At least half of the immigrants arrested Friday at the immigration court in San Francisco have since been flown to Arizona, according to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Three or more of the six arrestees are being held in a yet-unnamed facility in that state, according to ICE’s online detainee search tracker.
The six arrests on Friday were all men seeking asylum at the 630 Sansome St. immigration court. It was the largest number of people arrested yet from one judge’s docket in a single day. Every adult who was there without a child was detained.
There are no ICE detention centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. In recent months, many men arrested in San Francisco were sent to facilities in the Central Valley or Southern California.
On Thursday, the day before the six men were arrested, three people were arrested at the immigration court at 630 Sansome St., and at least two of them are now in a federal prison in Hawaii.
In the past, many women and children have been sent out of state, where there are facilities designed to hold them. (There are no facilities with beds for families in California, and relatively few beds available for women.)
Some men have been sent out of state in the past as well, said Alex Mensing, of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.
ICE is generally not transparent about why they send certain men out of state, but it often seems to be because they have arrested so many people that beds have been exhausted in California, Mensing added.
Mission Local has tracked the pathways to detention — and often out of the United States — of 2,123 immigrants arrested in the past several months in the San Francisco area here.
“At least half of the immigrants arrested Friday at immigration court in San Francisco have since been flown to Arizona”
This is nothing new. Someone I knew 20 years ago who was here illegally was detained in SF and sent to a facility in Arizona. He was there for several months before being released. Texas is a popular destination too.
They have the space and the facilities there, since there are private prisons in both States. And of course they are on the border with Mexico for easier deportations, although the guy I knew was white.
So this is not a new practice at all.
Who gives a damn?! Drop kick them into Haiti, slow-boat to the Ivory Coast – as long as THEY ARE GONE! This is one of the most consequential cities in the world, don’t you have anything better to report. Other than people who don’t belong here to begin with. If the white-savior-complex types need a cause try this one: An American KILLS themselves EVERY 11 MINUTES! https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html
Exactly. Other than perhaps satisfying someone’s idle curiosity, why is this relevant? People detained in the federal system get moved around all the time – this isn’t news.
Should not ‘consequential’ cities follow Constitutional laws?
It doesn’t when if comes to the 1st + 2nd amendments. Live by the ‘sword’, die by the ‘sword’
“people who don’t belong here”… What makes you think you have any more right than they do to belong here?
YEAH! SO WHAT! IF YOU’RE HERE ILLEGALLY, THEN YOU WILL BE DEPORTED!