Federal immigration agents pepper-sprayed protesters and a reporter in San Francisco on Wednesday after arresting an asylum-seeker in immigration court that morning.
In a chaotic street scene caught on video, the agents pulled out batons and tasers and tackled several protesters to the ground, detaining at least one.
As has become routine, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an asylum-seeker after a hearing at San Francisco’s immigration court, and were transporting them to their headquarters a half-mile away when protesters intervened.
ICE officers encountered about 20 people who had gathered outside the court at 100 Montgomery St. Immigrants legally seeking asylum have been routinely arrested after their court hearings and flown to far-flung detention centers, and protesters often congregate outside court.
Witnesses said the two sides squared off — protesters trying to stop the vehicles, and ICE agents trying to get through.
“This car has ICE in it!” one protester yelled. “ICE is not welcome in San Francisco!” said another through a bullhorn as protesters stood in front of a silver minivan holding signs reading, “Stop your car to block ICE.”
Video shows masked ICE agents disembarking from the minivan and wielding batons to push the protesters aside.
“The protesters and the ICE agents were facing off … and there were probably like 30-40 passers by, stopped, staring, filming,” said Zenobia Pellissier Lloyd, a freelance photographer and former Mission Local intern.
Pellissier Lloyd said traffic and a Muni bus had effectively blocked the ICE vehicles in. The ICE vehicles then turned around and sped down a one-way street, she said.
Video shows the protesters then chasing the van down the street.
About a dozen ICE agents headed toward 630 Sansome St., the ICE headquarters about a half mile away, followed by protesters. Pellissier Lloyd said the crowd shouted after them.
“It was just, ‘Shame! Shame! Shame!’ Someone had a megaphone saying, ‘These are ICE agents kidnapping our neighbors,” she said. “It was just a lot of, ‘What are you so afraid of? … How do you sleep at night? What will your children think of you?’”
The ICE agents were “holding each other’s arms, hands on each other’s shoulders, saying “Stay close, stay close,” Pellissier Lloyd said. “They were blocking cameras, they were randomly lashing out at people … They all had their weapons out, tasers ready.”
Several videos show ICE agents tussling with protesters, tackling at least four to the ground, zip-tying several, and pointing their tasers. At one point, an ICE agent “decides to turn and pepper-spray four people” about a block from the ICE headquarters, Pellissier Lloyd said.
One of them was a reporter with the online news site Gazetteer, who wrote that he was hit directly and “fell to the ground.”
“In a literal second, the agent pulled out his pepper gel, sprayed the protester next to me, and then shot a stream straight into my eyes,” the reporter, Eddie Kim, wrote.
Once the ICE agents arrived at HQ, “I turned and saw one protester on the ground, two ICE agents on top of them, and then dragging them into 630 Sansome,” Pellissier Lloyd said.
Mission Local has reached out to ICE for comment.
Wednesday’s detention marks the second time the Department of Homeland Security has detained a protester in San Francisco recently. On Aug. 8, ICE detained two protesters outside of the field office on Sansome.
Both of the people detained earlier this month were U.S. citizens. It was unclear if the protester detained on Wednesday was.
On Wednesday afternoon, the chaos outside could be felt inside the courtrooms as well.
Mission Local did not see any arrests at afternoon hearings. But one family was visibly shaken.
An asylum-seeker who appeared with two family members — including a child — asked the judge hearing his case, Arwen Swink, if he could appear by video for his next hearing.
“This is very tense for us,” he told Swink in Spanish through an interpreter. “This is the first day I feel afraid.”
A lawyer representing the Department of Homeland Security objected, citing department policy.
In recent months, asylum-seekers have been increasingly trying to appear remotely because of the arrests at San Francisco’s courtrooms.
Swink pushed back on the Homeland Security attorney.
There is “value” to in-person hearings, Swink said. But, the judge added, “many, many” immigrants have said they are afraid.
“The court does not condone using these facilities for any purposes that would generate fear,” Swink said, quickly adding the attorney himself may not be intending to do so.
Swink granted the man’s request to appear remotely in the future.
“Amen,” he said.
Immigrants like the man who was arrested this morning who are able to quickly connect with an attorney are sometimes released on habeas corpus petitions. Such petitions argue, often successfully in California, that their detention is a violation of their due process rights.
Was one of the people pepper sprayed. Didn’t intend to end up at a protest but got radicalized real quick after getting shoved out of the way by a masked thug for an unmarked minivan going the wrong way down a one way street. Can confirm pepper sprayer was a coward. No badges, no badge numbers, no names, no weapons on any protestors, no threat of harm, just pure cowardice. Hope he has trouble sleeping.
Headline: “ICE agents pepper spray protesters” – sounds like the ICE agents have almost certainly broken the law.
First sentence: “Federal immigration agents pepper-sprayed protesters who were trying to stop an arrest” – ah, this is very different; the ICE agents have almost certainly not broken any law but the protesters almost certainly have done so.
Protest all you want (and you should!), and they cannot legally touch you. If you obstruct or impede an arrest or the work of ICE agents, you are at risk of arrest and the law likely won’t provide you with any protection if you are pepper sprayed or zip tied or shoved away or detained. Not that such tactics aren’t justified from a moral or civil disobedience standpoint, but be aware of the line.
I don’t see your quoted sentence anywhere in the article. The actual first sentence is this:
> Federal immigration agents pepper-sprayed protesters and a reporter in San Francisco on Wednesday after arresting an asylum-seeker in immigration court that morning.
God save it simpleton. We don’t need primers on basic sht.
The system has not only long since adapted defenses to protest, namely abandoning any sense of shame, but Trump has innovated using protest as a foil against which to rally his base around the fact that his opponents are more concerned with non-citizen immigrants than with voters.
These protests are not preventing ICE from doing its job, they are too small. And they are not forcing power to stop doing bad acts, to the contrary, they encourage more ICE repression because Trump benefits from the optics.
Every time these optics get disseminated, Trump grows stronger and immigrants weaker and more vulnerable.
This is the hand that’s been dealt. This insistence by young people “on the left” to ignore strategic consideration in favor of them performing resistance only further empowers the right wing and puts immigrants at even greater risk.
Waffen SS nazi goons..History in the future won’t have a kind look regarding the goons and their bosses, traitors to the Constitution, traitors to this country. Masked like our local thugs; violent like our local thugs. In short, there are not much difference between goons and thugs. They probably call themselves “Family men” or “Caring human beings”. I hope they don’t have kids, kids will turn into Incels.
When you go into that building for a hearing, the JUDGE hears your case and decides you don’t get asylum or whatever, then you are literally walked out back to a gigantic gated area with a bus that takes you back to your country. If the JUDGE decides you can stay, then you walk out the front door.
Those masked guys in unmarked cars dragging people off the street and carrying them away with no judicial warrant and often no warrant at all, are literally acting against a Judge’s orders. Incontrovertibly.
There is literally no way someone walks out of a hearing and is not here legally. The only crime being committed is by these ICE “agents” and the DHS agents. They are all, KNOWINGLY committing a crime in doing this. Every Single One is guilty.
Every. Single. One.
There had better be Nuremburg style trials, because if there aren’t, we’re completely screwed.
Thank you, Law Enforcement. You guys are heroes. Keep up the great work!
I did not know John Wayne has so many relatives here in the Bay Area. Reading all the comments supporting Ice in previous articles, make me realize that… John Wayne, the dude that the immigration office of the Sioux nation should have deported as a genocidal advertising billboard.
Thank god SOMEBODY is trying to protect our nation from an ongoing invasion.
Everybody deserves to have a nation of their own, where the CITIZENS decide who comes in, and not be at the mercy of a FLOOD of invaders.
Nobody deserves to have their nation flooded with anyone who happens to want to come in. That’s a violation of everything that makes a nation a nation.
I’m no fan of Trump, but really like what he’s doing.
> Tariffs: The trade imbalance was a can being kicked down the road for too long. Finally someone did something about it. Mortgaging our future to China was only going to end one way.
> Crime: If crime is out of control, a 20% reduction is still out of control. I bet DC is much safer now, but woe to any news outlet with supporting statistics.
> Illegal Immigration: I have legal immigrant friends. They did it the hard way, the right way. Illegal immigration is a slap in the face to hard working immigrants that do it the right way. I love that we are deporting criminals.
Sill waiting for those Epstein files though. *crickets*
GOD bless our brave CBP. ICE, ERO and HSI Agents for getting the criminals out of our Nation.
Stay safe Agents !
Amen!!!
I’m glad to see ICE is still doing the work Americans asked it to do despite these ongoing violent protests.
Protest is a privilege. I wonder what would happen to someone who chased and threatened a group of cops in most countries in Central and South America?
The authoritarian corporate police state thanks you for your complicity. What happens in Latin American rightwing dictatorships propped up by the USA is besides the point, sort of. The founding fathers saw protesting as a duty, not a privilege, and thought those like you were recreant quislings.
The comments here clearly demonstrate why the heroic workers of ICE need to keep their identities secret. They are at risk in carrying out the work voters asked them to carry out.
Keep up the good work, ICE. Most of the nation supports you.
Not true. Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans do not approve of Trump’s handling of immigration. There’s a reason why they hide their faces in shame.
You can’t block a street you idiots. Protest all you want but interfering is not allowed.
It’s a PROTEST, genius.