 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the eighth annual Vanguard Court Watch Dinner. Is that amazing? At the time they thought the Vanguard was just a small blog that was going to go away overnight and the Vanguard and Vanguard Court Watch proved the doubters wrong. And because of supporters such as yourself and others that can't be here tonight with us, the Vanguard is successful and it's growing stronger every day. And we thank you so much for your continued support, involvement, and articles and letters that you write. We want to continue to encourage you to send in those articles and letters. Thank you. Thank you very much. Without further ado, I want to introduce a very special guest that we're honored to have tonight, our first guest. He is somebody that has integrity. He has compassion, commitment, and he loves Davis. And I know his son does too. We've known him for many years and we are very, very fortunate to call him Mayor of Davis. Please join me in welcoming Mayor Brett Lee. Thank you. Thank you Cecilia for that very generous introduction. So David has been doing this events as you've heard for quite some number of years. And when he reached out to me and asked whether I'd be willing to sponsor it, I said, yeah, there you go. So anyway, thank you for the generous introduction Cecilia. I just wanted to say, you know, David has been doing this event for many years. And when he reached out to me to sponsor the event, even though I knew that actually there was a time conflict, and that's my excuse for scooting out the door in a minute or two, I did want to sponsor it because these events are very important. And they're very important because of the broad aspects of them. And for those of you who have been to some of them, you know that the speakers have very compelling stories with specifics that make you understand sort of what's working and what's not working. And anyway, I think the Davis Vanguard itself in terms of the website has had that effect here locally for the city of Davis. So I know in these events, we have a lot of visitors from outside of the Davis area, but I can say as a Davis resident, the Davis Vanguard has really made a difference in our community because it provides an easy accessible forum for a variety of views. And so David was really one who was the first to really have a professionalized blog, which really allowed residents to submit information, but for him to convey information. And as some of you know, who have been here for 10 plus years, there really was a little bit of a vacuum in terms of transparency about some of the things going on in our community. So I'm really glad to have the opportunity to support David in his ongoing efforts. And he often does this, but I will just sort of steal a little bit of his narrative. It's pretty amazing to me that it started out with David just sitting in his living room, writing these articles at 3, 4, and 5 in the morning to where it is today, where he sits in his living room and writes his blog articles at 3, 4, 5 in the morning. But he has several interns who cover the Yolo County Courthouse, has several interns who provide coverage from a broader array of things, and really it's become what I would consider an indispensable part of our community. And I know sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree with some of the ideas on the Vanguard, but I absolutely believe that more transparency and more accessibility to the information is very important. And so thank you for coming tonight and thank you for, I consider David my friend, I've known him for probably a dozen, 14 years I would say. And thank you for hosting this and I hope that there are many, many more. Thank you. And thank you, Brett Lee. So I'm going to take this opportunity to also recognize a few other folks in the audience and also some of our main sponsors for this event. So Supervisor Don Saylor is here in the back and Supervisor Jim Provenza. And we also have Davis Mayor Pro Tem Gloria Partida and School Board Member Bob Popengay. And we also are very honored to have the public defenders from both Yolo and Sacramento County here today. So we have Tracy Olson and Steve Garrett. And of course the elections are now what? A little over a week away now. So we have a few candidates out in the audience as well. We have School Board Candidate Joe DiNunzio, School Board Candidate Cindy Pickett, Melissa Moreno who is running for the county board took ill but she was here earlier. And then also running for the county board out in West Sacramento is Maria Griehalba. And we also have a former mayor and Evans and former city council member Mike Harrington had to leave early. And so I'm going to introduce the National Lawyers Guild from Sacramento who are also big sponsors of this event. And they're going to give a few quick words here. Who's going to do the actual, oh okay. Hello everyone. My name is Elizabeth Kim. I'm the president of National Lawyers Guild Sacramento chapter. I'm putting my green hat here so you guys know this is us. In case you didn't know what National Lawyers Guild does, we're the oldest bar association in the United States. We were formulated in 1937 in response to the American Bar Association being a very conservative all-white bar association. And at the time we had the labor movement that needed some advocacy from a multiracial group. And so four attorneys at that time formed in New York City. And within two weeks we were spread all throughout the east coast. And here we are today. And for the past 80 years we just celebrated our 80th year anniversary of our existence. We've been on the correct side of history every single time with all the issues that have, you know, hit us. I don't want to say right, you got that right. Hit us from all sides throughout our country and as well as internationally. So we've been involved with the, like I said, the labor movement. We've been against world wars. We've been against invasion of foreign countries and occupations. You know, we've been against, you know, surveillance by the FBI. We actually won a lawsuit case against them in 1989 for monitoring us, trying to infiltrate us and dismantle the National Lawyers Guild for all of our work. And most recently we've taken on the task of battling police brutality. So and of course tonight's theme, immigrant rights. So as we know the one of the worst things that have happened during this current administration is how much our immigrant brothers and sisters are harmed in the past year. And I was reviewing some articles to try to get, you know, refreshed for this little remark, but I just was shocked all over again when I read a time article that was released in January of this year that it took after six presidents for this current administration to start pointing out to certain nationalities and having them leave. So it is essentially an illegalization of our immigrant brothers and sisters. And that was earlier before we then learned of the tragedy of splitting families apart and having the UN make remarks against us. And I don't even want to start depressing all of us with everything after that. But it's really a question of where do we draw the line? You know, that same article asked 170 million people in the world and I'm sorry, people all over the world and 170 million of those answered that they would like to live somewhere else in the world if they could. So the United States has had a history of welcoming immigrants as we know. And it's just a tragedy that this is happening. So I'm very glad that the Davis Vanguard has made this the theme for tonight. We're very happy and honored to sponsor this event. And we as National Lawyers Guild will continue to fight as much as we can to defend immigrant rights. We've hosted many no-year rights trainings throughout the year. We've hosted fundraisers to raise money to get the detained families out of custody. And we will continue to fight together. Thank you very much. So who here enjoyed their food tonight? All right. Well, you can thank the yes on L folks over there at the green table. They generously sponsored the food tonight from Tommy Jays here in Davis. So thank you very much. I would like the Vanguard court watch interns who are in the house to just come up here for a moment. Come on, don't be shy. Can you come up, Fiona? I know, I know. Hold on one sec. She'll be right back. I just want to recognize the work and these young ladies here are actually only a small handful of our overall interns. I think we have 10 right now who are going into the court and monitoring what is going on. And if you've been following the Vanguard lately, there's a lot going on in the courts. So they have their work cut out for them. So thank you. And I'd also like to thank Danny, who is our intern coordinator. And then in the back at the wine table is Helen, who's my office assistant. And at the NLG table is my Sacramento court watch guy, Cress Fallucci. And Natalie is in the back. She's a Vanguard board member and so is Cecilia, who you already met. So it takes more and more people to get the Vanguard done these days. So I could not do it without the tireless work of all these individuals and many others who were not able to make it tonight. Okay, so interns you may go. So I'm going to invite Denise up here, who's representing the ACLU, also a big sponsor. And of course, without the work of the ACLU, we'd probably all be in jail. So Denise. Hi, everybody. Thank you for being here. And I don't have prepared remarks. I just wanted to direct your attention to the ACLU table. Please, if you haven't stopped by, come on by. We have pocket constitutions for you. It never hurts to have a pocket constitution with you. We also have membership forms if you're interested in joining. And just to encourage people's involvement, we have a very robust local ACLU. And it's open to anybody. You can come check it out and see what's going on locally and in Northern California and of course nationally. And those meetings happen the third Wednesday of every month over at the clubhouse at the Lakeshore Apartments. But I encourage you all to get involved. I was really happy to hear that there was such a local active chapter. So if you have any questions, you can, there's several ACLU folks floating around. So thanks. Anyone who came to my first event, I don't know if there's anyone here, but Jasmine was a tiny baby and I spent the entire time holding her as I spoke. So she's now almost nine years old. My program disappeared. Yes. So I just wanted to point everyone's attention to the inside of the program because we had 82 people sponsor this event, which is by far a record for us. So rather than reading all of the names off, which will take an hour, I'm merely pointing it out. And so later today, please read everybody's name so that they get the proper recognition. Okay. So now I would like to introduce our first main speaker. And Chuck Pacheco I've known for a while now. I first met Chuck when he was one of the attorneys that volunteered to represent the defendants in the gang injunction trial, which started back in 2010. And for those of you that don't remember, the judge in that case decided that because it wasn't a criminal case that the people that were served under the gang injunction were not entitled to a public defense. And so I think it was six or eight attorneys volunteered their time to represent these individuals who were going to have their liberties severely curtailed, one of whom was Chuck Pacheco. And then last summer I was happening to read the news. And actually I think Kress had broken the story of the individual who was arrested in the Sacramento courtroom by ICE. And I read the Sacramento Bee and there was Chuck Pacheco. And so I I called up Chuck and I said, Hey, do you want to come in and speak on this at our event? And he said, Sure. So here he is. And without any further ado, welcome Chuck Pacheco. I also have a little nine year old and I think they're they've met on occasion. All right, my name is Chuck Pacheco. I'm a criminal defense attorney. I practice and actually I practice is it working? All right. Actually, I practice throughout the Northern California. I have probably tried 30 or so murder cases in my career. And my office is in Sacramento. First of all, maybe I have a little different take on this. But hey, you know, our country is a country of laws. All right. And the ACLU pointed out they have this pocket Constitution. You know, it's always nice to know that Constitution because that Constitution is a protection of for us against the government. A lot of people don't understand that. But that's the way it goes. And and the fact that our country is a country of laws, those who in someone's some people's opinion, don't follow the law and they engage my services. I give them 100% and don't mess with my clients. Like the court system did on August the 22nd in Department 8 in Sacramento, California, a person named Judge Brown and idiot. What happened that day is a day before, under about August 21st or so, I got this guy. Well, his name is all over the paper. So his name is on the various cabros. So he comes to me and he says, Hey, Chuck, you know, I got picked up on some drug charges. Would you represent me? Of course, I will have to be squared away business. And we did. And he says, but I'm concerned. What are you concerned about? He says, I'm undocumented. I said, Okay. He says, What are my chances of leaving that courthouse? I said, Well, I said it's never happened in Sacramento where ice has taken someone from the courtroom. Never. But then being a lawyer, you always had that other side, right? You say, But it doesn't mean this won't be the first time. So I told him, I says, I'll see you in court the next day was a 10 o'clock appearance in Department 8. And I said, Meet me in the front. Don't go into the courtroom. Meet me in the front. So what occurred was, I show up in court and I have 830 appearances in Sacramento. And so I wandered by Department 8 and I checked the calendar and I said, There he is. Okay. No warrants. Nothing to worry about. Right. And so I sit out periodically in front of the Department 8. Well, I see these two guys. Now, has anybody spotted an undercover cop? Yeah, they look like undercover cops, right? I said, Ah, come on, you know, these guys, they just, they're just not right. You know, they're looking one direction all the time the way my client would be coming. So I figured these guys were immigration. So my guy shows up and I go into the courtroom. Well, this is a sanctuary state, right? I ain't nothing to worry about. You know, I mean, the deputies in here, the judges and Sacramento is a sanctuary city, right? I got nothing to worry about. But I'm looking around and hey, guys, what? Zip run, zip look. How come everybody's looking at me? How come everybody's looking at me? The deputies and stuff. I said, Hmm, something's up. So I go about my business, come back and around those two guys are still sitting outside in the hallway. So I come back and I go out into this public lobby deal. And so my guy comes, now you shaved. I said, Good on you. So he's shaving. I said, He comes with his mom. I said, You stay here until I tell you to come. And I said, And then when I leave here, about 45 seconds later, you come into the court. Okay. So and he does that. He sits there and everybody's looking around. They don't see my guy, right? Well, there he is with his mama, but they can't recognize him. So we start the calendar court. Judge Brown calls the calls the court and call it in order. The deputy DAs introduce I'm introduced. So deputy a on the 1030 calendar page seven on to various Cabrera's. So I said, Good morning, your honor. Chuck Pacheco representing Mr. Author various Cabrera's the court. Good morning. Not this judge didn't like me from Jump Street because I don't think it's funny. And so he says, Have you received a copy of the complaint, Mr. Pacheco? I have not. Oh, and then somebody brings it to me. Oh, I have it now. The court. All right, Mr. Pacheco, I acknowledged receipt of the complaint with his full reading stipulate. My client's been advised of his rights. And her, please, I just have them. I said, And then, and then, well, spider senses go up, right? I says, Judge, I have this strange feeling something is going to happen. So we can set another September 19th date further proceeding in this case. All right. Well, the court. All right. Well, let's do this then. If if you're fine with not entering, please at this time, we'll simply set it for a settlement conference on September the 19th. Are you okay with that? Yes. All right. You said a strange feeling something's going to happen. Is this is this the gentleman? All right. This judge is not supposed to know anything about what's going on, right? You'll see through this deal. So what happened is, because I'd made that comment about the strange feeling. And so he says, is this the gentleman? And the bailiff says, Yes, it is the court. Oh, and I say, I just have a strange feeling. Oh, court says, I don't know for sure, but I feel something's brewing the court. I just I'm I was just worried. You had kind of like saw some image where all of a sudden I collapse on the bench or something. I says, No. See, he thinks he's funny. And so the guy said, the court says, Good, all right. I'm feeling a bit better. I said, Hmm. He says, Hey, I hear there might be a federal warrant. Is that right? Deputy? Yes. All right. So here I'm sitting like Homer. And and these guys know what the hell's happening. Nobody tells me in our system, and we have defense attorneys here. What happens is that if we know a client of ours is going into custody, we get the deputy heads up. Hey, he's going into custody. He's either cool with it or he's a little skittish. And vice versa. They'll tell us, Hey, these guys didn't do that crap. So sanctuary city, sanctuary state. Yeah, well, whose side was the court on? So the bailiff says, Yes. So the course is all right. Well, go ahead and have him remanded it at this time. Well, what do you mean, judge? What the hell? You know, so I say, Well, let me ask you this. What is the federal warrant for? If I may ask the court a violation of the federal law, I said, Oh, no, no. Yeah, he says violation of federal law. So I said, Oops, which one? We see, I'm an old guy. I'm 75, right? Do I care what they think anymore? No. I'm being respectful. But you know, you played the game, I will too. So the court said, Well, given this charge here, I'm going to guess it's somewhat somewhere in the title of 21 US code. He didn't even know the codes. Mr. Pacheco, well, does that interfere with my 919 date? The court says, Well, I think it would depend upon if they kept him on when the DA has to be do a gut check about whether they want to do a writ of add pros, proquend, proquendum is a land word means bring him to the right jurisdiction to have Mr. Antevares here or whether the federal matter sort of carries the day. I know this, I'm going to go off the record and we're going to have him go into custody. And we're going to see where. Oh, is ice taking him now? Because now I'm standing up there at the podium, right? My guy's right here. And here's the bar, you know, you don't pass that bar unless you pass the bar, right? That's what attorneys, right? So these two jerks come past the bar and they're quick, quick, hooking them up. So I turn on this little guy. That's what's this about? Yes, we got a federal warrant title title so and so and so and so and so I go I hate. I don't know the federal codes. Just tell me what it is. Illegal re-entry after deportation. Okay. So so they didn't like that. Well, I think I would. Okay, but but but but but but all right. Is ice. Yes. Yes, they are the bailiffs. Yes. Yes, they they're here. So let me ask you a question. So I know from now on, I'm asking the court from let me ask your question, judge. So from now on, so I know how to advise my clients, are we take talking in sacrament of that if a guy shows up in court that ice can take him? Is that it? The court I actually, Mr. Pachec, that is an outstanding point. I know, boy, that really is an interesting morning. This really is an interesting morning. This is a judge, right? Can't figure it out. So I say, see, because of that, and he says, no, let me go. I get it. I said, pardon me. He says, I get it. Pachec. All right. So I'd like to know. And then he goes off the record talking. Somebody not me. Then he comes back. Back on the record. I want to defend it here in custody here for a minute. And I'm going to pass the matter. And we're going to conference the matter for a moment when I have an opportunity. So we come, that's 1022, 1030, we come back on calendar and he says, all right, Mr. Pachec, I was obviously a bit unprepared. No kidding. To address some of the questions that you were posing to the court at that time. I'm now in a better position to address these questions. The defendant has a federal warrant arrest for 18 USC 1326. These are criminal charges have been brought by United States Attorney's Office for a person who has illegally re-entered the country committing a crime. So they have a warrant arrest warrant. That's that's different than what I was worried about. I recall kind of earlier there was some kind of headlines about people who will who with ICE come. They come into the courthouse and they are eligible for deportation, getting kind of souped up and taken away because my boss, the ultimate one, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court had denounced that as a practice, that's not what we have. He kind of misread the article. So this gentleman here has an arrest warrant for a federal crime. And so ordinary wouldn't happen in the courtroom. Ordinarily it happens out in the hallway or something. And it's just the way things played out. When you raised to me is something happening right now that kind of caught me a bit unaware as I was trying to do some solid in terms of trying to explain what might be happening. But that's where we are now. So I certainly, yes, the question is, are there times when arrest warrants have been issued by the authority, whether it is local state or federal agency, can these arrests be executed in this department or in this courthouse? Of course, this happens regularly. I have cases all the time where deputy brings me a warrant for $50, $25,000 out of Placer County, whatever it might be. I'm not a warrant free zone. So we'll go ahead then. I'll keep the September 19th date for this case. That's all I have jurisdiction over. It's not my federal warrant. I'm not a federal magistrate judge nor do I ever want to be, okay? So I said, okay, except it's a lifetime employment and you don't have to worry about elections. The court, no, magistrate is every eight years. I said, oh. And then you have plea the court. And then you have to plea to district court judges. And that's a rough one. I said, all right. Just to make a couple of comments and saying, you know, if that were the case and the act that occurred was 14 years ago, I find it disingenuous that all of a sudden my client shows up in court this morning and for something that happened 14 years ago and he's here, the court, and then he cut me off. All right. So that's what occurred in court. Well, of course, papers called because it's kind of interesting. It was pretty cool. And so the papers call. And so in my comment, I made a comment. I said, the judge was weak and the judge lost control of his courtroom. If you were a judge, we'd like to hear that from a punk attorney. But yeah, that's the way I felt, right? And so when I say that he misread his boss, as he says, right? Because Chief Justice Tony Cantil Sakai, good friend of mine. I know her well. And she states, and I'm sure maybe you know it, but I'm just going to briefly, was she was deeply concerned about reports from some of our trial courts that immigrant agents appear to be, immigration agents appear to be stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses and make arrests. Our courthouses serve as a vital form of to ensure access to justice and protection, public safety. Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country immigration laws. Then she goes on to say, hey, it's going to have a chilling effect on people who have personal injury, landlord, tenant, divorce. Why should we go and report crimes to the cops? They're going to bust us. And so it's well laid out with Cantil. So Judge Brown doesn't know how to read or his comprehension is not very well. So then he makes a smart remark to the newspapers about, y'all, he was just following the law and if he has a warrant that, you know, he has no, he has no choice. So a couple of days later, I get exoneration. I mean, I don't need it. I don't care. I don't want it. But the presiding judge stated, arrests that occur inside the state courthouse and especially inside a courtroom are disruptive of court proceedings. This is Judge DiAlba. Our courts regret the decision by ICE to execute an arrest warrant inside one of our courtrooms. The fear of immigration arrest deters witnesses and crime victims from coming forward to participate in the prosecution of crimes and the resolution of child custody, landlord, tenant, personal injury, and other claims. And he's indicated that they were going to discuss this matter with ICE. So this crap does not happen again. So that's our government at work, right? And then you would think that's it, right? Ooh, wait, wait, wait. So like I said, I'm an old guy. I'm 75. Hey, I don't do my face deal or Twitter or stuff like that, right? So my business partner, youngster, she's like 32, right? And she gets these things like link, business link, or something like that, right? And what do you call it? Link it? Okay, that's it, right. Link it, a Lincoln ab, right? So she runs it. See all searches. Department of Justice. Department of Homeland Security. ICE. Hey, they want to play? We can play, but they're not going to find anything on me because I don't have all these deals. But that's the kind of overreaching that when a defense attorney, when we get involved in this kind of stuff, it just pees us off, okay? And we have kids here. And so that's my story and that's my immigration story. And I'm still doing sword fights with this judge. And he's asked another case to say, let's go and conference this case. No, I don't, I don't, I don't conference. He said, and he had a deputy come up to me on time. The judge wants to see in the chambers. I said, for what? He wants to conference the case. I said, okay, I'm not going. She says he ordered you. I said, no, he didn't get out of here. I'm not going back. So anyway, that's my story. Thank you, Chuck. I'm now going to introduce Supervisor Don Saylor. Thank you, David. It's a, it's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be able to introduce the next speaker who's going to come up here in just a second. I just, I want to congratulate the Davis Vanguard and David Greenwald and his team for this ongoing series. This is important material that we're being, that's being shared with us tonight, just as last years and the year before. It's very important for us. You know, there's a, there's a concept called cathedral thinking. And the idea is that you may, the work that we do today is work that will stand, that must stand the test of time. If you, if you, if you think of the cathedrals in the great cities of Europe or the temples in Asia around the world, you know that people designed those buildings who never lived to see them completed. So they were doing something for the future, something that would go far beyond their, their generation. The builders didn't know the designers. The constitution of the United States was signed off on in, in 1787. That's 231 years ago. The people, the great thinkers who put that constitution together were not perfect people. They made mistakes. They made compromises. They knew that it wouldn't be easy. They knew that what they were doing would stand, would have to stand the test of time and would be shaped in the times to come by those who follow. They would be shaped this time by us. The constitution's only true protection is the people. There's no insurance policy on the constitution. We must stand up in these times ahead to be sure that, that the work that came before us and all of the struggles that we have been through as a country will continue and will stand the test of time. So my colleague Jim Provenza is here with us tonight and Jim is also a sponsor of this event. Jim and I have been able, working with a group of people here in Yolo County, several of you are here in the room. We've called it Safe Yolo. We've built a proclamation, a resolution about a year and a half ago now, that we call Safe and Welcoming Communities. Yolo County will be a safe place for all of it, all of our residents, for everyone who comes here. That was, and we got, we achieved the magic number of three, which is when a five-person body is making a vote, then you need three. So we've achieved the magic number of three on that one. And this year, in response to, and Jim does such a wonderful job of describing his gut-wrenching take on the family separations that have happened along the border that I would love for him to tell you that. But just to tell you, this year we followed that resolution with another that is family protection. And we pledged the support of Yolo County's advocacy efforts and all of the creative energies that we can take to fight the family separations that are happening along the border. And it's in that spirit that we then followed with a budget appropriation to set aside a fairly small amount of money, $100,000 to invest in legal support for refugee and immigrant cases that come to our attention here in Yolo County. So we're joining the city of Sacramento in attacking that issue at a local level. So these are important steps. They're small steps. So in the context of that, to have the opportunity, to have the opportunity, thank you, Ann, to have the opportunity to introduce Holly Cooper is such a seamless and wonderful privilege today. Holly has fought for the rights of immigrants and refugees for more than 20 years. She's a co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic, which as I know she's going to share with us, it's such a treasure this place. It's unique in the country. Holly is a UC Davis College of King Hall alumni. She joined the faculty here in 2006. She'll tell you all about the Immigration Law Clinic and other things, but I wanted to kind of get a sense of all the matters that Holly is involved in because she's right there in the trenches. She's talking to people in law classes and other attorneys all over the country all of the time, but she's also in prisons. She's also going to visit detention centers and places where kids are being held. She's involved in so many cases that you can't hardly keep up with her. And today she posted and on her, I think Chuck said, he kind of made a little joke about the different kinds of electronic social media. Well, Holly's out there on Twitter this morning and she's saying, I'm supposed to speak tonight and my mind keeps shifting on which horror to highlight. Threats to free press, hate crimes, police brutality, prisons, denial of refugee protections, oppression of our LGBTQ community. And now there's a slaughter at the synagogue called Tree of Life. So what better way to honor all of those who have suffered than to actually hear where the trenches are and to hear from Holly Cooper. So Holly, please come up and share. I am going to a costume party later. But I'm also wearing this honor of my Russian grandfather who came here as a refugee and this is a Russian dress, unless you thought it was like a like a salsa dress. I don't know. But he came here as a child and he came here at the age of six years old as a refugee because his father resisted the Tsar soldiers at the time and refused to heed the high road. And through his own dignity, unfortunately, ended up in a struggle, in a physical struggle with the soldiers. And it forced their entire family to flee to this country, at which point my great grandparents were too poor to protect my grandfather and had to abandon him in orphanage where he was raised. And so it's with that calling that I have dedicated most of my career, if not all of my career, to defending the rights of children who, like my grandfather, came here with nothing and had to endure the indignity of detention and processing and also starting to work at a young age. He began working for Western Telegraph at the age of eight and worked up until it closed down. I think he was the longest running employee. Sure. How about that? That's easier for me. Yeah. Well, Beyonce now. So, you know, David wanted me to talk about our role at the clinic because I think that oftentimes people see me and associate me with the clinic, but I also wanted to recognize that our law clinic is a part of UC Davis Law School, and it's a teaching, a place where we teach. And the students are, in fact, the heart and soul of the clinic. And without them, we would not be able to achieve any of the victories that we have. And we have many of the students, well not many, but some of the students who are in the audience tonight. And we appreciate your presence, even some former alums of the clinic are in the audience. But as the director of the clinic, people oftentimes think I work at a clinic and they think I work at a health clinic. I don't. Although I feel like it is an ER tent. But the work of our clinic is to, first and foremost, teach students how to sue the federal government, and how to defend the rights of immigrants in court. And it is our students who are standing in court and writing the briefs and interviewing the oppressed communities for which we can base our lawsuits on. And so I just wanted to make sure that this is not about me. This is about our work is really a testament to an educational model at UC Davis that is working and is in large part the heart and soul of the students' work. But one of the cases I wanted to highlight, because David asked me to, was our work with detained children. And in that capacity, four years ago, I got a call from a lawyer saying, you have to come inside of this detention center. Children are here for two and three years and they're not getting out. And I thought, okay. And I had left work on the border. I worked on the border for six years and I worked with detained children. And I had to get out because it was so emotionally grueling. And I promised myself I would never get back in. But when I heard that children in my backyard weren't getting out of custody, I said I need to get back in. And so about four years ago, I dedicated our clinic to being a counsel to what's called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which President Trump has tweeted about, written executive orders about, and has basically called an all-out war on the settlement agreement. So what is a settlement agreement? Again, it's important to recognize that this settlement agreement is named after a child who in 1985 sued the federal government for better conditions of confinement for immigrant children in custody. I mean, if you could imagine like 14 years old ensuing the federal government in a class action. And unfortunately, she didn't win. The case went to the Supreme Court, but was remanded partially. And at that point, the federal government realized it should probably come forth and settle. So they settled. And they came to terms of basic, basic human rights for children in detention, like the right to school, like the right to be detained in the least restrictive environment, the right to have state licensing standards govern these detention facilities. And she settled that. Genesee Sett Flores settled that case in 1997. And it was in four years ago that our clinic became involved in overseeing that the federal government was doing its end of the bargain with the settlement agreement. And in such, we have enormous, enormous oversight powers into these children's prison camps. Sometimes we don't like to use the word detention, but for lack of a better word, sometimes we often use the word prisonment for what the children are enduring. There are currently 13,000 children in this country in detention, imprisonment, internment camps. What word we choose to use, I think is important. And the children always choose to use the word either cage or prison. And when we go, we have complete access to these facilities. We can show up to any of the hundreds of detention facilities as Flores Council, ask for a list of the names and ask to speak to all the children detained. So in the last few years, we've flown all over the United States and interviewed countless children about the conditions of confinement. So this settlement agreement is very important because Trump has, it only permits the federal government to hold children for 20 days inside of a non-license, a non-child welfare license facility, like a family imprisonment, family prison camp, excuse me. And so a lot of a heart and soul of this, Trump has said, well, it's because of that Flores settlement agreement that we have to separate children because we can't keep them in prison with their parents. So we, because of the Flores settlement agreement, at 20 days, we have to rip that child from the mother or father's arms when in fact they could release the family unit and have the ultimate federal power to do so at any time. So this summer, I thought I was going to take some time off and I was going to paint and I was going to relax. And then Trump, the Trump administration actually authored an executive order commanding its agents to dismantle this settlement agreement so that they could create family prison camps along the Texas and Arizona border. The next day after the executive order, the government in our case filed a motion to modify the settlement agreement to permit family imprisonment. So my entire summer was upended. And there were no students around. So needless to say, I didn't have the relaxing summer that I wanted. But right now, the federal government has lodged another attack. And that is, they have what are called proposed regulations that will try to squash out the settlement agreement. And so we're engaged in litigation working 18 hour days to make sure that that does not happen. But what has this, why is this important? It's important because we have visibility right now. We have lawyers that can go in and talk to the children and understand what is going on inside of these detention camps. What we've gathered in the last four years of information is that we have seen since the family separation, and I'm not just talking about family separation between mom and child. I'm talking about brother and sister. I'm talking about uncle. There's all types of different family relationships that are being separated that are not being acknowledged. In light of that, we're seeing increased for sedations because children are having psychiatric breakdowns when they're separated from parents. We've gotten declarations from people who have witnessed children as young as six and seven years old who are being forcibly sedated because of the psychiatric meltdowns that the children are having with the four separations. We've seen suicide attempts at record high. There was a period of time where we were getting almost three or four calls a week on my home phone from children who were telling me that they were on the verge of suicide because they were so desperate to be reunited with family or to get out of detention. We're also seeing prolonged increasing detention times for children. We used to see an average of three to four weeks that has tripled according to the numbers that we have. When Trump is talking about this influx of the border and the surge of children who are detained, what's important to know according to the information we have is that it's not because more children are coming, it's because less children are being released from detention. The reason we have a record high number of children in custody is because Trump is increasing the processing requirements for the family members. I just want to give you an example of a child that we represented to show you how difficult it is to get one child out and what it takes in our community to get one child out. So I went to visit a rural Texas detention facility and I met a girl who goes by the surname Daniela Marisol and she chose that name because she said it represents the sea and the sun and that's what she wanted her fake name to be in our lawsuit. She's partially deaf and when I met her in a rural Texas facility she's like, I don't need your assistance but I want to sign declarations about what I've witnessed here with other children because I think the conditions are horrible. She provided us with a critical declaration about what she witnessed with respect to forcible sedations and immigration policies but she said I don't need your help. So this was in October of last year. So we left the facility, filed some lawsuits about the deplorable conditions in that Texas facility. Fast forward to May of 2018 I walked into a detention facility in Los Angeles and there was Daniela Marisol and she said I think I'm ready to have a lawyer now and I said I bet you are. So Daniela told me that her own story when she came across the US-Mexican border from Honduras she was forcibly separated from her family and was civilly committed three times due to psychiatric meltdowns from being separated from her family. She didn't even know if they were alive and she said there were weeks when she didn't hear from them, didn't know if they were alive and she unfortunately was civilly committed for about 11 days. She was then transferred to a residential treatment facility where she got psychiatric care and in the entire time she was detained but for the last month she had no treatment for her deafness. When we saw her again in May she signed a retainer agreement with Art. We checked in with her family and they agreed to let her be the lead plaintiff in our class action against the forcible sedations of minors against the increased detention times for minors with disabilities and she sued under the the American with Disability Act. She was very proud to do that. So at at this point we said well we're going to get you out of here. So we called her family and her sister said well I can't get her out they won't let me because they say I have to have a two bedroom apartment and a minimum of five hundred dollar balance in my checking account at any time. So we're like okay what are we going to do with that I don't have that much money but we called a Jewish synagogue where her sister lived and the Jewish synagogue in two days raised five thousand dollars for her. They got her not only a two bedroom apartment but they also furnished it and made decorated Daniela Marisol's hopefully future bedroom. Then when we went back to the federal government said we've got all the conditions met they said oh no you don't we're going to add some more on. We want her to have a lawyer lined up a free lawyer lined up in Minnesota. We also want her to have a free therapist with two three weekly visits and we want the entire family to redo their fingerprints. We did all of that and they and we said okay we've done it all we've gotten everything you wanted and they said we want one more thing now we want a backup sponsor who's a U.S. citizen. So low and behold through our networking found not only a backup sponsor as a U.S. citizen but worked for NASA formerly worked for NASA and I thought I was an advocate until I met Winnie and she pressed she like went down and did her fingerprints pressed the federal government every day for this child's release and then the federal government said when I called them now what now what excuse do you have and they said we can't tell you when this child will ever get out. I thought what so we got a habeas lawyer. Habeas is when you sue the federal government to release and have a human being liberated right after we found the day we found that habeas lawyer they released her so last Friday they released Daniela Marisol but the point of that is not like wow that's so cool the point of that is how depressing it is that's what it takes to get one child out of federal custody and also what bravery it takes for one child to stand up and file a class action lawsuit. She just called me actually right before I was coming to speak and she was super excited because somebody had offered to donate her target gift cards and she could go shopping so she was really excited but some of the work that our students also did is that this last Thursday and Friday two of our law students one of whom is a Honduran lawyer who's bilingual another one they went down to Torneo Texas where there's a tent camp immigration the federal government has created a tent camp for children and in the tent camp the numbers of children are over 1100 children there they're intense the only electricity is generated there's no sewage the classroom is a hundred students children to one teacher how much does it cost per day to detain 1100 children per child is $1000 per day all the employees of 1000 employees that work there are not from the El Paso Torneo area they're actually living in a hotel so the federal government's also about $1000 of expenses includes the overhead to fly in employees who are staying in hotels on a daily basis so our students went out and met with many of the children not all the children and got declarations and we hoped to hold the government in contempt because this facility is in clear violation of the flora settlement agreement and it's clear that Trump's architecture includes expanding this he's hoping to expand this to thousands and thousands of children right and this is in part why he wants to dismantle our flora settlement agreement because it's not licensed the education isn't in compliance with child welfare standards so last Friday we filed a motion to hold the government in contempt and one one of the contempt powers could be putting someone in jail which we're hoping for but I don't think it'll happen right but but hopefully it won't be me right so so anyway we know that the federal government must be held accountable and our students believe that they will be held accountable some of the other things our students have been working on are our bonds one of the one of the actions our students did was file a lawsuit to get bond amounts and they discovered that there is 1.5 billion in open cash bonds open cash bonds and 36 million insured bonds that the immigrant community has paid and that's just in 2018 some of the other work the students have done is work with children in foster care and children who have been arrested on false gang allegations we filed a class action last summer where like throngs of children were re arrested by the federal government saying that these children are all in gangs we actually won and the federal court said go back into court and prove they're in gangs and of the 30 kids we got all we got 29 released so all of the charges were unsubstantiated um so I just I know that everybody came here to hear my Gonzalez I did but uh but anyway the uh the uh I just wanted to conclude on this note and that is that we're here in celebration of the Davis vanguard and that I think right now in this country I want to think that the the change is in the courtrooms and that we're all looking to lawyers to maybe hold the government accountable but it's really journalism in my mind is where we need to invest um and journalism that also inquires and analyzes in new frameworks and I think that I can appreciate the Davis vanguard anytime almost every time I've gone to them to help me advocate for the most minimal protections whether it be for a Cambodian refugee who's going to be wrongfully deported whether it be for a child who's being held into tension the vanguard has always covered the story and in fact when we got a pardon last year from the governor's office they said I don't know if we're going to look into this and grant the pardon show me what media attention you've got so I was like zippity but it's really I think without the oversight of the media and media that's responsible that we cannot get past this administration so I just really wanted to say thank you to the journalists like yourself thank you Holly as someone who I tremendously respect hearing those words of praise means a whole lot so there are others that I would like to thank this evening as well including Davis media access who have as sponsors are filming this and so we will be able to broadcast this local media and we can also stream this on the web so other people will be able to watch this as well so I'm going to give some brief remarks and I'm going to go a little bit off topic because there are a few things that I have to say of interest but the first thing is kind of following on Holly's comments and it's interesting the way it worked out because we didn't plan it this way but the vanguard is really a unique organization and we're a non-profit which I always joke it means we don't have any money the good news actually is that this is the first year that I've actually experienced where we're not paying our bills like two or three weeks after the start of the month when they were due we've actually had money in the bank so that we pay our bills for November and we still and we have all the money that we need for our December bills so that's a weird feeling to have and a lot of that is due to our subscription program which we've started in the last few years and you may think well you know ten dollars a month how much good does that do well you know maybe one person giving ten dollars a month doesn't do a whole lot of good but when you're talking about 200 to 250 then you're starting to talk about real money and that's money that we can count on to come in every single month so I don't have to you know on November 1st try to raise two thousand dollars to pay the rest of the bills we actually again have the money in the bank so as our inducement to get everyone here who is not already signed up to sign up Danny can you hold up the photograph in the back so there's actually kind of a neat story of this photograph actually can you come up front because it's hard for people to see sorry I'm making you come up twice in front of people and I apologize that probably there's probably a workman's comp provision that I'm violating right now which was is something else interesting that we've had to do but anyway this this photo has an interesting story so a few weeks ago we had a larger version of this done up and we presented it myself in a man named Don Sherman who invented sizzle picks and we went before the council and we gave it to the city council and I haven't seen where it's hanging but supposedly it's hanging in city hall which is a pretty cool thing and and this photo is really completely accidental there was a morning in July where my internet wasn't working and anyone who knows me I get up at three o'clock in the morning to to do my writing when it's nice and quiet so about three thirty four o'clock I've realized the internet's not working and so I drive down to my office in downtown Davis get everything written out and it's right about sunrise so I step out on the back balcony and I look at it and I'm like oh my god it's raining outside it's like July 13th and it's raining in Davis so I'm like hey um I wonder if I have a camera here so I found my old camera and some old lens and I walked down the street and I saw this scene with the clouds and everything and I took the shot and it came out and so you know sometimes your best photos are are by a complete accident okay you can sit down so so anyone who signs up at $10 a month between now and December 31st so you don't have to do it today you can sign up online um enters to win the raffle and then anyone who wants to actually just buy it outright can can pay $200 and we'll have another one made and and sent to you so so that's a way to donate to the vanguard and it's a way to make sure that we can continue to fund ourselves into 2019 I can't believe it's going to be 2019 had that happened um so I want to tell you a quick story because there's a lady here in the front row and Maria can you stand up again this is Maria Griehalva now I'd like to tell you that this is the worst case I've ever seen here in Yolo County but unfortunately it's not even the worst case this week in Yolo County however it's pretty bad she called me I don't know three or four weeks ago and told me hey I'm getting this subpoena from the DA and I'm like well what's going on and she's like well they're looking at my 2016 city council bank records and I'm like well why would the DA be doing that um and so I talked to a bunch of people and I said do you know of any uh situation that you can remember and I'm talking about people that go back you know 40 50 years in this community who have been intimately involved in elections and not one of them can remember a single time when the DA's office tried to prosecute somebody for a campaign violation so I go away and I come back in early October and I think it was last week everything's happened so quick as she said they're charging me I'm like they're charging you with what she said well it's government code 85 501 and so I do a quick search on 85 501 which it turns what what she had done is she sent out a mailer in west Sacramento for a candidate for for mayor and and she spent I don't know six thousand dollars six thousand dollars okay good sum of money but in the scheme of everything in in politics six thousand dollars is like pennies no offense um and so and so it's like what in the world are they doing so I so I do some some searches and I find uh this case out of San Jose and the mayor of San Jose the former mayor Chuck Reed had created this independent expenditure committee um and he spent like a hundred thousand dollars so six thousand versus a hundred thousand now keep these numbers in your mind because of what's going to happen next so uh the f ppc which is normally the body that investigates campaign violations finds him for for violating the independent expenditure law he spends a hundred thousand dollars anyone want to carry a guess exactly how much they find him one dollar now why do they find him for one dollar well they said well you know he was trying uh made a good faith effort to comply with the law you just didn't do it so he challenges it in Sacramento municipal court and they throw it out because it because they ruled that 85501 violates the citizens united supreme court case so if there's one good thing that comes out of citizens united it's that maria doesn't get prosecuted um so so then she goes into court this week and they announce to the shock of many um that uh they were throwing out the case now now the question really is why in the world would the district attorney prosecute somebody they were going to charge her with two misdemeanors which you know may sound like a slap on the wrist but it it comes with potential jail time and all sorts of other things um why would they do that well it turns out that maria donated a whole bunch of money to the guy who ran against the district attorney back in June now does this smell a little funny i think so um why why did they drop the case why were they prosecuting the case oh they won't answer that question um uh you know they didn't answer uh when kress asked them they did not answer it when the sacramento b asked them they didn't answer it when fox 40 asked them but you know like i said uh it it's kind of suspicious um so i want to tell you about this other case and this one's much older case um but when i first started doing this back in 2006 i met a guy from clarksburg actually um and his name was khalid bernie and khalid bernie had a ranch um on his ranch i feel like i'm gonna sing old mcdonald but uh on his ranch uh he had some goats eieio um this part's not so funny um so apparently the goats got off his property and started roaming around and uh and may have caused some damage and whatnot so what would you think that the fine for allowing your goats to run around would be well apparently in yolo county the penalty for that is getting charged with misdemeanor counts and so they charged him with i believe one misdemeanor count for each goat that got out and so eventually he was charged with 170 misdemeanor charges again this part's not so funny because he's facing 60 years in prison for allowing the goats to run uh run around at large so he ends up hiring a guy named mac and zealots who may be in this room um and eventually um they they catch a break because uh anyone who knows judge fall judge fall can be a real stickler among other things in his courtroom and so he had made a whole bunch of rulings that made it really hard for them to defend the case um but he ended up uh recusing himself from the case and uh the da made the decision to dismiss the charges and so khalid bernie was able to go about his way um so it it's another interesting story a lot of people tonight have asked well why did i start the vanguard how did the vanguard start and notice my wife's not in the back right now uh because she'd be laughing but uh but uh early on um i i had come into contact with a family uh uh halima buzai on and her father jamal buzai on and as uh people who've been in davis for a while will recall uh halima was involved in a bumper bender in the safeway parking lot um and the family claims at least that they were unaware that uh they had made contact with another vehicle but a witness reported seeing them at least drive close to it and they uh thought they saw some damage on the bumpers um they contacted the the family was contacted and the family paid uh had other things going on and so they paid for the damage and they thought that that was the end of the story um but a few weeks later this um this daughter who was at the time 16 years old um and they come on a school night 10 o'clock at night and uh their ruster uh inner pajamas for a bumper bender hidden run misdemeanor case um and there were other things um so so the family was muslim and uh the the family believed uh that religious factors be a play to roll um then there was a whole bit where um the investigating officer kind of ignored her plea for an attorney um and then uh later on uh when she filed the complaint against this officer um the uh the the sergeant that took the complaint tried to get her to confess to committing the crime which is completely inappropriate so eventually the family hires matt gonzalez who at the time was working uh as a private attorney along with his partner whitney lay um and they eventually get the case tossed out and and so uh as the result of this case and some other things that were happening at that time i ended up forming the vanguard as basically the way that i saw uh to be able to tell what's actually going on in the community as opposed to uh some of the other forms of media which i felt we're not telling the full and accurate story uh so as i mentioned uh matt gonzalez at the time was a private attorney um so he's got an interesting history um very interesting for such a young guy um so in 1999 he ran for district attorney in san francisco i didn't know this until i looked it up today i finished third of the five candidates uh but the next year he won a seat um on the san francisco board of supervisors and then in 2003 uh he became the president of the board of supervisors and uh that same year uh he would run for mayor and he ended up losing but pretty narrow a 53 47 to some guy i've never heard of his name is Gavin Newsom um and then in 2008 he ran for vice president on Ralph Nader's ticket so he's done a lot um and then in 2011 he went back and uh was hired as the chief attorney in the san francisco public defender's office and then what was it 2016 uh he ended up as the lead attorney uh defending a guy named Jose Zarate in a case that everybody was uh following because that uh that was the murder trial of Kate Steinle and so he ended up on national news for several months as that trial went on and he was able to gain an acquittal on the main charge um which which was pretty amazing considering everything uh that it transpired so i'd like to introduce without any further ado mac and zealous it's uh it's always difficult to hear about all my political defeats i've run four times in one one race in baseball that wouldn't be very good average you know i i uh i grew up in a town in south texas mcallin texas and uh you're not missing anything don't worry i grew up in south texas and mcallin texas and um i became an attorney and i started work in the public defender office in san francisco and i spent about a decade doing that work before as david mentioned i ran for district attorney um i ran because i'd represented a young person in a marijuana case um and the district attorney who was considered the most progressive district attorney in the united states wanted jail time for a kid that was basically smoking pot on some steps on hate street um which was against the law back then not anymore but uh and so in negotiations with the district attorney the head of the narcotics unit it was actually an attorney that had smoked pot in my house at a at a party and it was very interesting because the defense attorneys the public defenders weren't smoking pot and all the da's that came through were and so he's telling me how they're gonna have to make an example of this young person he was like 23 years old and it was going to college he had no priors and the judge who's now on the ninth circuit very conservative judge did in fact sentence the defendant to jail and at the time i said if you do this i'm gonna spend all of my resources telling people what you're doing i mean i'll take out ads in the paper i'll go on the radio run for district attorney i mean i'll do whatever it takes so the next day i was in a courtroom and that attorney walked through the head of the narcotics unit he says well you better get your filing money together and it was really just an insult uh so i did and i ran and and his boss uh had to listen to me at all these various debates explain to him what they were doing wrong i was elected the next uh year to the city council the board of supervisors i was a member of the green party and a couple years later became the president of the board of supervisors um i was not expected to win the mayor's race that i got into and in many respects i was not a very good politician i um i uh had closed my bank account after being elected to the board of supervisors and when we were making planning decisions i would often get checks from some of the parties that were appearing before me and it would so weird it was like why are they sending me money but it they just understood that that's what you did you're supposed to pay your respects to the politicians by giving them you know five hundred dollars for their next race or something like that we would just send it back of course my office um but um i thought getting elected mayor might be easier than having to put together eight out of eleven votes to override a mayoral veto and that's what motivated me to run i got into a runoff with very um low vote totals i had about 19 20 percent of the totals it was a wide field and nuisance had uh over 40 percent i think 42 percent so he was expected to win and it became a very close race unfortunately there were a lot of progressive allies labor unions etc who as they tried to assess who they should support they basically went with him because he was going to win and in the week before the election they started saying oh man if we knew it was going to be this close we might have done this different and probably my greatest injury in politics was when the union representing janitors that i had marched with endorsed my opponent you know even though all the guys in the room knew me because the the heads of the union and sacramento told them to to do that um i uh returned to private practice i didn't seek reelection of the board of supervisors i started a progressive law firm it was a bunch of lefties you know green party uh you know attorneys about six seven eight of us at the peak we filed lawsuits against district attorneys against police against grand juries against you know businesses like Comcast and national hotels not paying the minimum wage we didn't we got into big fights that we didn't have the resources to fully do but we had some attorneys that were so talented that they could you know single-handedly fight entire law firms um i want to i want to tell the story of some of these cases uh in davis because it's it's really just shocking and i'll remind you david in 2006 there was a group called carol that was trying to advocate for citizen oversight of the police department i wrote an opinion editorial with my law partner at the time that was published in the davis enterprise defending the right to speak anonymously because the police were trying to go on chat rooms and try to figure out who was behind the citizen's effort at oversight and try to figure out where the money was coming from so there are a lot of us that have participated as you are doing to make this community more progressive and you know i think we're all in it together um the case you mentioned i want i want to just talk about khalid's case the goat case because it's a fascinating uh example of obvious bias um he was represented by another attorney that was urging him to take a plea deal he came to us and asked us if we would handle it i was worried that if we took the case over the judge would want us to go to trial like that day because we were substituting in his counsel on trial date but we got ready i showed up i think it was judge fall and uh they were extremely hostile to somebody representing uh you know his case and i remember when i appeared in front of him he said uh okay understand you're gonna be the new attorney on the case is that correct and i said yes my name's mac and zhal is i'm gonna file a general appearance on the case and the first thing he said to me was i'm sorry counsel did you mean to say yes your honor and i said no actually i meant to say yes which is what i said and and that's literally how it started but this is what happened to khalid he was actually he had gone to he was muslim he had gone to one of the california agricultural schools and was very interested in state of the art technology he was married to uh you know california caucasian blonde haired woman they were a great couple they had kids they were super happy just law abiding people uh and they had the best fencing for goats in this entire region but goats are pretty crafty and these guys would charge the fencing and get through it not a big deal you have dogs to round them up it's a rural area anyway and rounding them up it's just a it's just something you have to do as a goat rancher well khalid had a problem which was there was a crop dusting um operation nearby and if the planes came in too low the goats would be frightened and charge the fencing and so that was actually what was causing them to get out of this state of the art electronic fencing um typically it's like getting a parking ticket it's an administrative code violation that they just write a ticket and you probably pay i don't know five dollars per goat i mean if anybody cares um in this case they did criminally prosecute him for over a hundred uh violations uh we brought a motion it's called a merguea motion that shows discriminatory prosecution and in every other goat rancher caucasian goat rancher came forward to sign declarations that in the same time period they had had their goats get out more often than him and had never been prosecuted never had a ticket written and we were able to subpoena those records and ultimately it was dismissed when we made these allegations judge fall denied that motion and we threatened to make it as a trial defense when the da gave up um another case we handled was the young woman halima's case uh juvenile charged in a hit and run what had happened was her mother with her brother's mother and the mother's uh sons had gone to the supermarket i think it was raining or something and uh in parking the vehicle she bumped another car um they didn't pay any attention to it it wasn't like a big deal this was a super minor situation she went home and i guess someone had written down her um license plate and the police came and told her what had happened she said oh my god i'm so sorry i mean this is a wealthy family they're they've got you know good solid jobs i mean they've never been in trouble at all and she's like immediately like oh my god give me the information i'm so sorry i absent minded i was on the way home to get dinner etc etc she immediately contacted the other party paid for the whole thing the cops got it in their head that her daughter was driving because whoever saw it thought it was a younger person um and the the the son said that that wasn't true the mother the you know etc etc and literally that got criminally prosecuted when i appeared in court with my law partner whitney lay african-american from chicago uh we had met in law school great just a brilliant lawyer the best legal writer i've ever uh been been with we appeared in front of this judge and um he was very unhappy that we were there and so he started with this sort of like okay well when are you coming back for the for the pretrial conference and we said well what about the 16th no that's too far away okay how about the 12th i'm not available on the 12th okay how about the 11th how about the 10th i mean i put out five or six dates then i said well your honor why don't you select the date and we'll be here you know i just said it like that and he said you know counsel i don't appreciate you talking to me like that he says what why don't we do this i'm going to put the matter over till tomorrow and we can pick a date tomorrow now he was doing that because he knows we're driving to san francisco and have to come back and i appeared on a lot of cases in davis where that was the deal uh they would call my case last if i walked out of the courtroom they try to call it uh when i wasn't there using the bathroom or something like that it was really quite ugly and i represented the head of the housing authority david uh serena um who had a high performing agency when he traveled they shared rooms and slept on the floor i mean he worked with cesar chavez back in the old days and the republican grand jury kept issuing reports saying it was a low performing agency and alleging that he was misusing mon monies and staying in lavish hotels and we contacted them and said look before you issue your report because you did it last year and you did it the year before in the year before that why don't you just tell the truth i mean here are the documents none of this is true you keep putting out this false information what was going on was it was all republicans selected by republican judges and conservative democrats and they were in effect trying to undermine him because he was building housing for poor people so we filed a lawsuit against the superior court and the grand jury in this county in yolo county and just said you can't do it the way you're picking grand jurors is like your friend there are no latinos on the grand jury it's just uh it's just completely discriminatory um the next week they filed i don't know 40 something charges against david for misappropriation of public monies all felonies what had he done well he had um a girlfriend who he later married and she had two children minor children and they were getting medical and dental benefits via his employment with the county and so they had decided i i think they'd been to the dentist one time they'd gone to the doctor you know a couple times and they decided this is criminal activity so um fortunately for us we had filed the lawsuit against the superior court so they recused themselves because they were being sued and they had to bring in a judge lucky for us from berkeley california you know how this turns out and uh they put a a death penalty prosecutor on the case who was extremely rude and uh um i just said look there a crime has not occurred we're not going to plead guilty to something and at the preliminary hearing we're able to show i forget if it was the medical or the dental benefits but one of the benefits in fact the law did allow these children to get the benefit from him because they were living in his house and as to the other benefit they were not entitled to get it however my point was he never lied in the application the county gave him the benefit he told the truth he says no i'm not married to their mother they're living in my house whatever whatever i said your mistake doesn't make it a crime he just applied for the benefit and you gave it to him that's your problem and if you want him to pay you back you know a couple hundred dollars ask him and that was that um let me tell you a couple of things it you know i know everyone's been sitting a long time and if you're bored by all means leave but um i mean i'm all these memories are coming back because we really litigated these cases and we cared very deeply about trying to do the right thing that we handled other cases here i don't recall any of them resulting in a conviction so um it turned out pretty well um the Garcia's Arate case that i handled um you know just kind of swept up in the uh in the with media attention because of our current president you may not recall but he had um that well you you recall this but not the time period with the case i handled he had announced he was running for president after coming down the escalator at uh trump towers and he disparaged mexicans and mexican immigrants and saying you know they're not sending their best people etc everybody laughed him off this was a joke candidacy well two or three weeks later kate steinle dies on pier 14 a populist tourist location in san francisco young beautiful her whole life ahead of her and she's with her father when she gets shot in the back it seems completely senseless and my client uh jose in escarce is a ratte in his 40s is arrested he had been deported oh i don't know about five times he had seven felony convictions and so trump started talking about his case and talking about what a terrible fellow this was and um i was in colorado when the elected public defender jeff adachi called me up and said hey we've got this case will you take this case and he was wondering if i had bandwidth because i was handling another serious murder case at the time and i said sure i'll do it all we knew at the time was you know he had shot this woman at point blank range is what we understood and he had confessed to it to a tv camera that weekend and so i went to see him i flew back the next day i went to see him and immediately i could see there were some mental health issues going on very simple but he had no violence in his background no no history of any kind of violence and he just he didn't know katherine steinle he had no reason to hurt her this was not like a robbery gone bad he never committed a robbery never committed a theft this guy was just not the way who's being portrayed and so we were able to show pretty clearly um it but it was hard to get the media to to to hear this that the uh he was seated on the pier when the gun was fired the bullet struck about 12 feet where from where he was and traveled another i believe was 70 or 80 feet before it struck steinle in the back it's a totally freak occurrence you could not you could be an expert marksman and not be able to ricochet a bullet off concrete and accurately hit someone that far away he got up and split and that was kind of that that was the case um i started realizing that his prior convictions were actually very minor when you broke them down and i want to talk to you a little bit about them because one of the takeaways is how bad immigration law is and how things like sanctuary city and kates law get wrapped up into a narrative that you know it's like it doesn't fit this isn't the right case to be dealing with national legislative solutions and here's why he had in the early 1990s while he was up in the state of washington he had some what were uh drug cases today they would all be misdemeanors they were basically drug possession however in like 1993 he pled guilty to one for possession for sale now the report i read it he had no money on him and there was residue in a plastic baggie the police thought he was in a drug transaction they offered him i don't know credit for time served deal if he pled guilty for a possession for sale he pled to us not a big deal he already had some felonies and these were this is drug activity in between his laborer jobs and out of season while he's just trying to survive well the federal law it's eight usc 1326 chuck mentioned this statue because it relates to illegal entry into the united states and i want to break it down for you like this if you come from mexico the united states without documentation you're gonna get deported maybe you'll be in custody for a little bit before they deport you maybe you'll get six months or a year maybe if you're a repeat offender they'll hold you for a couple of years but that's pretty much that's it you know the the universe is relatively you know you know what it is however if you have been deported on what's called an aggravated felony murder rape all the sex crimes explosives right you're gonna do your jail time in the united states then you're gonna be deported and if you come back to the united states you're facing 20 years and it's not a joke like you'll get a lot of jail time okay that kind of makes some sense if you did a serious crime here we really don't want you back problem is aggravated felony includes murder rape all those offenses and any amount of drug trafficking so any marijuana felony the sale or possession for sale any small amount of any other contraband means that Garcia Zarate when he played guilty for possession for sale for virtually no jail time to some residue in a bag he's now facing 20 years every time he comes here first time he came they negotiated it five-year sentence he appeared in court I think two times did his five years they deported him he came back for work because you know in certain parts of Mexico there's really extreme poverty they catch him he's committed no crime other than entering they negotiate six years he does six years gets deported comes back they offer him seven years this time so he does five six seven okay part of why he keeps coming back is he doesn't understand why he's getting the jail time because he's got like some cognitive issues and so he doesn't understand like what he did to merit this and so he's not changing his behavior so the feds are about to deport him but San Francisco has an old warrant form it's 20-year-old marijuana case and they've ignored it every other time they've deported him but this time they bring him to San Francisco San Francisco he appears in a courtroom they dismiss it immediately and the feds don't pick him up because the San Francisco sheriff wants there to be a legitimate warrant or probable cause document from the courts to release him to the feds the feds don't get the document San Francisco actually holds him in custody for about two or three weeks without any legal reason and finally they just let him out in the street goes out on the street he's just living on the embarcadero he's wearing clothes he found they won't hire him in the Mexican restaurants but they feed him a little bit he doesn't beg for money he doesn't steal he literally he looks so poor when people are walking by in an affluent tourist area the people just give him their leftover dinners that they're taking home they're like oh my god would you like this that's literally how he's surviving and he does that for about three months before this incident happens and he swears up and down he found a gun at the seat that he sat down on the pier wrapped up in something he investigated it and it fired the bullet and that's what he said now it was hard for people to believe that you could actually find a gun on the pier wrapped up but then stop and think about it we have you know over a hundred million guns in our society i mean it's it's a crazy number there are accidental shootings that happen every day i think it's something like 40 every day somebody dies i think the numbers three people die every two days from an accidental shooting so it turned out we were able to get some surveillance footage from about i don't know a quarter mile away from a fire boat it was grainy but it revealed something very significant which was before Garcia Zarate sat down at that chair there was a congregation of about six seven people they had a nap sack or a bag with them they were talking they were there they were together for about 20 minutes they weren't tourists this is a pier that everybody walks on to walks down to the end looks at the site and walks off which is what Catherine steinley was doing with her father Garcia Zarate didn't do that because he's just a homeless guy sitting on a chair swiveling around but these people could very well have been discarding a gun now why would they discard the gun it turned out to belong to a bureau of land management ranger who had left it unsecured in his vehicle and it had been stolen a few days earlier and we argued very clearly that Garcia Zarate had no history for stealing he had not tried to offer any object for sale in the preceding days that he was arrested and i mean i don't even think he had 10 cents in his pocket and there were other things of value stolen from the vehicle laptop computers credit cards all kinds of stuff there were many things that happened during the trial that frustrated us because i felt the judge wanted a different outcome he was a short he is a shorts and nigger appointment and he did a lot of things that we think resulted in Garcia Zarate not getting a fair trial now he was found not guilty of the murder and manslaughter charges and that's why it was celebrated as a big victory but he was convicted of gun possession and i'll give you an idea of why that shouldn't have happened basically the the judge would not instruct the jury on this idea of a momentary possession and think of it this way if i hand you a bag and you don't know what's in it and you say what's this and i said have a look and you open it look in it and there's contraband in there and you put it on the ground you say i don't want this you hand it back to me have you committed the crime of possessing that contraband well i think the answer is no you didn't know you had no knowledge and uh if you once you had knowledge and it was in your hand the only possession you had was to get rid of it well that was what we were trying to explain to the judge that look Garcia Zarate did not know it was a gun he's handling it it fires at that moment the jury says well it is in his hands is he guilty of possession and they asked for instructions from the judge and he would not properly instruct them on the law there were a lot of other things that happened the the bureau of land management officer was allowed to testify to all the safety precautions he took but the judge wouldn't let us tell the jury that he actually had a second loaded firearm in the car also not secured properly that had not been stolen things like that and one of the things that in the course of this trial that was most frustrating was that the firearm that he had was an elite firearm that can be fired with a very low trigger pull the fact the factory trigger pull of this gun when it's in single action mode is like 4.4 pounds and this is a gun without a safety it's meant for law enforcement to be able to reach for this gun and start firing not to be messing around with the safety this is a gun you have as a secondary weapon that you reach for if you're in trouble that's the that's the concept it's a very well made firearm but it's got a very light trigger pull so we were trying to demonstrate how low the trigger pull was to the jury and we were making a simulator that couldn't actually fire a bullet but would allow a jury to test the simulator we had a firearms expert in canada making the simulator and we told the court about it we weren't in possession of it yet but it was in the mail to us and we told them when we got it we would turn it over to the da they could test it and the whole thing well the da was very upset so there's no simulator we're going to object if the jury should see the real gun so we said fine let them test the trigger pull on the real gun the judge said great we're all in agreement well a few days later the da changes her mind before i can even be heard on the subject the judge agrees with her and so the da argued to the jury that that 4.4 pounds is like lifting a five pound bag of sugar that's what it takes to fire this gun when the truth was squirt guns our expert tested some children's squirt guns at trigger pulls of like four pounds i mean this is a very light trigger pull and you know this was the kind of gamesmanship that was happening in court anyway i could go on and on i let me just say a couple of other things about the law i mentioned this idea of this illegal reentry based on the aggravated felony i want to just say about sanctuary city i think it hurts us when everybody is presenting sanctuary city as a municipality fighting the federal authority and that we want to have our own laws and we don't have to follow what the feds are doing and i don't i don't think that that works because we're a nation of laws and that seems to make sense to people they don't understand what are we going to do be ruled by local authorities when there's you know federal law and here's why that argument is wrong what has happened in a 10-year period it was it was proven that ice and homeland security arrested 1500 u.s citizens by mistake they put detainers on them they would call the sheriff of a county and say put a detainer on that person we're going to deport them turned out they got it wrong 1500 times in that time period so the courts in uh nevada north dakota road island i think uh utah a number of different places said no no no you can't do it that way you have to present probable cause a warrant a probable cause instrument that says this person is not a citizen and subject to deportation we have to see that before the municipality does what you want that's what's actually going on it's the federal authorities ice and homeland security that don't want to follow federal law it's the municipality that's following federal law because federal law gets interpreted by the courts and that's really the fight the final thing i want to say is you know i was thinking about why is it that immigration is such a hot topic right now like why is it that there's so many people here in this country that appear to be here without documentation like was it always this way when i was growing up was it this way it just seems so peculiar that this is so much a thing and it turns out that in 1952 um there was a national immigration law that was passed that changed something in the law that is causing the problem that we have now and it relates to something in law that we call statute of limitations so when you commit a crime typically you have to be prosecuted for it within a certain amount of time so like let's say unless it's murder right there's no statute limitations on the crime of murder but let's say you commit a misdemeanor some states you have to be prosecuted within a year or within three years some states with felonies have three years statute of limitations some maybe go to five years and what this means is i could admit to doing a crime 10 years ago hey i stole that stuff from you when we were roommates i'm sorry i shouldn't have done it you can't prosecute me for it just too many years ago well this law in 1952 changed the statute of limitations for illegally entering the country because that's the crime right you illegally entered the country without documentation so the clock starts the day you entered and let's say five years later they can't prosecute you for it now you're not a citizen so you have to apply to become a citizen but the law had a built in amnesty what did the law do the law changed the statute of limitations not to start running from when you entered but to start running from when you were discovered here without documentation which meant you never obtained amnesty and that's why you've had this proliferation of these cases anyway i've talked enough it's a real delight to be back and to david and cecilia i really appreciate everything you guys have done because from the very outset i mean you guys just took on so much you were always supportive anytime we needed anything they were there 100 and congratulations on on this event and everything you've done thank you so we do have a little bit of time for audience questions and uh there are mics on the side of uh the room um try to actually ask a question if you're interested rather than making a statement um because we don't have a lot of time uh but if you have a question uh you can get up behind the mic and uh and ask it or if you just want to go then that's fine too so i don't know does anyone have a question okay perfect mr gonzalez if you don't mind uh there's a scenario going on right now in guatemala where we have like seven or eight thousand um guatemala or whatever's going on in those central countries that may be reaching the border within the next two to three weeks and the dummy in the white house has sent like 800 troops to the border they may not all get there the seven or eight thousand but some of these people are going to wind up at the border from my understanding you know they're escaping a life of a crime being committed against them what happens there once they get to the border well i i think for me i'm most interested in the kind of rhetoric of how these folks are perceived because you know it's very different like the way you think of like illegal immigration you know undocumented people coming here when you understand that they're fleeing american foreign policy decisions then you get it like there's like literally the tens of thousands of guns that we have sold into mexico contributing to to the the rampant crime there and the drug cartels or you take something like nafta where you've got you know are subsidizing of american corn so it can be sold for less than it can be grown in mexico means that you're putting mexican farmers out of work and it starts to feel different about why are they are coming and i think you know i'm not an expert in foreign policy but i think the same argument goes for folks coming from central america so many of those nations are ravaged by you know certainly the 20th century united states um you know really undermining of democratic regimes etc there what's going to happen when they get here i mean folks can come and in uh make application for asylum i think that that's going to be the process the question of whether or not trump's tactics of trying to harm people physically and mentally to to injure them so much that they give up i mean i don't know how that plays out i am bothered that a rule like illegal reentry for an aggravated felony that applies to any amount of marijuana sale has been on the books for god two three decades i mean ever since i've been a lawyer and even the democrats have not stood up to change that law um i wonder if you could advise us in the vanguard or any tonight about concrete things we can do like it's disturbing to read the story about maria what do we do i think i last year we knew what to do we worked for a new public defender and we came i mean district attorney and we came close but what do we do this year well one thing i like to do is i like to write the truth and i like to put people's names in those articles and make them read about the injustices that they're engaged in because it bothers them and when when when they're friends or they they google themselves these articles are out there in the world and i'll tell you we had some public defenders run for judge and um uh in san francisco it's very hard to beat incumbents but they ran against conservative judges and the judges were sitting court of appeal judges and a state supreme court judge basically got out there and were writing you know letters and editorials to the legal papers saying what an outrage it was and every lawyer should oppose this kind of attack on the judiciary it was all rubbish right but one of the judges that signed on to a letter was a supreme court judge democratic appointed who basically taught at stanford i mean my alma mater never even did a deposition he'd never tried a case and it was like you know i wrote an article that in parts basically said to him you're not even as qualified as these people like shut up you know and i didn't say it that way but the point was made which was you know this is this is a democracy people are running for office if you don't want judicial elections and change the constitution that's the way the law and you're supposed to uphold the law not attack it you know and that sort of thing so i think it's very effective that's just something you have to do you'll get better at writing things my writing has gotten better you may be a great writer to start with but i just mean you know and you whether you whether you publish it in the newspaper or you create your own places to publish it people read it and find it and it gets circulated everybody knows the details of what's happening to somebody and they can join forces and and the powers that be feel the pressure hi my name is desi rojas and i'm a resident of davis for many years we have been fighting this da jeff rising he attacked maria grahava we're a part of the community that that supported maria thank god they dropped the i guess it was a complaint so in the press conference that we had before she entered the courthouse we stated in our press statement that we are are demanding that uh javier um viscetta uh the attorney general to conduct expeditiously uh an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct and so my question is is what can we do to really put the pressure on him to do his job to get this da to start the investigation well i think the state attorney general has a good reputation and um i don't know him personally i've heard him speak um but personally i like when when when you know a lot of times people in authority hide behind the strict reading of the law to say well i'm just you know charging you with a crime that you may have committed and it looks like you committed a very powerful tool is the case i mentioned earlier the merguea case which basically allows you to get your case dismissed if you can show discriminatory prosecution and in this case you have a latina woman um who is being singled out the question is is there anybody of any other category you know in terms of gender or race that they have not criminally prosecuted that they could have for the very same thing it's a very powerful tool and it's been used i've used it successfully um to allege that hey why are you only arresting the latino guys selling drugs in the in the city square and not the african-americans or caucasian guys who have a marijuana club around the corner or whatever or you know out at san quentin there would be fights in the jail and only the african-american guys who get prosecuted in the county courthouse the caucasian guys that gotten fights out it's an administrative matter we'll deal with it in house that's a merguea motion and what merguea does is it gives you if you can make a showing that there appears that there might be discrimination here you can ask to subpoena and to make the prosecution turn over the records that you need to prove your situation so for instance in the in the in the marijuana case a latino arrested in a drug case i put together a declaration with the names of 40 or 50 other guys being charged for the same offense all of whom were latino so i was saying okay here i'm showing you all the guys being prosecuted i want to see the records like show me who's being arrested so i can figure out why you're not prosecuting them and uh so that's worth asking a lot of questions and trying to sort that out and if you've got a district attorney that has run for office i would scrutinize his own campaign finances you know yeah it's a great idea thank you hi um you said a few minutes ago that local municipalities want to obey the laws but it's the feds that don't and it's pretty obvious we know that so i'm trying to understand the mentality and this is a pattern throughout the trump administration not just locally with uh or with immigration issues but i'm trying to understand this whole thing that they do not wanting to follow the laws is it because they think uh well first of all it's arrogance we know that and it's a lot of other things but do they think we're gonna push it until someone sues us or do we think or do they think the laws don't apply to them or do they think what's this mentality well it's pervasive well they're bullies fundamentally and what they're doing is they're going to put pressure to make congress change the law so or to get judges on the bench that aren't going to agree with those other judges and what they're doing is they're basically saying rather than follow the law we're going to ignore it and every time someone like catherine steinling gets hurt we're just going to blame the municipality and eventually people are going to get so upset that the law is going to change you know they they they have the long view and they're willing to let a lot of people get hurt in the process unfortunately thank you all very much thank you matt thank you everybody for coming tonight and thank you to all our speakers and everybody who uh spent their time here thanks