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Fed law, local enForcement

Donald Trump has talked about deporting more illegal immigrants, in part by changing the threshold for what gets them deported. That is, the administration is expected to change federal policy so that less serious criminal offenses could trigger deportation. Until now, it has taken major crimes to do it.

That would mean more policing, and Trump said he would revive two federal programs—Secure Communities and 287(g). After they led to increased racial profiling, Barack Obama discontinued the first and reduced the use of the second. Both would allow Trump increased use of local agencies like county sheriff and city police departments.

Reno City Councilmember Paul McKenzie, himself a former police officer, is skeptical of the idea.

“I don’t think the Trump administration can tell us what to do as far as our ordinances are concerned,” he said. “It is not our job to enforce federal laws. Those are the responsibility of federal agencies. We currently assist them to the extent that if we have a person in custody, we hold them. But it is not our officers’ jobs to go out and check for green cards.”

He said if Trump wants to get serious, the first thing he will need to do is send a check.

“There would have to be funding,” McKenzie said. “A place to incarcerate, putting officers on the street. … What we are doing now [for federal immigration], that’s the limit of our ability to do currently.”

He said the city council and city manager need to be tuned in on whether to aid other agencies, and he does not expect Reno police to act outside that.

“RPD is not going to go out on their own and make a decision to refocus its priorities,” he said.

Sparks City Councilmember Kristopher Dahir said his city is already hurting for officers. “My initial thought is that police should not be able to make that decision without the governing board,” he said. “Obviously, we have to look at the larger scope. We’re already looking now at whether we have enough cops. With what we have now, I can’t imagine where we would take away from city service to supply help” to federal functions.

Sparks Councilmember Charlene Bybee said she had not realized Trump was planning to use local police. “I would probably want to have a conversation with our city manager and [Sparks Police Chief] Brian Allen before reaching any conclusions,” she said.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police on Jan. 30 issued a statement saying that the administration needs to stick to voluntary agreements, that it “has, and will continue to strongly oppose any initiative that would mandate that state and local law enforcement agencies play a role in the enforcement of federal immigration law. The IACP believes that the issue of state, tribal or local law enforcement’s participation in immigration enforcement is an inherently local decision that must be made by law enforcement executives, working with their elected officials, community leaders, and citizens.”

Trump tends to paint broad strokes with bold rhetoric. One of his executive orders shows he has only authorized the Department of Homeland Security—which handles immigration—to enter voluntary agreements with police agencies.

—Dennis Myers

In the 1950s, University of Nevada student Nancy Alberti instructed children in the Child Development Lab, now called the Child and Family Research Center.

PHOTO/UNR SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

‘Replacement’

Century-old children’s ed program facing end

For more than a century in reno, children have been going to college.

They haven’t been getting a college education, understand, but they have been getting an education. They go to a school called the Child and Family Research Center (CFRC). Until 1970, it was called the Child Development Lab.

Many former University of Nevada, Reno students have memories of the children playing at recess on campus. Although no one ever thought to form a CFRC alumni group, it would be pretty big. An exact year it began operating seems to have been lost, but “the early 1900s” is often given. The campus was then usually called Nevada State University.

Children from the community and the children of faculty members are students. As the economy evolved and households could no longer survive on a single income, CFRC also evolved into a child care facility. Demand for spots in the program normally exceed supply. “The kids are taught to socialize at the same time they are taught their letters and numbers,” said one faculty member who has observed class sessions. “Children help one another.”

UNR’s class catalog contains a capsule description: “The Child & Family Research Center provides a learning laboratory which supports the education and training of students in the department college and other units on campus. The center also serves as a research site for investigations that focus on particular aspects of infancy, toddlerhood, preschool or family development. The Child and Family Research Center was the first early childhood program in the state to be accredited by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs and has long served as a model for best practices in northern Nevada.”

With that level of pride elevated to the catalog, why is UNR trying to get rid of the Center?

Or is it? There is conflicting information coming out, some by word of mouth, others in legal jargon. The Center’s former director, Eva Essa, is trying to save it. The campus says it’s in no danger. After Essa wrote an essay for the Reno GazetteJournal objecting to the Center being replaced, UNR President Marc Johnson sent a message to Essa reading, “I just want to make clear that the university has not even considered closing the CFRC.”

However, in December, UNR invited commercial child care facilities to submit a statement of their qualifications to establish a new child care facility on the campus. That document read in part, “Existing Child Care Facilities ... will be replaced as a result of this project.” The document was titled, “Replacing and Expanding University Child Care Capacity.”

In fact, the word replace appears in various forms nine times in that document. And CFRC is “excluded” from being a contender for the contract.

expansion

CFRC has more than once requested funding for expansion. In fact, at one point a feasibility study was being launched, and an architect was at work when there was a change of administrations that brought it to a halt.

In a Gazette-Journal essay responding to Essa, UNR Provost Kevin Carman and Education Dean Kenneth Coll wrote, “As a very tangible sign of our commitment to the CFRC, the College of Education provided much needed space and a playground in the William J. Raggio Building for about 35 four- to six-year-olds.”

On the other hand, the university also sold the current home of the

program out from under it. This is the former Reno Gazette-Journal building at Second and Stevenson streets.

Carman was asked why the existing program is not simply being expanded instead of bringing a commercial player into the mix. He said, “We’re not going to get more than one building from the legislature each session,” and UNR has engineering in that slot this year. So a public/private partnership seemed like a good step, he said. A similar approach was taken to grad student housing.

One campus source said of Carman, “He’s one of these guys who thinks all programs should pay for themselves.“

He responded, “Interesting observation. I think that we have to look at economic realities, not completely self-supporting but some self support.”

However, given the language of the request for qualifications that a program is being “replaced,” some of the firms that look at it may be taken aback when they learn it is actually a public/private partnership. Carman said one thing the Center has going for it is that “There are certainly a lot of loyal

It “results alumni.” That is always helpful because even with in kids that legislative support, a school needs private are amazingly well donors. “There’s a lot prepared to that’s special about it,” Essa said of face life.” the school. “The comments that we’ve been getting [on petiEva Essa tions to keep the school Former director going], people are grateful not just for the education, but the social/emotional preparedness their children got, the ability to communicate well, work with other people. It’s just a very positive and nurturing environment and results in kids that are amazingly well prepared to face life.” Ω

Moving back downtown

Fountainhouse, a 236-unit apartment complex in several buildings in downtown Sparks, is still in scaffoldings but already letting leases. A few hundred yards to the east, another apartment building will be constructed. Next to it, the former Silver Club Hotel has been converted to apartments and is occupied. Smack in the middle of these three properties is the downtown movie multiplex, now shuttered and dark.