Mayor Daniel Lurie called the Trump administration’s immigration arrests and policies “un-American” during a press conference Friday alongside other Bay Area city leaders to announce a new private-public partnership to support immigrant and refugee communities.
Lurie has shied away from directly criticizing President Donald Trump, but his comments — made while announcing the Bay Area Stand Together fund with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan — may represent a shift. Lurie has been criticized for not confronting aggressive arrests by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcements officers in the streets and courts of downtown San Francisco.
Alongside his fellow mayors and immigrant advocates at a skyscraper in the Financial District, Lurie told the story of a 27-year-old Peruvian woman named Frescia who was arrested while attending her hearing at federal immigration court in San Francisco. Lurie said Frescia had not broken any laws when she was arrested July 3.
“In an instant, her life and her family’s lives were upended,” Lurie said. “There was no warrant, there was no reason communicated for her detention, and she, as we all know, is not the only one. The tactics being used in this country — arrests, raids, fear-based policies — are not just cruel, they are un-American.”
The mayor’s office later told The Standard that the woman is currently living in the Bay Area.
Since taking office in January, Lurie has leaned on his experience as a nonprofit founder to form two other private-public partnerships, addressing homelessness and downtown revitalization. Organizers did not go into detail about what services the new fund will provide, but it is being administered by the $1.7 billion San Francisco Foundation and seeks to raise $10 million. The same nonprofit is also overseeing Lurie’s Breaking the Cycle fund on homelessness.
Lee said Oakland and its two larger neighbor cities are standing “shoulder-to-shoulder” on the issue of immigration with this new private-public partnership.
“We are sending a clear message: The Bay Area stands with immigrant families,” Lee said. “We will answer fear with solidarity, turn division into unity, and meet hardships with real support. “
Mahan, who spoke in English and Spanish, noted that 40% of San Jose residents were born in another country and more than half the city speaks a language other than English at home, but “that doesn’t make them any less American.”
“Fear makes us see neighbors as strangers, or even worse, it shrinks our sense of community at the very moment we need it more than ever before,” Mahan said. “The antidote to fear is not a strong man. It’s a collective acknowledgement of our shared humanity and collective action to build a better future for all of our children.”
Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, said the new fund has raised roughly $500,000. Alameda County Supervisors Nikki Fortunato Bas and Elisa Márquez on Friday each pledged $50,000.