From the LATimes.com:

Kern County sheriff a defiant California maverick on immigration

by Kate Linchicum

Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood was hiking along the bluffs overlooking Bakersfield last year when he got a call from Gov. Jerry Brown.

“What are you trying to do to me?” the sheriff said Brown asked him.

“What are you trying to do to me?” Youngblood shot back.

A Republican in one of the reddest counties in the state, Youngblood had riled the Democratic governor when he announced that his department would defy the Trust Act, a law signed by Brown that restricts cooperation between local law enforcement officials and federal immigration agents.

The sheriff said the law put him in an impossible position, stuck between a federal program that relies on local jails to hold inmates who might be deportable and a state law that says inmates in jail for low-level crimes can’t be detained past their release dates.

Apparently what Brown fails to realize is that federal law, generally, trumps Fornicalia law.

That kind of stance has won him enemies in California’s immigrant-rights movement and frequent comparisons to Joe Arpaio, the brash Arizona sheriff notorious for his workplace raids and ID checks.

Imagine that.  However, Sheriff Youngblood nails it in the next paragraph:

The federal government should start enforcing immigration laws — or write new ones, he said. He criticized President Obama’s new deportation policies, which say most immigrants who have not committed serious crimes and have fewer than three minor crimes on their records should not be priorities for removal.

“You’re in this country illegally and we’re going to give you three bites of the apple? That’s three victims!” Youngblood said. “If you commit crimes, you oughta go.”

Sheriff Youngblood stating the obvious: either enforce what’s on your books, federal government, or completely re-write them.  Make a decision and commit.  There’s a reason, however, the federal government refuses to commit.

He has largely refused to sign paperwork that immigrant crime victims need to apply for U visas, which allow some victims to stay in the country lawfully. As president of the Major County Sheriffs’ Assn., a national advocacy group, he has asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to share data with police so patrol officers can determine whether the person they stop may be in the country illegally.

How odd that a major Fornicalia law enforcement officer dares to display courage in today’s political environment.

Youngblood argues that Brown and the Legislature were interfering when they passed the Trust Act. Conflicting state and federal mandates put sheriffs like him “in the crosshairs,” he said.

“It’s unfair, because the law is so unclear,” Youngblood said. “Really what we’re looking for is clear law, clear direction.”

The law is so unclear.  The Demorats wish it that way for one reason only: votes, in order to hold the state and the nation in perpetuity.

BZ