Windsor police chief reassures community on immigration

Windsor Police Chief Carlos Basurto wants to reassure those who are here illegally that Windsor police are not going to come after them, unless they are serious or violent criminals.

As the grandson of undocumented immigrants, Basurto has a unique perspective on President Trump’s hard stance on illegal immigration and the protests and anxiety they’ve engendered.

Basurto, the only Latino police chief among Sonoma County’s nine cities, also has in-laws who emigrated from Mexico in the 1960s to work in the pear orchards. Only much later did they become naturalized citizens.

“If you are an undocumented immigrant in the town of Windsor, you do not need to fear the officers of the Windsor Police Department, nor assume that they have any reason to bother you, detain you, or arrest you for simply being undocumented. Your immigration status is completely irrelevant to us,” he said.

Basurto’s comments were delivered in a “letter to the community” in both English and Spanish posted this week on the town’s website, social media and printed in a local newspaper.

It comes as the Windsor Town Council plans to consider a ?resolution next week declaring the town “a united community that values its diversity and the contributions of all residents” and supports the safeguarding of the civil rights, safety and dignity of all residents.

The draft resolution reaffirms that town services, including public safety, will be provided without regard to immigration status.

President Trump has moved to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States and issued directives to speed up deportations and widen the pool of immigrants targeted for removal, regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes.

It’s prompted a growing number of communities, including cities and school districts in Sonoma County, to take stands against cooperating with federal authorities on deportation programs, or attempts to identify people who are simply in the country illegally.

Town Manager Linda Kelly is recommending against the council going further and declaring Windsor “a sanctuary city” because of Trump’s threat to cut off federal funds to municipalities that have designated themselves as such, including San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Richmond.

In general, she said, a sanctuary city is loosely defined as a community that does not use municipal funds or resources to enforce immigration laws and does not utilize immigration status to withhold services. Nor does it share a person’s status with immigration authorities.

The Windsor resolution and similar ones passed this week in Sonoma, Sebastopol and Healdsburg embrace those precepts without invoking the term “sanctuary.”

Chief Basurto’s three-page letter to the community emphasizes that Windsor police won’t engage in federal immigration enforcement activities.

“It is not our job or mission,” he stated.

But he makes an exception for serious or violent criminals.

Basurto said the department will work cooperatively with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or any other federal agency to apprehend those individuals.

The police chief said most, if not all, who cross the border to work the fields and ranches of California - such as his grandparents - are “good, decent, hardworking people” who do it for little pay, in hopes of a better life.

He said that when he was in junior high school, his parents made him and his brother work in the prune orchards to earn money for school clothes, and it gave him an appreciation for the hard jobs that undocumented workers do.

But as a result of his 28 years in law enforcement, Basurto said, he also has another perspective on illegal immigration.

There is a segment “committed to violence, drugs and domestic terrorism,” he said. “To think that this does not exist and that all immigrants are good people, is to be either, naive, uninformed or in denial.”

Along with all the “wonderful people” that emigrate here, he said, “we also receive a much smaller percentage of those who are violent gang members, drug dealers, murderers, rapists, human traffickers, spousal abusers and child abusers.”

He said if the Windsor Police Department works with federal authorities to catch serious criminals, it is on the condition that ICE refrain from arresting or taking into custody any person based solely on immigration status, traffic offenses or minor violations.

The policy mirrors that of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, which contracts with both Windsor and the city of Sonoma to provide police services.

It is at the county jail, when someone is booked into custody, that their fingerprints get entered into an electronic database to check for outstanding warrants. The fingerprints also get checked by other law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, to capture wanted suspects. Sometimes the process catches people who were subject to deportation but did not show up for immigration court proceedings, Basurto said.

He said Friday that Trump’s rhetoric has provoked hysteria and fear, much of it unwarranted.

But it also provided an opportunity to educate people on what the Windsor Police Department does and does not do.

Windsor can’t prevent the federal government from coming in and enforcing immigration law, Basurto noted. But it won’t be with the help of local police, he said, “unless the policy changes.”

And he had some parting advice for undocumented immigrants, echoing what the San Francisco-based Mexican consul general Gemi Jose Gonzalez Lopez said recently.

“If you want to take precautions from being deported, respect the law,” Basurto said. “Don’t put yourself in a position where you are in custody.”

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 707-521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter@clarkmas