L.A. Council Backs Down on Sanctuary Plan

Over the objections of pro-sanctuary groups, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday revised its controversial resolution on refugees and abandoned any reference to Los Angeles as a symbolic “city of sanctuary” for those fleeing political dangers in their native countries.

Buffeted by criticism and faced with a possible ballot initiative over the issue, council members backed down from their sanctuary stand taken two months ago and overwhelmingly rescinded the resolution, 11-1. The council immediately passed a new resolution, 12-0, along the same largely symbolic lines as the previous policy statement, but one that omits any reference to sanctuary.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who had been collecting signatures in an effort to place his initiative on the November ballot, immediately announced a halt to his petition campaign.

“Rescinding the sanctuary resolution makes sanctuary a dead issue and will mean the end of my initiative petition drive,” Bernardi said at a news conference.

Bernardi told his colleagues on the council, who had criticized his initiative campaign as “racially divisive,” that the sanctuary resolution was the real “trigger” for “tension and friction in the community” and called for its repeal.

Since passage of its first resolution, the council had received severe criticism from immigration and law enforcement authorities, county supervisors and negative mail from the public fearful that the measure was an open invitation to an added influx of illegal immigrants.

In dropping his petition drive, Bernardi was performing his part of a compromise worked out with Councilman Michael Woo, who had authored the original sanctuary resolution that narrowly passed the council Nov. 27.

“I think that what we have here is a fair compromise,” Woo said Friday. “It’s more than symbolism . . . We are taking steps which I believe will reduce the climate of fear in which the refugees live.”

But some sanctuary supporters who had applauded the council’s earlier action expressed their displeasure at the flip-flop and accused members of folding under political pressure from such critics of the sanctuary movement as the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service.

‘Pay the Piper’

“Unfortunately, I think politicians have to pay the piper, and I’m sorry about that,” said Sister Jo’Ann De Quattro, sanctuary chairwoman for the Southern California Ecumenical Council’s Interfaith Task Force on Central America.

De Quattro said that the council had confused the broader question of immigration and the specific needs of political refugees who are seeking safety and a temporary haven from violence. Although the resolution covers all political refugees, the focus in Los Angeles has centered on the city’s 350,000 Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees.

Woo disputed those who said the council was retreating from its commitment to refugees.

“This compromise . . . is not everything that I would like it to be, but I think it’s defensible. I think it contains the gist of what was contained in the original resolution,” he said.

The new resolution reaffirms a city policy that bans municipal employees from considering a refugee or resident status in providing public services and urges passage of pending federal legislation that would halt the deportation of Salvadoran refugees until their civil war-torn country is safe for them to return home.

With three of the 15 members absent, only Councilman Robert Farrell, who warned that the council was “stepping back from (its) support of the sanctuary movement,” voted against rescinding the original resolution. But Farrell joined in unanimously voting for the new measure.

Calls for Task Force

Another provision--new in the revised resolution--would establish a task force to study the effect of undocumented aliens in Los Angeles and help develop an immigration policy for the city. Each council member is permitted to name a representative on the 15-member task force.

Councilman Richard Alatorre, who expressed concern that such a study would go beyond political refugees and “further inflame” the immigration issue, cast the lone vote against that proposal.

INS Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell, an outspoken critic of the first resolution, said Friday he was thankful that the sanctuary provision had been repealed although he added: “I’d like to have seen the initiative go forward and go before the people.”

Ezell called the new resolution “a way of pacifying the opposition--an improvement, but not the same effect we would have had had (the initiative) gone before the people.”

Bradley Reaction

Mayor Tom Bradley, who was in Northern California, said that the council was merely clarifying the city’s refugee policy and added that he had noted from the outset of the resolution that the sanctuary provision “had no legal implications.”

As a non-binding resolution, the measure does not require action by Bradley.

Sanctuary proponents, meanwhile, expressed concern that the city’s action could discourage other local governments from adopting similar sanctuary resolutions, or, perhaps, consider revoking any that have passed. More than a dozen U.S. cities have adopted policies offering some form of protection from deportation for refugees from Central America and elsewhere.

“I think it will cause them to look more carefully at it,” said the Rev. Donald Lindsey Smith of the Presbyterian Synod of Southern California and Hawaii. “But I don’t think this will close the doors to any of those cities.”

Times staff writers Janet Clayton and Don Rosen contributed to this story.