L.A. will end up running out of taxpayers.
Via LA Times:
The Los Angeles City Council and county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to allow a legal aid fund for immigrants to be used for the defense of migrant children separated from their parents under President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” border policy.
The L.A. Justice Fund, approved in 2017, is a pool of city, county and philanthropic dollars that pays for legal assistance for immigrants facing detention and deportation.
As of November, it had awarded $7.45 million to 17 nonprofit organizations, including Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
Before Tuesday, the fund was restricted to residents of the city of Los Angeles or county, making it difficult to aid migrant children recently separated from their families at the border.
The Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 0 in favor of expanding the criteria to include those children, as well as their parents or sponsors who have ties to L.A. County. Supervisor Kathryn Barger abstained, and Supervisor Janice Hahn was absent.
The City Council voted 11 to 0 in favor of a parallel motion, authored by Councilwoman Nury Martinez, that applies to children detained in Los Angeles and their parents or sponsors.
The actions do not change the existing prohibition on using money from the L.A. Justice Fund to provide legal services to immigrants who have violent criminal histories, a subject of fierce controversy when the fund was created.