Few ICE raids, but much-hyped plans stoke fears in immigrant communities
‘ICE prioritizes the arrest and removal of unlawfully present aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security’
A mass federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants did not materialize Sunday in San Francisco or the other nine cities expected to be targeted. There were only a few reports of actions in Florida, Chicago and New York City, and none in the Bay Area.
Federal officials altered their plans for sweeping, nationwide raids targeting people who have been ordered deported after news reports alerted immigrant communities on what to expect, multiple current and former Department of Homeland Security officials told the New York Times.
But the absence of reported raids Sunday did not allow immigrant advocates to lower their guards. Rev. Deborah Lee, executive director of Oakland-based Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, said leaders at dozens of Bay Area churches were relaying resources such as immigration hotlines to their congregations.
“In a way, I feel like we’ve been preparing for a raid as soon as the president was elected,” Lee said. “These threats from the president are designed to create panic and fear. If you’re going to raid people, why tell them three weeks in advance? He’s obviously doing this as a strategy to instill fear and put people back into the shadows. It’s a form of repression.”
Immigration policy scholars agreed, saying while the raid announcements can give advocates time to prepare, they also stoke fear within immigrant communities and households with mixed immigration statuses.
It’s “extremely unusual” for federal officials to say exactly when raids will take place, said Terri Givens, a Menlo Parkbased political scientist and CEO of the Center for Higher Education Leadership. Givens said it’s possible that authorities are using it as a strategy to increase fear in those communities.
“If you read on Twitter ‘we’re going to go out and deport a million immigrants,’ and Customs and Border Protection comes back and says 2,000, well, no one hears that second point,” she said.
The crackdown is supposed to remove “millions” of people in the country illegally, President Trump said previously. That number is closer to 2,000 people with deportation orders, said Mark Morgan, who took over as acting chief of Customs and Border Protection on June 27 after serving as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Twitter, Trump managed to make waves without ICE raids by assailing a group of Democratic congresswomen as foreign-born troublemakers who should go back to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came,” ignoring the fact that the women are American citizens and all but one was born in the U.S.
Trump was almost certainly referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez of New York and her allies in what’s known as “The Squad.” The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
Meanwhile, local immigration attorneys were monitoring ICE movements “24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said Edwin Carmona-cruz, a spokesperson for Pangea Legal Services, which represents immigrants in court proceedings.
Pangea Legal Services, along with the ACLU of Northern California, filed a pre-emptive lawsuit Thursday with the Northern District Court of California in San Francisco seeking a temporary order to ensure that ICE provides detainees with access to legal services.
U.S. District Judge James Donato denied the order, but noted that he “expects” immigration officials not to deport individuals until they have had time to speak with an attorney.
“The decision puts ICE on clear notice that it has an obligation to ensure due process and access to counsel, and should be prepared to document their compliance with this duty,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, an immigration attorney and regional director of the Northern California Rapid Response and Immigrant Defense Network.
Blocking access to legal counsel could be a violation of due-process rights, he said.
“This agency should already have rigorous policies in place to ensure access to counsel, but we have seen in practice that it does not,” added Yazdan Panah.
Paul Prince, a spokesman for the San Francisco ICE office, said officers make arrests “every day” and declined to give details about enforcement operations.
“ICE prioritizes the arrest and removal of unlawfully present aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security,” Prince wrote in an emailed statement. “However, all of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and – if found removable by final order – removal from the United States.”
Police agencies around the Bay Area said they had not heard of any raids.
“We’re just as in the dark as everyone else,” said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.