Long article and I got tired (and depressed) so the snarky stuff stops in the middle..When will we learn...
| I'm mildly surprised the Chronicle took this on. |
As San Francisco's juvenile justice system shielded young illegal immigrant felons from possible deportation, Mayor Gavin Newsom's office gave grants totaling more than $650,000 to nonprofit agencies to provide the underage offenders with free services - everything from immigration attorneys to housing assistance to "arts and cultural affirmation activities," city records show.
This is one of the less-explored links between liberal government officials and NGOs at the local level: NGOs take government money to provide 'services', and in return ensure a steady stream of votes and campaign contributions. I'll just bet that if you checked it out, you'd find that the leaders of the NGOs in question have been making contributions to Newsom and other key officials in San Fran.
This in fact is how Richie Daley in Chicago has stayed in power -- he doesn't have a patronage army like his old man had, but he's got the modern version of it. |
Newsom has said the city began its policy of not referring young immigrant offenders to federal authorities for deportation under previous mayors, and that he reversed the practice after he decided to run for gov became aware of it this year. However, in 2006, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice - a community outreach arm of Newsom's office - created a grant program specifically designed to assist, rather than deport, "undocumented, unaccompanied and monolingual" immigrants who were in the custody of the city's Juvenile Probation Department or on juvenile probation, according to city documents. |