Last Thursday during the Republican National Convention Donald Trump formally accepted his party’s nomination for president of the United States. Amongst other soundbites in his cobbled-together acceptance speech was more talk of a wall along the Mexico border to keep Americans safe. That’s when Trump dropped the name Jamiel Shaw.
Jamiel Shaw, Sr., also addressed the convention last week. Trump had also dropped Jamiel Shaw’s name back in March during the Arizona primary, which he won handily. Trump’s win was aided in part by his hardline stance against immigration, which is a top issue in the state and a centerpiece of his campaign. But exactly who is Jamiel Shaw, and why does Donald Trump keep mentioning him?
Jamiel Shaw, Jr. was a student at Los Angeles High School and a star football player for the school’s team, the Romans. On March 2, 2008, Shaw was walking to his West Adams home when he was shot and killed by Pedro Espinoza. Espinoza, a member of the 18th Street gang, shot Shaw twice, once in the head. Jamiel Shaw, Jr. died on the street he grew up on, about three houses down from his home.
In the midst of their anguish, the Shaw family asked one very legitimate, multi-part question: How is it that an immigrant in this country illegally,* who is known by law enforcement to be a gang member and spent time in their custody, can be let out of jail, get his hands on a gun, and approximately 24 hours later, use it to kill their son?
That is indeed a legitimate question. Unfortunately, the Shaws were given an illegitimate answer. Conservative, anti-immigration activists (predominantly white, but you already knew that) stood ready, waiting in the wings to respond to the family’s question: “Los Angeles is a ‘sanctuary’ city, which is why an illegal alien* killed your son.”
Los Angeles is not a sanctuary city, but that has not stopped conservatives from declaring it so. What exactly, then, is a “sanctuary city”?
The idea of sanctuary cities dates to the 1980s, when thousands of people fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala sought refuge in the United States. American involvement in those wars made the federal government reluctant to acknowledge the danger the refugees faced in their home countries, so churches and synagogues rallied to take them in and shield them from deportation. Some cities, including Los Angeles, joined that movement. In 1985, the City Council formally expressed its "opposition to the deportation of known law-abiding Central American refugees who have fled their homelands for the fear of losing their lives." Even then, however, the council insisted that its support for those refugees should not be construed as "sanctioning the violation of any law or encouraging interference in law enforcement efforts." At no point did the city government protect immigrants from federal authorities.
One reason that conservatives insist Los Angeles is a sanctuary city has to do with the Los Angeles Police Department. They adopted a policy in 1979, before the concept of sanctuary cities really came into being, called Special Order 40. The order states that:
-
Officers shall not
- initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person.
- Officers shall not arrest nor book persons for violation of Title 8, Section 1325 of the United States Immigration Code (Illegal Entry).
The order goes on to state that when undocumented immigrants are arrested for “multiple misdemeanor offenses, a high grade misdemeanor or a felony offense, or has been previously arrested for a similar offense,” information regarding that arrest must make its way through the LAPD’s Detectives’ Headquarters, where it will be forwarded to the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Although the INS has changed its name to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Special Order 40 has not changed and remains in place. The fact that police do not go around looking for undocumented immigrants to lock up gets lumped into the bureaucratic haze of ICE, and thus you have the “L.A. shields illegal immigrants” mantra.
This might in part explain what happened in the case of Jamiel Shaw except for one itsy, bitsy problem: Espinoza, the gang member who murdered Shaw, had been in the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, not the LAPD, in the months before he encountered Shaw. Espinoza was arrested by Culver City Police (a different jurisdiction from the LAPD) and charged with assault with a deadly weapon in November 2007. He would be released from Los Angeles County Jail—which operates under the auspices of the Los Angeles County Sheriff, not the LAPD—several months later and wound up shooting Shaw the very next day.
Espinoza went on trial for the murder of Jamiel Shaw in April 2012. He was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to death the next month.
The case of Jamiel Shaw was heartbreaking for several reasons: the loss of life and potential, the devastation of a family, the increased fear of a community, and the painful and ironic reminder for Jamiel’s mother Anita (a sergeant in the United States Army who was on her second tour of duty in Iraq) of having your child murdered in an urban war zone while you are away serving your country in an international war zone. The other heartbreaking aspect to this story is how conservative, white anti-immigration reactionaries latched onto the tragedy to advance their own agenda.
Eight years later that parasitical relationship is now front and center for all the world to see as part of Donald Trump’s march to the White House.
*undocumented immigrant is the preferred term; the words “illegal” and “alien” are used because they are the words of the Shaw family.