Bay Area residents rally, prepare
Protesters decry conditions at the border, separation of children from their parents
OAKLAND >> With President Donald Trump’s threat of immigration raids looming for today, organizers on Saturday manned hotlines to arm residents with resources, and for the third day in a row, thousands gathered throughout the Bay Area to protest.
Already, there has been an uptick in the past week of immigrant detentions in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties, said Cynthia Bourjac, an immigrants rights organizer with Causa Justa :: Just Cause, an advocacy organization.
“Folks are feeling really scared,” Bourjac said. “People fear going out in public spaces. But they also don’t know how safe they will be in their own homes, so they’ve lost that, too.”
Trump said last week that his administration would begin a nationwide immigration enforcement operation, moving forward with a plan he announced
late last month, then postponed amid objections from congressional leaders and officials at the Department of Homeland Security.
Paul Prince, a spokesman for Homeland Security’s Investigations & Enforcement and Removal Operations, declined to answer questions Saturday about whether the operation would be delayed again.
“Due to law-enforcement sensitivities and the safety and security of ICE (Enforcement and Removal Operations) personnel, specific details related to enforcement operations will not/should not be released to the public,” he said in an emailed statement.
The potential raids come on the heels of a victory for Trump in federal appeals court. A 9th Circuit Court judge ruled the Department of Justice could provide preferential treatment to jurisdictions that agree to cooperate with federal immigration agencies when considering law-enforcement grants. The policy provides exceptions when the grants are “deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes.”
In fiscal year 2018, California received nearly $567 million, including nearly $17 million in the nine-county Bay Area, from the department’s Office of Justice Programs. The funds were distributed to some 280 city or county agencies for myriad law-enforcement initiatives. In fiscal year 2019, only two organizations in the state received Department of Justice funding, totaling less than $11 million. The region did not receive any funding from the department.
Bourjac said that, based on information she received, the raids would target people who entered the country within the past two years and who are already undergoing deportation procedures. Multiple news outlets have reported that other “collateral” individuals picked up at the same time may also be subject to deportation.
Although Bourjac hadn’t heard of any reports of detentions on Saturday, she said there had been a marked increase in the number of calls placed to a network of hotlines, which people can call to report or confirm reports of raids and to learn about resources available to them. Most of the calls so far have been to ask about what to do in the event the caller or a loved one is detained, Bourjac said.
Causa Justa spokeswoman Rose Arrieta said she’s been encouraged by the support of local city leaders, including the mayors of Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco, who have rallied to voice their support for immigrant communities throughout the Bay Area.
At a rally in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park on Saturday, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin described the conditions of detained immigrants in federal custody as “cruel, inhumane and anti-american.” Multiple media reports have described cramped quarters in federal detention facilities, with children denied showers, toothpaste and other necessities.
“This is not acceptable,” he said. “This is not American.”
As the daughter of Cuban and Guatemalan immigrants, Oakland resident Jessica Arevalo said the detention of immigrants feels personal. It was important to her that she bring her own daughter to the rally in Berkeley, she said, to add her family’s voices condemning the administration’s detention practices.
“My daughter is four years old,” Arevalo said, “and she could be one of those children.”
Local GOP officials, however, have criticized Bay Area governments for spending public resources on helping undocumented immigrants avoid deportation. Hugh Bussell, chair of the Alameda County Republican Party, told this news organization on Friday that the people being targeted by the enforcement raids have already had their day in court, were told to leave, but remained in the country anyway.
“It’s a function of the federal government to enforce the law,” he said.
At San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, protesters gathered to call upon private facilities to refuse to offer any detention spaces for ICE. The protests followed other demonstrations Friday at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland, at the headquarters of Planatir, a data analytics company in Palo Alto, and at the intersection of El Camino Real and Castro Street in Mountain View, among other places. On Thursday, protesters gathered in front of the ICE headquarters in San Francisco.
Berkeley City Councilwoman Rashi Kesarwani said she helped organize the rally Saturday in her city to deplore reports that at least seven children have died in federal custody at the detention centers.
“We are here to say ‘Close the camps now,’” she said. “Close the camps now.”