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'l.arARCIA., RAINEY <br />BLANK(' &)W ERBANK. LLP <br />June 8, 2017 <br />Vera Institute of Justice <br />233 Broadway <br />I2th Floor <br />New York, NY 10279 <br />695'rown Center Dr., Suite 700 <br />Costa Mesa, CA 92626 <br />Main: (714) 382.7000 <br />roe: (714) 7$4-0031 <br />Norma Garcia Guilldn <br />(714)382-7002 <br />nguciagtiitlei)@garciarainey.com <br />RE: City of Santa Ana Prouosal to Vera Institute of Justice SAFE Cities Ne work <br />I write to express my suppoit for the City of Santa Ana's proposal to be included <br />in the Vera Institute of Justice's SAFE Cities Network. I am a commercial litigator and founding <br />partner of the law firm Garcia Rainey Blank & Bowerbank, former president of the Orange <br />County Hispanic Bar Association, and former chair of the Board of Directors of Vidworks, a <br />Santa Ana -based nonprofit organization that serves at -risk youth and their families—and a native <br />of Santa Ana. <br />Over the past several months, I have been working with a coalition of individuals, <br />including the directors of the immigration clinics at UC Irvine School of Law and Western State <br />College of Law, to create the Orange County Justice Fund. We are in the process of <br />incorporating the OC Justice Fund as an independent, 501(c)(3) organization that will <br />consolidate public and private funds for the purpose of launching the provision of legal service <br />for detained immigrants facing deportation. Financial seed money from the City of Santa Ana <br />and the Vera Institute would provide the OC Justice Fund with critical funds and national <br />expertise to address a deeply important due process and access to justice issue. <br />I am compelled to underscore that selecting a municipality in Orange County will <br />further promote equal access to justice in a community where resisting that movement has long <br />been the norm and where anti -immigrant policies are often developed. For instance, one of the <br />authors of Proposition 187, the anti -immigrant (and unconstitutional) measure that sought to <br />defend education and other critical fundamental rights for immigrants, was an Orange County <br />resident. The Minuteman project was also founded in Orange County. Thus, forming the Orange <br />County Justice Fund and having the support of the Vera Institute in these critical times is not <br />only long overdue in Orange County, but needed perhaps more than in any other county/city in <br />California, <br />20A-32 <br />