the city wastes a lot of money, the subway went over budget in the first four years, the city had to come up with, 260 million out of the fund to help to pay their share of it. they are going to waste, 260 million plus on the geary corridor. and they are going to waste another 260 million or more on the van ess corridor and not to mention how much money on the central subway. where you are asking for 45 million dollars in this combined thing, which is a lot for a fixed income and retired work and stiff like myself but it is not compared to the money floating around this town, so to sit here and argue and demand all of this information for 45 million bucks, to do the work

that it is going to do, seems like a waste of our time. thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> good morning. >> first i would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to chairman cohen and the committee and supervisors fewer. my name is claire, and i am here as the managing director of the big elz worth foundation, and an attorney interested in doing pro-bono work and the founder of the network, the legal founder network is a network of over 630 local organizations that all believe that legal services is one of the most effective ways of working on poverty ee leavation, and we include private foundations and community, foundations and crowd source funders and law firms, and government and individuals. >> over the past three months, i participated in dozens of phone calls and meetings related to this issue, my meetings have included pure, funders and funders networks, ngo and

attorneys and even government officials. the funder community is eager to help. but, many feel we are on hold as we are preserving many of our dollars in order to figure out where the needs will be the highest and greatest after this body makes decisions about the government funding. >> discussions have ensued about as immigration super fund, but again, until we know what the city is going to be doing, it is hard to private philintropic to know what our role will be and how our dollars will be best spent. >> attorneys interested in pro-bono work are frustrated as the ngos are no the at the current time, having the capacity to work with them. >> all of the communities that i represent strongly support this proposal. and we urge you to move forward quickly to make decisions so that we know how we can come and partnership with the government, and provide the best representation for our communities and those most in need. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please?

>> good afternoon, i am pascal and i was recently hired by the public defender office as a social worker to work on immigration detention and we all know that much needs to be done in this field. i am going to read a letter from my colleague garte. in the midst of these unparallels attacks, san francisco must act, and it must takes steps to insure sha detained non-citizens have basic

rights, including the right to an attorney if they cannot afford one. while most detained non-citizens have viable claims for relief, most waived those claims because they do not have lawyers. and are unaware that they have a chance of obtaining lawful immigration status, however, if non-citizens are represented in a fair legal proceeding they will have a better chance at success, and our communities and our city will be a better place. >> the public defender's office and accustomed to managing a large docket of the high stakes matters and hafz the skills, resources of and capacity to provide high quality representation in all the cases it handles. my supporting this sensitive, the city and council of san francisco can once again make a strong statement in support of immigrant rights, amid a terrifying climate of hate. thank you. >> i wanted to take the comments

of why not to fund the public defender. >> pull the mic. >> the san francisco public defenders office in this battle against the impending wave of detention and deportation. detained and incarcerated folks do not want someone to stand next to them and represent them, they want someone to advocate for them with passion and skill. when i came to this san francisco public defenders office ten years ago it had a representation of one of the best offices in the country, since then we have become better every single year, we had a win rate in felony trials last year that was perhaps the best in the country. and as the former training direct ir, i have spoken at

conferences about our collaborative approach to trial preparation, and other head public defenders have asked me about how we do this. >> we have a checklist initiative to insure on this, and every aspect of case preparation, we have a highly funk pg bail unit that fights against the prehearing incarceration to insure that the vaf he isty for the clients to get out of jail happens less often, we collect data on the performance of the attorneys and provide feedback to help each staff member practice at a high level. i have spoken with our immigration attorney, and he has talked about how his approach to representing detained people has transformed as a result of some of the practice beings that we have implemented in the public defenders office, the functioning and reality is that there are people in this country, that are being incarcerated and sentenced in the criminal court and then detained or deported in immigration court.

because the quality was not what it should be. >> when you hear that chime the time is up. >> i am a member of the national lawyers gild i am here not just individually to ves my support for supervisor few are's ordinance but also the support of the immigration committee and i am the former of the national lawyer's guid, and the former chair of that committee. i practice at the intersection of criminal and immigration law.

my practice has informed me over the years i started out in domestic violence prosecution and ended up in defense. merely by chance. but perhaps the reason why it is so important for you to hear from me today. is that i understand the importance in a way that it is fundamentally different about the intersection of criminal and immigration law. than many of my colleagues in the immigration bar. i know why it is so important for jeff adachi's office to have the absolute authority to go forward with this representation so that access to council is afforded in the immigration courts by the public defenders and the reason for that is that they have when there is a

necessary prerogative to provide the essential bi furcated defense, for the individual, against the criminal and the immigration issues that might be related to entry without inspection and unlawful presence and etc., those are different issues and many times something can be afforded on the determine. >> thank you. next speaker. >> what an honor this is, thank you for your leadership. and thank you to those who spoke, i am an average person. nor not representing an organization, but myself and my co-workers here today are participants in the day without an immigrant national movement. and we are here today on a day off and my sweat pants. and we said what are we going to do today, we are going to come here and support this awesome initiative thank you guys for

taking this on. san francisco should be a leader here we can't have any other city be ahead of us. with regard to you know these reforms. my family, i am a greek bone handsome refugee. and we came here to san francisco in 1988. and they welcomed us. and so you know, let's keep this tradition alive and remain as leaders as we are, and we look forward in participating in other days, because we are immigrants and we are proud and we are san francisco. much love. >> thank you. >> next speaker please? >> hello, there, my name is rich order and i have been a san francisco resident for almost four years i went to law school here. and i want to share my thoughts with you if i could. having been a former san francisco prosecutor for 23 years, i do personally attest to the ability and commitment of

the san francisco public on the defenses on behalf of their clients, having just returned from the new york city visit and observed season trial lawyers from the brooklyn public defenders office practice in the immigration courts there, i am confident that the san francisco public defenders office would be an essential asset to fight the threat and deportation, and other threats that the federal government may soon initiate, and therefore, concur, that san francisco needs to bolster its immigration defense, immediately and i urge that the money be allocated now to hit the grouped running. thank you very much. >> i am with cuav and we are a

member of the domestic violence consorcum of san francisco and i work with lgbt survivor and we know that the people are in dire need of these services are isolated by society, what happens when someone pro-desperately preaches out for help and they are placed in to deportation proceedings or a survivor of violence is deported away from their community and their access to safety and employment and usherred into the face of extreme violence, this particularly applies to transgender women, and latin anies and lgbtq survivors in general it cannot be a place where the fear is bolstered by the inability to provide protection against them against the purse cushifederal governmei

implore you to vote in favor.

>> to know that we have the freedom and to know that we are protected and to have the freedom to ask for help, without the fear of being deported or encars rated. >> is

>> we are afraid and feel unprotected. i myself feel this as a transgender person if i were to be deported to mexico i would not have access to medical services, i would not have access to the hormones i need or the medication for my depression. it scares me to think of the possibility of being deported. without any exaggeration, the possibility of me being deported means me being killed. in my country, there exists a lot of tranphobia and please provide legal representation for all.

>> thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> >> i am one of the effected families as a result of deportation proceedings. my husband was taken away by immigration and we were separated for 7 months. >> i lost my home and i was still in the hospital because my son was born prematurely.

>> now we are still recovering, and we are still affected by all of that has happened, even though. >> we are afraid that the same thing could happen again. >> i am asking for all of the immigrants to help everyone in our community. >> thanks to having an attorney, my husband and i can be reunited with my son. >> thank you for everything. >> hello, good afternoon, my

name is rodriguez. >> i want to share a little bit about the impact that i have it was difficult being detained and separated from my son and wife who was in the hospital. there were seven difficult months that i was fighting for my self-and my family. i was lucky i found a lawyer who was able to get me out of immigration detention.

but i'm still afraid, i am afraid that they might come and knock on our door and something similar might happen again. >> it was very difficult what i experienced and i don't want that something like that to happen again to myself or anyone. >> i want to support the efforts here and the effort to stop the deportations of our families, thank you. >> my name is mar get raverdy and i am here to support sandra lee fewer's prop. and i want to say that we are all immigrants. announceme

announcement, ancestor of mine came to this country without papers on a boat for religious freedom. the boat that he came here on is the may flower and his name is william brewster. >> >> next speaker? >> good afternoon, first i want to say thank you to supervisor cohen. >> thank you.

thank you to her love, the great love we are going to achieve due process. >> i also want to thank her for the defense of my nephew jesus. when a person who didn't like immigrants tried to attack him. >> and now he is in the hospital because he has lucemia and i would like to be there.

>> supporting the public defenders is one small thing that we can do for our immigrants communities, because we have many problems and we want to support many of them and the basic human rights, the basic due process rights.

>> so we have to support due process because for the people that are detained they need a defense. so that providing attorneys will be the basic right that they are entitled to. >> the shortest path to deportation is being in one of these ice detention facilities. and if there is no defense, and there is no attorney, then what is due process?

>> we immigrants they have criminalized us, and they have criminalized our poverty and inability to get the attorney and it is the poverty that is the criminalation that is at issue here with our immigrants. >> thank you. >> thank you supervisor cohen from the bottom of my heart. >> >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> next speaker please? >> good afternoon, my name is norma.

i would also like to thank supervisor co-hen for what my colleague has said. for all of the support that you have given us. and also my community in bay view that is pushing forward. being a community of latinos and african americans, we are used to being criminalized. for me it is really important that the public defense be assigned to defend all of us immigrants against the deportation in the courts please.

>> it is unjust that minors be in jail and that they have no lawyers to represent them. >> it is necessary and urgent that we provide public defense to these people that are waiting in these centers. with the current administration, trump's executive orders are tearing families apart and these families don't have the resources to provide proper representation. >> that is able to fight for our cases. there is an urgency to protect our community.

>> i urge you to approve this proposition. >> we have to come together and we have to protect ourselves. and we also have to tap into the resources that this city has for us because we are part of it. because a lack of humanity of this president does not have any limits. >> i am a mother, and i am terrified of all of trump's executive orders because they are pretty much against humanity. >> i think daily, what would happen if i am deported and what would happen to my children?

>> when they come home and this don't find their parents there what will they do? >> we are living a lack of certainty. >> i ask each of those supervisors of san francisco to respect each of us who are also citizens of the city. and to contribute to the development of human rights, thank you. >> next speaker. >> hello, my name is yesterday ka lopez, and i am a phd student studying the linguistic

experience of the parents in the bay area, and my husband teaches in san francisco and he teaches 7th grade. and i like to make a comment about how attorney defenders for people in deportation proceedings is a human right and is absolutely essential for us to be able to teach our children ideals of equality and of fairness, but also of the same children that are being educated here in san francisco, come to school every day with die pregs and severe anxiety because they are worried about their parents being deported. our children here in san francisco and i am also emotionally upset by a term that was used earlier to say that we are unsure that at best we are

it is unclear how the federal government is fwoeg to respond to issues of immigration, and i think obviously if anybody has been following anything in the news, the response by the federal government to immigrant communities is hostile, people are already experiencing deportations and raids and i think that it is time for san francisco to step up. thank you. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon, i want to thank sandra lee, for bringing this forward and i want to urge every member of the budget and finance committee to send it forward with vig or, my name is cathy, and i am a teacher at city college and i am on the executive board of our american federation of teachers, 2121, faculty union and i am here because our board of trustees passed a resolution to be a sanctionary college. our union passed a resolution to support our being a sanctionary college, on the day before the

inauguration, we had an action at mission campus to show solidary, with our immigrant students. and i thank you, sandra for speaking that day. and one question is sanctionary, but what does it mean if it does not have teeth? we are constantly, figuring out what do we do next? where do i get trained? what, or what do i tell my students? >> and it seems like this is a civic issue, and it is a national issue, it is more than any npo can handle, and we have heard every npo speak strongly in favor of it today. it is hard to balance the life

against the budget line, and 2.5 million dollars of whatever the budget was that came up today is not a lot to help insure that every immigrant who is detained has a public defender. and it is a human right, if we are really progressive we have to put our money where our mouth is.

students, who has an immigrant parent and we also know that more than half of the people in our county jamils, 59 percent ae parents and they have an average age of nine, thank you for your time. >> good afternoon, board of

supervisors. ply name is ramos and i am a resident of the neighborhood. >> i am from elsal ra door. i have been living in stephenson for eight years. the school that my son went to in the same district. 67 percent of the students are of latin american origin, central or south america or mexico.

and now, as a promoter of land and sf, for language access in the communities in san francisco. allocate these funds for the public defense so that they provide the necessary defense to the people that need them.

and because san francisco has made itself known as a sanctuary city i hope that we do what we need to do, so that we can live up to that. they the tax that they pay for, and they may not have papers but they participate in the tax paying, responsibilities.

i hope that you gives the funds to this defense. >> thank you. >> my name is stephanie, and i am a resident of district three. i want to thank supervisor fewer to taking the initiative to expand legal defense funding for our city's most vulnerable residents as the grandchild of immigrants, i strongly support this initiative, especially given our current national climate of fear and instability. immigrants, both documented and undocumented form the back bone of our society. and deserve due legal process

and representation regardless of ability to pay. i am here to express my concern as a latin that and an immigrant from latin america and given that we are a nation of immigrants and that the people

come from many places here. >> >> i am really concerned about the increase of the deortation and i am not just talking about the depowertations due to the commission of felonies but also of minor crimes.

we are living in the san francisco city and given the circumstances san francisco has the opportunity to arise up to the occasion and do what needs to be done to stop these deportations. >> i am worried about the separation of family whz fathers are deported, the families are left in sham bells, and the children go to other families where they are being taken care of and this is a situation that is creating a lot of stress in my community. >> i ask all of you that are

here present for their support to our community and that i beg you to not give any private information to anyone that asks for it. thank you. >> all of these cases it is likely that we need the legal reputation, but we cannot afford to have this legal representation. >> thank you. >> good afternoon supervisors.

my name is -- and i am a community organizers with -- and i want to thank supervisor fewer for taking this initiative and being a champion and issues that are important to my community and our city and i am here to ask you to please help me do my job, i am a community organizer and i go to a lot of schools and churches and other community service provision agencies. and what i see is a lot of fear. so i want you to please allocate the necessary funding to the public defenders office so that i can go out into my community and assure my xh community that our city is standing in unity with them, with he have the resources we also have expert attorneys who are going to be taking care of their cases in case of an emergency. >> please we have the power as the county and the city and to provide the support that our families will need and you will help me to bring that hope that it is not there right now. because there is a lot of fear in our family and communities.

>> making sure that we all have or that we provide due process for all. is something that we have been advocating for many many years. and i do believe that in and i have seen this in my work and in the life experience of my community that they trust the public defender's office, just the way that they trust the non-profit organization, and therefore i please, i ask you to allocate the funding in to this office. because i know my community are going to be looking out organizations and other city departments that have more resource and attorneys that will be fighting for their cases. please take into consideration all the stories that you have heard and please i ask you to provide that services to our families need and not be sent home thank you. good afternoon, members of the budget and finance committee, my name is amy, and i am a civic

engagement organizer as my co-worker said, we work a lot with our communities. we do a lot of know your rights presentations, how to create an emergency family plan. just so that our families are one step ahead if their families enter any type of detention or deportation. and so that is why i just want to say that we are first hand seeing all of the fear that is being created in these communities all of the children not wanting their pashts parents to leave them because they are afraid they won't see them again, this is happening every day at these schools when we are talking to parents. so i just want to say that right now is the time to show our immigrant communities that san francisco is ready to stand up and protect them and defend them. right in this time of crisis, we have to know they have to know that we have their back and that they stand in solidary with them. it is has been mentioned that

progressive cities like new york saw this as a need and they are doing it. this is why i am here to ask that you support the funds, to go to the public defenders office because it gives them the legal representation without having to worry about finances or putting food on their table and paying their rent, and they know that they will be able to stay here with their families. right? already we have legal organizations and that are representing our communities, and there are also, limitations through capacity, expertise, and an economy of scale to provide all of the necessary legal defense that our community needs in this time,

>> thank you. >> i am a resident of san francisco. and i strongly urge you to support legal representation of some of our some of our, off our citizens and most vulnerable residents, especially the immigrants and in particular, the >> thank you for these most important matters. >> hello, good afternoon,

supervisors my name is cathy and i am on the executive board of senior and disability action here in san francisco. senior disability action gives a special thanks to supervisors kim, and fewer, in their compassionate and intelligent attempt to cobble together funding to get legal service foz immigrants who face reckless, cruel, deportations. senior disability action stands firmly with the immigrant community and it's fight to push back ice, and trump. passage of this bill and san francisco sends a strong message to president 45, and the nation. thank you very much. for passing this bill. >> good afternoon.

we are here to express for the needs and the funds to defend our community of immigrants. >> because the immigrants contribute to the economy. because it is not just the community of immigrants that will be impacted it will also be the economy, and the society at large. and this country is made of immigrants, i live in fear that

i will be separated from my children, and i know many families that are also live with the same fear and it is destroying them. >> i am the face of displacement of racism and anti-immigration sentiments and also what has happened in latin america. >> thank you. >> i am the board president of manila town heritage foundation, and i speak in the memory of my uncle, the poet in the i, hoi tell whose birthday we celebrate today. he devoted his life to remembering the stories of the early philippine immigrants that

came here like my grand parents, they were scapegoated just as they are right now, that related in the death in the 20s in watsonville of a young man named tobera who was a farm worker, who was murdered by a mob who accused the philippine know workers of taking their jobs. we are seeing come to fruition as james balkbin ignorance with power, the most enemy that justice can have, i two like to thanks, supervisor fewer to introducing this legislation, and we need to make sure that the legal defense is expanded and that the due process is given. and i can only imagine, or i can't imagine, the integrities that are suffered by the people by our brothers and sisters that are being detained and yanked from their families, and the

humiliation that they are enduring because of the ignorance and the hate filled rhetoric that is going on right now, and again, it you very much for this legislation, thank you. >> good afternoon, board of supervisors. my name is judy and i work for somcan, as a family coordinator, i help the immigrant families navigate the resources in the community, one of which is the immigration concern, since they are low income, they are unable to access private lawyers who could defend or advocate their issues. with these, we strongly support, this budget appropriation legislation, because we believe that everyone deserves legal representation, regardless of income and their status in the community. thank you. >> next speaker? >> i am a resident and a worker

of soma, this is heavily populated by immigrants, with people by beliefs and contributions that very well might vary widely from your own, i ask you what will it mean not to approve this proposal. the obvious question, where would we be without our immigrants approval authority society, what we do to keep our families together. people who have not committed violent crimes are incarcerated separated from their relatives and children who likewise have committed no violence, at the very least, no one should be locked up and waiting so long for resolution and answers. >> less address this backlog and allow these engineers and doctor and students and artists bus drivers and care givers, parents, siblings and sons and daughters torques resume their lives thank you. >> go ahead.

>> thank you. >> my name is neil and again, and i am with pangia legal service and we are an immigration organization here in san francisco, representing detained and non-detained immigrants and removal proceedings, i just wanted to reiterate the issue around why the public defender again. so pangia for example, has six immigration attorneys. and hiring just one extra attorney it increases our staff size by a huge percentage, it adds a huge burden and infrastructure capacity need on to our organization. whereas the public defender hiring 17 staff, is you know, ten percent of their capacity. for us, ten percent is one. you know, or even, actually 15 percent is one new person.

together, with the non-profits we are filling in and stepping up as a stopgap measure, temporarily, but for a real permanent solution we need an organization that has the infrastructure and the mass capacity to take on this mass need that we have. and the on the point of residency, again, you know, due process, is happening here in san francisco. our court is in san francisco, we used to detain folks here in san francisco, and we believe basic rights for our immigrant community right here in san francisco and, so we strongly support supervisor fewer's proposal, and hope that we can all work together on this, and move forward on a united front. thank you. >> hi, this is unice with the center for gender and refugee studies and i just wanted to make one final point.

we are a technical assistance and training center. and we you know we do one on one technical assistance in thousands of cases and protection cases and each year. so we see the gamut of cases and it is not just the attorney but it is also the quality of representation, we do see a lot of cases where the attorneys are no the prepared and not trained and not adequately supported, and we absolutely think that having defenders at the public defenders will make a big difference, and our other prior community members and organizers testified as to the trust that the public defenders has in the communities and we think that is another very important factor. to have the public defender along with the community based organization attorneys. thank you. >> all right, thank you ladies and gentlemen. is there any one else that would

like to testify or offer public comment? >> okay. public comment is closed at this time. thank you. supervisor yee, tang is next and then to supervisor yee, please? >> thank you so much for all of your public comment, on this item. >> during that time i also just wanted to i guess bring back our public defender because i wanted to clarify some numbers that i think were not stated accurately. >> in terms of the caseload that is in our san francisco immigration court, we talked about the 2209 number, and i believe that the public defender stated that 1500, are detain ease who are san francisco residents. >> i said detain ees. how many are san francisco residents? >> we don't know. we have tried to find out that information, but there is no documentation as to where the current detainees are from.

>> i don't know if we want to speak to it, because somehow they have the information and i have a better sense of what we are looking athe in terms of the caseload. >> i am the mayor's budget director and, thank you, supervisor tang and i want to say quickly, the mayor's office has been talking a lot with the community on this item, and with the supervisors and the department. and you know from our perspective, we have a lot of policy questions about this proposal. and really heard from everyone about the need to move forward quickly, with the supply mental which, of course the mayor and the board supported together. >> and we have been asking the office for information and they provided it, and one thing that they told us was that approximately, 15 percent of

that number is the best estimate that they will have of who will be san francisco residents. so that will be about 225 cases. and i think that i just want to say that we are also supportive of making sure that this work and representation is happening. and so we are just working through the process with the department and we are actually meeting with the public defender later today as well vment to continue to get answers to these types of questions. and so thank you for holding this hearing. the public comment in particular was really helpful. and nice to hear at the same time that we are going through this process and i want to appreciate everyone for that. >> i don't know where that information came from, because we don't have information as to the number, the only information that is listed as to the detainees is where they are detained. >> so your staff member told that to our office. >> i just texted him and he said that is not krek. >> we are happy to talk to you about that more. >> we wanted to make sure that we had the answer. >> he said that an estimate. he said that was the best guess. >> would you say is your best guess is the question if you don't agree with that assessment

in >> i could just say that we don't have that information. as to how many people are detained, this proposal is pro-he vied representation for everyone. who is being detained. >> sure. >> that is the point. if if you going to give it to only the san francisco residents, we will not want be part of that. >> just for the collarfy of information, no the to say that i only support you representing san francisco or not, i am trying to get accurate facts here, that is all. >> and so i would just say that you know, it looks like we need to some some more follow um conversations on this particular item. and you know, i was listening to the public commender say that really the san francisco it is the time for us to step up and that they are tired of us being so conservative with our budget. and i just want to remind everyone that if you look at the analysis that was done by the budget analyst report and all of the counti,