Editorial: Dana Sabraw: the 2018 San Diego person of the year

Family. Decency. The law. The truth itself.

These ideals that most Americans hold dear were attacked by the Trump administration in 2018. President Donald Trump continually undermined the independence of the judiciary, lied to mislead his followers about our nation’s ethical and legal responsibilities, and, infamously, separated thousands of vulnerable children from their parents.

According to a recent Washington Post Fact Checker poll by the University of Chicago, 45 percent of Republicans believe Trump’s false claim that his policy of separating parents and children who had crossed the border illegally was a requirement of long-standing U.S. laws.

It was not.

That was never clearer than in San Diego-based U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw’s courtroom.

In March, Sabraw ordered a DNA test for a Congolese asylum seeker and her young daughter, and set in motion a chain of events that would change the course of thousands of lives.

Sabraw was presented with the case of Ms. L., as she was identified in court papers, and her 6-year-old daughter, S.S. The pair arrived at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Nov. 1, 2017. They said they were Catholics hoping to find asylum from religious persecution in their home country

Instead, border guards seized the daughter, who screamed and cried, pleading with them not to take her away from her mother. They detained the mother in San Diego. They sent the girl to a federal facility in Chicago.

The pretext for this police-state approach was that the pair could not prove they were mother and daughter. In fact, it was a foreshadowing of Trump’s zero tolerance policy, which in the months to come would separate thousands of migrant families, leading to the shameful spectacle of children held in chain-link cages and tent cities.

Had the government made any attempt to learn if L. and S.S. were related before separating the family, Sabraw asked.

It had not.

Thus began a series of hearings featuring the quiet Republican judge and his allegiance to the Constitution. Soon, the Congolese mother and daughter were reunited, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried to cover its tracks. On Sabraw’s order, more than 2,000 other families separated by ICE were brought back together.

Sabraw is well-known in local law and order circles. He graduated from San Diego State University in 1980 and the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in 1985. He won unanimous Senate confirmation when appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2003. He is married to San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan.

He has handled big cases before — like those involving a drug-trafficking Border Patrol agent in April, and San Diego’s pension-related securities disclosure violations in 2010. But his Courtroom 13A was never turned into a fishbowl like this.

In hearing after hearing, he showed he is no judicial activist. Nor did he sugarcoat his assessment of Trump’s family separation policy for unauthorized immigrants. He said it “is brutal, offensive, and fails to comport with traditional notions of fair play and decency.”

Judge Sabraw ended a shameful chapter in our country’s history. His criticism of the zero tolerance policy — “a chaotic circumstance of the Government’s own making” — speaks to the disdain for reason, order and truthfulness that worries thoughtful people about Trump and his closest advisers. “They belie measured and ordered governance,” Sabraw wrote, “which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution.”

Sabraw’s middle name is “Makoto,” a nod to his Japanese mother, whom his father, a young Army soldier in the Korean War, met overseas. Makoto means “truth” in Japanese. In a year that featured such attacks on family, decency, the law and the truth, The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board chooses Dana Makoto Sabraw as its 2018 San Diegan of the year. His honest, thoughtful oversight of a complex case shouldn’t be forgotten.

It should be hailed. Few know Ms. L.’s name. Everyone should know Sabraw’s. People like him are why the American dream endures for people everywhere who yearn for fairness and justice — people like Ms. L.

Related: A timeline of how Judge Dana Sabraw oversaw family separation case in 2018

Related: An inside look at the fight to stop family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border

Read more: And the 2017 San Diego people of the year were...

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