Almost 4,000 UCSD students at risk of losing student visas

Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Monday, June 2nd.

The State Department wants to revoke the visas of almost 4 thousand U-C-S-D students.

More on that next. But first... the headlines….

More than three dozen military families displaced after May 22nd’s plane crash are now able to move back to their homes.

The Navy says 40 homes were damaged in the crash – four of them destroyed.

The service also said that families who want to move to other homes will be allowed to do so.

Moving expenses will be covered by Liberty Military Housing, which manages the properties.

The San Diego Police Department says it’s moving its radio communications to fully encrypted channels.

The move will limit the public’s access to real-time law enforcement communications.

The department says the decision to go encrypted is to comply with a state DOJ mandate to protect identifying information of individuals.

The public will still have access to many police calls through the department’s online dispatch site.

DOZENS OF CALIFORNIA JURISDICTIONS ARE ON A NEW FEDERAL LIST OF SO-CALLED “SANCTUARY JURISDICTIONS.”

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY SAYS CHULA VISTA, SANTEE … VISTA AND THE COUNTY AND CITY OF SAN DIEGO ARE NOT IN COMPLIANCE WITH FEDERAL CRIMINAL STATUTES.

THE MAYORS OF VISTA, SANTEE AND CHULA VISTA PLAN TO WRITE A LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP ASKING TO BE TAKEN OFF THE LIST.

THEY SAY THEIR CITIES HAVE NOT ADOPTED ANY SANCTUARY CITY POLICIES AND FEAR THAT BEING ON THE LIST WOULD AFFECT FEDERAL FUNDING.

WE’LL HAVE MORE ON WHAT THIS NEW SANCTUARY DESIGNATION MEANS AFTER THE BREAK.

From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.

Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS RELEASED A LIST OF SO-CALLED SANCTUARY JURISDICTIONS; CLAIMING CERTAIN STATES, COUNTIES AND CITIES ARE OUT OF LINE WITH FEDERAL IMMIGRATION POLICY.

HERE TO EXPLAIN WHAT THAT MEANS FOR OUR REGION IS BORDER REPORTER GUSTAVO SOLIS.

Hey Gustavo tell us a little bit about what sanctuary jurisdictions mean. Well, It kind of depends on who you ask, because there is no legal definition of what a sanctuary policy is. Generally speaking, academics, politicians and journalists have used them to describe policies that limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement when it comes to immigration enforcement, but we're not really sure how DHS is defining sanctuary jurisdictions in this context. Okay, so what do we know right now? Well,   we know that cities and counties and states got a letter. That letter says that they are out of compliance, and they're asked to revise certain policies, but we don't know how specific the letters are. We don't know if there's a timeline. There's just a lot of that we don't know about how this will play out, which is very common for the Trump administration, right, from tariffs to visa revocations to budget cuts. There's a lot of uncertainty around how and when these will play out. There. Definitely. We can expect legal challenges along the way, and that will also slow thingsdown. And the Trump administration, of course, has been talking about this for months. We knew this was coming. So what now? I think wait and see, right? I think people listening to this should know that nothing's going to change overnight, right? These are, these are big threats that are looking to remove funding away from local jurisdictions, including the County of San Diego, the city of San Diego, the City of Chula, VISTA and Santee are the local ones. But like I said, it's not going to happen overnight. The state attorney general of Connecticut has already said he plans to sue the Trump administration if they go after their funding. Right here, we can expect leaders in California to react similarly to So what is California is saying right now? Well, actually, I just got a response from the state attorney general, BONTA, and he was pretty forceful in his critique of the letter. He said, California has never hidden the fact that they have chosen to focus resources on public safety and not federal immigration enforcement. They called this I'm just quoting for the response I got. The Trump administration cannot bully or intimidate state and local law enforcement into doing the federal government's job for it. So it seems like they're drawing a line, right? They they they're not happy with it. They're a little bit antagonistic. And I get the sense that they're going to fight if this keeps going, and let's talk about how this is affecting us locally. Let's talk about our county and the cities within our county. Yeah, Chula Vista, for example, Chula Vista, I used to cover them in a previous reporting job, they went out of their way to not declare themselves a sanctuary city when everyone else was doing it. They became a welcoming city and went through this long process to get Welcoming City designation, but then they let it expire, partly because of issues with surveillance policies around police potentially sharing data with Border Patrol. So it's I don't know how they can't point to chula vista .... there's a lot of confusion about how certain cities got on there, for example, not here in San Diego, but here in California. Huntington Beach is one of the cities on the list. Huntington Beach has been very public and vocal about their support for Trump's immigration policies. Their City Council voted unanimously to reject California State sanctuary laws. So it doesn't make sense why they would be on this list, And Gustavo, why do we have sanctuary policies in the first place? Sanctuary policies are a direct response to the first Trump term, and that was essentially, at least here in California, lawmakers recognize that communities are safer when people are comfortable and confident in callings of police in the first Trump term up in Los Angeles, there was a drop in 911 calls in immigrant communities, particularly domestic violence calls. Now that doesn't mean there was less domestic violence. That means people were too afraid to call and report it, so part of the reason behind these laws is to protect victims of crime and make them feel like I said, safe to call local law enforcement without having that fear that they'll be deported for it. So that's the background. That's the that's the benefit of those laws. All right, very good. Well, thank you so much for talking with us.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS ALSO ANNOUNCED PLANS TO REVOKE VISAS FROM SOME CHINESE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS.

EDUCATION REPORTER KATIE ANASTAS SAYS THAT COULD AFFECT THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS AT U-C SAN DIEGO.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said federal officials would QUOTE “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.” At UC San Diego, that could impact more than 3,800 [3,826] students. Celia Xu is studying business economics. She says Chinese students have brought a valuable perspective to her international business classes.

XU: We hear the same professors, from the same companies coming in, but then hearing it from an international scale or, just like a different perspective on the time is really, it's really refreshing once in a while. In a statement, the UC Office of the President said it was concerned about the announcement…writing QUOTE “Chinese students, as well as all our international students, scholars, faculty and staff, are vital members of our university community and contribute greatly to our research, teaching, patient care and public service mission.” UC San Diego says it has not seen any changes to its Chinese students’ records in SEVIS, the federal database used to monitor student visas. The State Department has also stopped scheduling new visa interviews for  international students. UC San Diego says it will continue to issue F-1 and J-1 visa forms in preparation for future interviews. Katie Anastas, KPBS News.

IN RECENT YEARS, NATIONAL CITY HAS PAID TO SETTLE THREE SEPARATE CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUITS BROUGHT BY THE FAMILIES OF PEOPLE WHO DIED AFTER POLICE OFFICERS CONFRONTED THEM.

SOUTH BAY REPORTER KORI SUZUKI SAYS THOSE SETTLEMENTS HAVE REIGNITED QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW POLICE RESPOND TO PEOPLE IN MENTAL HEALTH CRISES.

AND A WARNING TO LISTENERS – THIS STORY INCLUDES DESCRIPTIONS OF GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.

The cemetery is quiet. It’s a tiny plot of land, tucked away behind the mortuary in southeast San Diego. On spring evenings, the sun spills across the grass. Roberto Umana comes every week to change the flowers. He places them in a vase that he spray-painted bright gold. He wanted his older brother’s gravestone to have some color. He liked uh very bright colors when it came to like his style, his fashion, like especially shoes. So, I don't know. I think it just stands out really. That's kind of why I did it. As Roberto tells it, his brother Brian was a pretty quiet person. He liked comedy and collecting sneakers. Like any younger sibling, Roberto looked up to him. I remember he got his ears pierced, I wanted to give him my ears pierced. Stuff like that. He was just my big brother. I I I wanted to follow him with whatever he was doing. Brian was confronted by National City police officers in the early morning hours of October 2021. Roberto says Brian was in the middle of a mental health crisis, triggered by their father’s death eight years earlierin 2013. Body camera footage and court records show the encounter began when police dispatchers received a call about a person breaking into a storage facility. County investigators say the caller reported that the person was holding a blade and left on foot. Three officers responded, body cameras rolling. They found Brian pacing along the sidewalk in the rain, holding a machete in his right hand. In their video, you can see that he’s barefoot. The cuffs of his brown pants look like they’re soaked with water. The videos show officers surrounding Brian with their squad cars, turning their headlights on him. They yell at him to drop the machete and threaten to release a police dog. Brian starts walking away from them, up the sidewalk. One of the officers fires a taser, and Brian flinches. Two officers move in close. Brian turns towards them and raises the machete. Two officers, Evan Davis and Michael Sportelli, open fire—Davis with a handgun, Sportelli with a high-powered AR-15 rifle. They hit Brian eight times, according to the DA’s office. In the video, Brian freezes and topples from the sidewalk into the road. It was the third time in four years that National City police confronted someone in crisis and that encounter turned fatal. In 2018, a Black man named Earl McNeil stopped breathing in custody after officers arrested him and used a full body restraint device and a mesh face-covering to bind his arms and legs. In 2019, a white man named Tony Wilson died after officers pressed him against the ground and tased him repeatedly. County investigators eventually declined to bring criminal charges against the officers who shot Brian. But Roberto still had questions. He felt like there had been clear signs that Brian was mentally unwell. His bare feet. The time – 4AM. The fact that he was pacing back and forth. It's kind of common sense that he was going through mental health crisis and the officers didn't really deescalate whatsoever. A year after the shooting, Roberto filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court, arguing that officers failed to deescalate the situation and used excessive force. Separately, the families of Tony Wilson and Earl McNeil filed their own lawsuits. Those cases stretched on for years. But eventually, in all three cases, National City officials decided to pay to resolve them instead of allowing them to go before a jury. This past February, city officials paid Roberto and his family one million dollars to resolve their case. “Every officer-involved shooting is traumatic for all involved. ” City officials said the settlement didn’t mean the city did anything wrong in Brian’s case. Here’s City Attorney Barry Schultz, speaking at a City Council meeting in February. “The City of National City and the Police Department agree that the officers’ actions were justified during this critical incident.” But for some experts, these settlements do raise new questions about what National City has learned from these cases.  Joanna Schwartz is a professor of law at UCLA, and a nationaln expert on police misconduct litigation. She says the city should be closely examining the information that emerged in court—combing through depositions and documents. If there was an airplane crash and three people died, you would be opening up that black box to try to figure out what happened and what went wrong and it whether there is any shift, any change that could be made to prevent it from happening again. The settlement has changed some things for Roberto. The cemetery where Brian is buried used to be a place of anger and worry. But when he visited this past April, Roberto said he felt calm. I'm very relaxed when I come here now. Very at peace. Still, he does worry that the city may just plan to move on from his case, and the cases of the other families. Tomorrow, we’ll look at what National City is doing to change their policies when it comes to responding to people in crisis. In National City, Kori Suzuki, KPBS News.

KPBS HAS BEEN REPORTING A LOT LATELY ABOUT SAN DIEGO’S BUDGET PROBLEMS BUT WE WANTED TO HEAR YOUR QUESTIONS.

SAN DIEGO INDEPENDENT BUDGET ANALYST CHARLES MODICA JOINED KPBS ON THE SAN DIEGO SUBREDDIT FOR AN ‘ASK ME ANYTHING.’

REPORTER ANDREW DYER SPOKE WITH MODICA ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE.

City leaders are scrambling to balance the city’s budget amid a predicted 300-million dollar deficit. San Diego’s six-billion-dollar budget is, to say the least, complex – that’s why Charles Modica, the city’s independent budget analyst, sat down for an ‘ask me anything’ on reddit. “It's important that folks who live and work in the city can understand how their city is being run.” Basically, the city took in less revenue than it had predicted. Many of the questions on reddit were about who to blame. “It's difficult because you can't just point the finger at one person or one thing. You can read all of the questions and answers on reddit  or find a link to it on our website, kpbs dot org. Andrew Dyer, kpbs news.

That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great Monday.