Council committee OKs expanding use of RepresentLA funding

A Los Angeles City Council committee on Friday voted 4-1 to approve a motion seeking to expand the use of funds to cover additional legal services through RepresentLA, an initiative aimed at providing free legal services for the city’s immigrant community.

The motion presented by Councilmen Hugo Soto-Martinez and Curren Price calls for expanding the $4 million program to provide services addressing detained and nondetained merit-blind removal defense.

“Deportation proceedings, which are things that are not covered under this current plan, are the most difficult, most arduous or the most stressful experiences and tear families apart,” said Soto-Martinez, who is the chair of the Civil Rights, Equity, Immigration, Aging and Disability committee.

“That’s why I introduced the motion, because while I thought we did good work, let’s try to improve it.”

The City Council approved the move forward with the implementation of RepresentLA in April, but it did not specifically carve out funding for legal services for immigrants who might have criminal records.

Prior to RepresentLA, the city had the Los Angeles Justice Fund, a two-year public-private partnership between the city, Los Angeles County, the California Community Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.

LAJF provided a collective $7.9 million to establish a legal defense fund and provided funding for legal services to immigrants facing deportations.

“So this, to me, is a way to bring equity into the system that we have. We can’t change the federal law, but we can change what the city of Los Angeles does for the over 1 million people that live here,” Soto-Martinez said.

By approving the motion, the city would send a message to the community that “we value them,” the councilman added, and that “we believe in universal human rights.”

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, a committee member, voted against the motion. She did not agree that city resources “should be representing the interests of individuals that exploit other people, or that have committed violent felonies against other people.”

“While I remain supportive of everything that we did with the Justice Fund, and the work that we had adopted previously, I cannot support an open-ended amendment that doesn’t have restrictions or protections,” Rodriguez said.

Ultimately, Soto-Martinez had the support from fellow council and committee members Heather Hutt, Eunisses Hernandez and Curren Price to move the amendment forward for final consideration by the full council.

More from Politics