On Tuesday, San Francisco officials and advocates stood in solidarity against the Trump administration’s immigrant policies and in defense of the city’s sanctuary status, which prevents the city from assisting federal authorities with immigration enforcement.
“We value our immigrant communities. We recognize your contributions to our city. And we stand with you. You belong here,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie, who spoke briefly at the conference. He encouraged residents to visit immigrants.sf.gov to find support.
Lurie did not make any direct comment about the Trump administration. At today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, mayoral legislation setting aside $250,000 to cover legal services for LGBTQ+ immigrants is slated for introduction. The funds will ostensibly go mainly toward supporting trans immigrants who are seeking asylum.
The rally was organized by SEIU Local 87, which represents many service and janitorial workers, following an incident involving ICE agents targeting janitorial workers in a downtown office building on Friday.
Virtually every branch of city government was represented in Tuesday’s rally, and speakers included every member of the Board of Supervisors, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Public Defender Mano Raju, Police Chief Bill Scott and City Attorney David Chiu, many of whom are immigrants, or were born to immigrant parents. Many union representatives were also present, including SEIU president April Verrett, who flew in from Washington, D.C., to attend the event.
Chiu, whose office was one of the first to file a lawsuit against Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, insisted that the city’s sanctuary policy is legal. “Nothing in our local law interferes or impedes federal immigration enforcement,” said Chiu.
“Our city is not encouraging our people to impede lawful immigrant immigration actions. Our policy simply says you cannot deputize local law enforcement as ICE agents,” he added.
President Trump has vowed to conduct mass deportations, among other measures targeting immigrant communities, including halting refugee admissions. Talk of ICE raids has widely circulated in the city, in some cases referring to false claims.
Local immigration nonprofits have cautioned against spreading rumours and panic. They have warned against spreading unverified reports of raids. (Here is a breakdown of what else immigrants should know under Trump.)
“We are going to make sure that our sanctuary policies and laws that have been in place for decades here in San Francisco continue. We are not going to support warrantless searches. We are not going to provide resources to separate families and to separate communities here in San Francisco,” said District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton. “And we will fight this administration consistently every single day until the message is received.”
Additional reporting by Joe Eskenazi
We are a *sanctuary city* primarily because ICE was demanding SFPD hold people indefinitely in our Jail if they weren’t here legally and our jail was overflowing (and they were busted having fight-clubs there at the time as well). Anyway, the entire thing became an issue because the city wanted to be reimbursed for the cost and the feds told them they’d come get their people whenever they felt like it, so SFPD made it a policy to NOT look up immigration status as a way to get around this.
However, ICE is loaded with the biggest a-holes you can possibly imagine. These are the alpha personality people who get off dragging kids out of schools and churches so they can deport them. These are the people who literally said that taking a child away from a mother, sending it into random un-traceable foster care, and deporting the mother was an “acceptable way to deter future immigration”.
So, I’m not only pro-sanctuary, but I’d be happy to deport all the ICE agents as well.
This isn’t accurate. ICE prefers to be notified when an undocumented person is held, and wants ICE detainment requests honored.
Under the Constitution, people can’t be held unreasonably without due process. Law dictates 48 hours a reasonable amount of time for an ICE request, but if I remember right, the hold can be extended for like a day if it falls on a weekend.
All I know is after living in or near San Francisco for 46 years, it was a far more habitable and pleasant city, before ‘sanctuary’ enabling was in effect. I just returned from Asia (Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur) and their city cores are booming, with great shopping and restaurants. Everything worth while in San Francisco is shutting down and only drug addiction and despair are ‘booming’. Soon, even the shop lifters will have to leave San Francisco to do any shop lifting….
I can respect city officials standing up for what they believe in. As an immigrant myself I am sympathetic.
But I do worry that if SF sets itself up as being the vanguard of opposition to the Administration on what is clearly its signature policy, and for which it feels that it has a popular national voter mandate, then what are the risks to the city of so doing?
And those risks are not just the loss of vital federal funds. But even in extremis, the risk of some kind of martial law being imposed, or a state/federal takeover of the city.
Is defending those here illegally really the hill on which the average SF voter wants to die upon?
They’ve got you scared pretty good Tom and you aren’t even on the deportation list.
Is there any hill you are willing to die on? Pick one, this town has plenty.
Plenty, just not this one.
I am not scared at all, no reason to be. But I think that those here illegally should be scared. And not lulled into a false sense of security because a few local pols are sounding supportive. I guarantee you that Lurie and Chiu are not willing to go to jail defending you.
I would love for us to be “the vanguard of opposition to the Administration,” but many other cities are doing it, too. We will defy Trump and defend our people. The average voter will not be dying on a hill any time soon.
BTW, Trumper, he barely won the popular vote by 49%—no landslide, no national mandate.
So to you “our people” are illegal immigrants?
Interesting perspective, although evidently not one shared by at least the 31 States that voted for Trump.
This type of treason will not serve the city well longer term.
ICE raids in neighborhood.
Rounding up criminals .
Sad that it has come to this .
Law enforcement is needed to do massive raids to get the drug dealers arrested and get the addicts off the street. Zero drug tolerance time .
The use of the word “criminals” as it pertains to undocumented immigrants is being propagandized. Less than 1% of undocumented immigrants who are deported have been convicted of a crime.
The term “criminal alien” is used narrowly in federal immigration law. ICE is indeed currently going after many who fall into this category, but it is also a propaganda to portray undocumented immigrants as serious criminals writ large by having the arrest of immigrant felons appear in the headlines and on the news. It’s an attempt to normalize an association between criminality and improper documentation, when in reality being an “illegal immigrant” is a civil violation.
Overstaying a visa is not a criminal offense. Failing to appear for an immigration hearing is not a criminal offense.
There is no legal definition of Sanctuary City.
Of course asylum seekers and legal immigration should be protected .
Undocumented and illegal foreigners should be arrested and deported .