Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained as many as 15 people, including a 3-year-old, during check-in appointments Wednesday in San Francisco, according to a city supervisor and immigration attorneys.
The people taken into custody have been marked for immediate deportation, potentially as soon as Thursday, according to Supervisor Jackie Fielder.
Among the people apprehended by ICE were a woman from Central America and her 3-year-old daughter, according to Kate Lewis, an attorney for Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto.
The detentions appear to significantly escalate the federal government’s immigration enforcement in San Francisco. Attorneys say ICE has detained people before at the 630 Sansome St. downtown field office, but Wednesday’s action may be unprecedented.
“The rate has gone up substantially in recent months, and [Wednesday] felt like quite possibly a new peak,” said Katie Kavanagh, a supervising attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. “I have also not heard of any people, let alone families with children, being held overnight at 630 Sansome St. in six and a half years of responding to enforcement.”
Last week, apparently for the first time, ICE made arrests at the downtown immigration court at 100 Montgomery St. Four asylum seekers were taken into custody there.
The Central American woman was told to report with her daughter to ICE’s downtown field office Wednesday after losing her asylum case and receiving a removal order, Lewis said. Yet ICE denied having the two in custody even as the woman sent texts to Lewis, the lawyer said.
“I called ICE 3 times this afternoon to ask about her case, but each time they denied having her in custody,” Lewis said by email. “That whole time she was in communication with me by text, telling me she was being held in some back room at 630 Sansome with other families.”
Another immigration attorney, who requested anonymity to protect her clients, told The Standard that a woman with her children, ages 5 and 10, had also been detained by ICE.
While being held overnight, they were not given food and had to sleep on the floor, according to the woman’s sister, who requested anonymity. The sister identified her, but ICE’s detainee locator does not currently show her as being detained.
The detained woman has worked in restaurants and cleaned homes since moving from Peru more than three years ago to seek asylum, her sister told The Standard in Spanish.
Fielder condemned the arrests, calling them “unconscionable, unlawful” and a violation of due process rights.
“Trump’s ICE tactics are a danger to public safety, education, and public health, as they sow panic and fear among San Francisco’s vast immigrant communities,” Fielder said in a statement.
Fielder also criticized Mayor Daniel Lurie for not increasing funding for immigrant legal and support services in the city budget despite what she characterized as a growing need.
Fielder said the detentions were detected by the San Francisco Rapid Response Network. Neither that group, which monitors federal immigration raids, nor ICE has responded to requests for comment.
The stepped-up deportation actions have challenged the city’s identity as a safe place for immigrants. San Francisco has long maintained sanctuary city policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The city’s policies generally prohibit local law enforcement from detaining individuals solely for immigration violations or notifying ICE about release dates.
“For a long time, there have been concerns about the behavior of ICE and how they are penalizing people who obey the law,” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said in a statement Thursday, noting that those detained were “diligently cooperating with law enforcement and complying with the law by reporting to their regularly scheduled check-in with ICE.”
“The arrests in San Francisco are a manifestation of a broader pattern of ICE’s ineffective renegade behavior,” Pelosi added. “Oversight and reform of ICE is needed now more than ever.”