Our Santa Ana domestic violence criminal defense attorneys disagree with the police practice of arresting both people involved in a domestic dispute. For some officers, this is a routine response to "he said, she said" situations in which each accuses the other of being the violent one. The practice can create unfair accusations against the victim of the violence, victimizing that person a second time. A Jan. 24 article from the San Francisco Examiner makes another case against this policy: it puts the wrongly arrested person at risk of deportation. Thanks to a new federal program called Secure Communities, all fingerprints from arrestees are going through a database to identify people who might be in the United States illegally. The article said at least three victims of domestic violence have been deported this way in northern California.
That figure comes from Angela Chan, a police commissioner for the city of San Francisco and an immigration attorney. Two of them are clients, she said, including a woman who was arrested after she called the police during an altercation with her husband. The charges against the woman were dropped, but she is in immigration detention and her one-year-old daughter is now in foster care. Chan and others expressed concerns that the situation will discourage illegal immigrants from getting help for domestic violence. San Francisco's famous sanctuary ordinance forbids the deportation of illegal immigrants who are charged only with a misdemeanor, or not charged at all, after an arrest. The city police and county sheriff's department have both looked for ways to legally decline to participate in Secure Communities, but haven't found any.
As Torrance domestic violence criminal defense lawyers, we think this is a sad but not entirely unexpected result of making arrests without thinking about whether they are really deserved. An arrest that doesn't end with criminal charges is already bad enough -- it's frightening, humiliating and an unjust way to treat someone who might already have been the victim of domestic violence. But for people who don't have U.S. citizenship, it can also throw into question their right to be here. Not everyone in Orange County has sympathy for illegal immigrants, but most people would agree that it's unfair to imprison someone who is the victim rather than the perpetrator of a crime. And even immigrants who are here legally can be threatened by a domestic violence conviction, since it could be considered a "crime of moral turpitude" that could trigger deportation.
Howard Law, P.C. defense people who are accused of domestic violence throughout California. All too often, domestic violence arrests are made after a fight that got out of hand, plunging the person or people arrested into a criminal justice system that treats them like hardened abusers. It's also common for the police to simply arrest both people, as described above, and let officers sort out the truth of the matter later. Our Leucadia domestic violence criminal defense attorneys vigorously defend people who are falsely accused after being arrested in this way. Domestic violence is frequently a crime committed behind closed doors, with no witnesses or no adult witnesses. That allows us to mount a strong defense based on the physical evidence, any witness statements and sometimes, the credibility of a false accuser.
If you're charged with spousal battery, domestic assault or other domestic violence crimes in California, you should call Howard Law, P.C. right away to discuss how we can help. To learn more or set up a free consultation on your case, call us toll-free at 1-800-872-5925 or send us an email today.
