Though great pains were taken to discourage people from mentioning the Marilyn Pharis case, the horrific murder of the 64-year-old air force veteran was clearly the reason dozens showed up Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors’ hearing in Santa Maria. Pharis, who lived in Santa Maria, died in the hospital eight days after she was strangled, raped, and beaten with a hammer on July 24. The suspects are two men, one of whom is an undocumented Mexican immigrant who has pleaded not guilty.
Victor Martinez, 29, had been arrested six times, mostly for misdemeanors, in the past 15 months and booked in Santa Barbara County Jail three times before he, along with U.S. citizen Jose Villagomez, who is 20, allegedly acted together to kill Pharis. The case attracted national media attention and generated confusion about the policies in place for undocumented people convicted of crimes. The latter was the purpose of the hearing — called for by Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, who represents Santa Maria — and proved to underscore widely different perceptions of immigration enforcement in Santa Barbara County.
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials have stressed their deportation policies under the one-year-old Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) focus on threats to national security and offenders of violent crimes, particularly felonies. PEP replaced a policy implemented in 2010 known as Secure Communities that cast a net over every undocumented arrestee whether he or she was convicted of a crime or not, ICE official David Marin said Tuesday. Now, ICE officials request county jail staff to hold an inmate longer than their local sentence permits — or notify them of such an inmates’ release date and time — only if the inmate is considered a serious offender.