerned about numbers rather than human rights.
Sheriffs’ letter: Last and most nonsensical and insulting of all to the men and women who have sworn to preserve the peace – is the assertion that sanctuary repeal would unleash a wave of profiling against Hispanics. First, all across the State, law enforcement officers undergo formal rigorous training which includes anti-profiling training. More importantly however is this: People who choose to devote their lives to law enforcement are people of uncommon integrity. … (They) will continue to do their jobs with integrity and don’t believe for a minute, they won’t!
Barilla’s response: I respect law enforcement. I think that in order for Oregonians to understand what the values are and what’s at risk, the community and local police have to work together. Basically, local police are members of the communities. They have children, they have spouses, their kids go to school – everybody, undocumented or whatever, they want safe places to live. This law does not prevent police from enforcing laws.
But local police should not enforce federal criminal laws. I’ll give you an example: Income tax. Let’s say somebody has an income tax form, they’re filling it out; they add two dogs as dependents. Well, that’s a criminal offense, but you don’t want local police auditing your federal taxes.
The sanctuary movement actually, in the United States, began in the 1850s, when the Southerners wanted to maintain African-American slaves as chattel. Federal law was passed, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, in which the feds wanted to require the states to return slaves back to their owners. They would commandeer state resources. The Supreme Court said, “That’s illegal. You cannot under the 10th Amendment force states to enforce federal laws,” and that’s been a precedent for 150 years.
What law enforcement can do, under this law, is they can focus on their own law enforcement priorities: crimes against property, crimes against persons and maintaining public order. They can spend their own money on local issues. They can use their own equipment on local issues, staff for local issues, jails for local issues. They don’t have to be hung up by the feds. Feds should not be manipulating local resources.
Emily Green: What went through your mind when you heard there was an initiative aimed at repealing Oregon’s sanctuary statute?
Rocky Barilla: I was disappointed with a large group of people. Part of this sponsorship, by the Oregonians for Immigration Reform – they’re funded by FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). And FAIR has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. So this isn’t about law enforcement; it’s about trying to keep American values as white European values.
It’s, really, a racist initiative. I think a person who really wants to weigh the issues, there are some really strong opposing points – like you want people to be treated with dignity, all people; you don’t want families separated; you don’t want people taken out of their houses in the middle of the night, out of the hospitals and from courts.
On the other hand, understandably, people don’t want open borders. You don’t want people to simply come in here, like Sweden, and you have 50 people in your block without jobs and who have nothing to do. So I can see at the intellectual level – at the honesty level – people weighing things. And it’s up to Oregonians to figure out what their values are.
One of the things I love about Oregon, besides some of the politicians, is its values: dignity, tolerance, acceptance, environment, pro-education – great values. And what I like about Oregonians is they’re committed. They simply don’t watch TV and say "blah blah blah"; they actually do things about it. So I think this measure is contrary to Oregon values.
E.G.: We’ve had some instances that were made public in Oregon recently of local law enforcement coordinating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Do you think Oregon’s sanctuary statute has done what you intended?
R.B.: I think for the most part, yes. I think that the more enlightened local law enforcement agencies, local police – like Portland and Eugene – they understand. They love this law. It’s less work for them. They don’t have to process somebody if they don’t know their immigration status. If this person gets injured, there’s no local liability. I think that people want to use the excuse that “we’re a nation of laws” to enforce things that they have no authority to do.
E.G.: If law enforcement likes the sanctuary law, then why did 16 sheriffs sign a letter opposing it?
R.B.: Some of these sheriffs – and I respect them for their opinions; not their facts – are from conservative areas, and they have an uneducated interpretation of what the law does.
No. 2, in some of these areas – they’re highly agricultural. On one hand, they don’t want (undocumented) immigrants. On the other hand, there are local growers that need these people to work in the fields. So there have been cases, when I was practicing law, where the grower would call up immigration the day before payday. And it’s a kind of wink-wink situation between immigration and the growers and the police.
E.G.: Can you describe what the situation was like in Oregon for Latino and Hispanic families before the sanctuary status was applied?
R.B.: In the 1940s, they had the Bracero Program, and a lot of the local growers needed Mexican workers to come up here, and while the war was going on it was fine.
In the late '40s and the '50s, there was resentment. Most of the migrant stream was from California and mostly Texas, and the migrant workers normally went home, back to Texas, after the harvest, but some stayed. And local communities, let’s say Woodburn, became more and more Hispanic, and there was resentment: “We want you to work here, but we don’t want you to stay here, we don’t want you to marry our children, blah blah blah.” So there was an anti-Hispanic thing. There were issues on education for limited English-speaking people. Local communities were saying you have to speak English. In the early '70s, and before that the '60s, local police would simply round up Hispanic people and say, “Show me your papers,” and they did it either by themselves or with the cooperation of INS (the Immigration and Naturalization Service). Roadblocks, harassment on the street – things like that.
E.G.: Do you think Oregon would revert to that – or some areas in Oregon might revert to that – should the sanctuary status get repealed?
R.B.: Unfortunately, I do believe there will be an increase in racial profiling. People who are brown or black, they will be pulled over more and subjected to questions that are irrelevant to local police. Again, the caveat being, if any person commits a crime, they should go through the process.
FURTHER READING: Measure 105 would unravel a system designed to ensure equal rights (SR editorial)
E.G.: One argument of proponents of Measure 105 is that Oregon doesn’t need to worry about racial profiling if this is repealed because we now have a database where people can lodge their racial profiling complaints and a task force that investigates those complaints.
R.B.: Being a former legislator – if you ever wanted to bury an issue, you create a task force. A task force is a bunch of people sitting around talking about something, who have no power to do anything. They have to make recommendations, and they have to send them back to Legislature. The current law will not prevent any increase in racial profiling if this measure passes.
E.G.: A poll last month found that 31 percent of Oregonians support Measure 105, 50 percent oppose it, and 19 percent are undecided. What does this say about the political climate in Oregon right now?
R.B.: I believe that Oregon and California and a handful of other states are progressive. They try to protect the rights of all of the residents. I really respect your governor, I respect Sen. Wyden, I respect Congresspeople Bonamici and Defazio.
There are so many legislative people, from the local level up to the governor, who have stepped up to say, “Our state is not about discriminating against people; it’s about dignity, it’s about fairness, it’s about justice.” And I am really proud that Oregon is one of the few states that fights for these things. I really don’t understand Arizona or Texas – show-me-your-papers states, or whatever, where people carry guns down the street. I don’t understand that.
E.G.: Do you think we should be resting on our laurels, considering that it looks like this measure probably won’t pass?
R.B.: As a person who has run for several elected offices, you never stop running until the day after! It’s just like football – you play the game for 60 minutes. Here, you play the game until Election Day.
E.G.: What effect do you think it would have on public safety if Oregon’s sanctuary status were repealed?
R.B.: If this measure passed and the law was repealed, it would lessen public safety. Let’s say a (undocumented) person has a contagious disease. Right now they will go to a public health clinic or emergency to get treated. If this measure would pass, these people would not want to go to a hospital, and they’ll stay home, and maybe send their kids to school, maybe not, and that will make this contagious disease a danger for the community, which will affect everyone in that community.
E.G.: You’re here in Salem to talk to law students later today. What message are you going to convey to them?
R.B.: Vote no on Measure 105. It’s a non-Oregonian measure. The effect will increase racial profiling, and local police will be minions of the feds.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots
