District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder walked out of the elevator on the sixth floor at 630 Sansome St. on Thursday morning and through the security checkpoint to become the first San Francisco supervisor to visit the immigrant detention facility since the Trump administration began its immigration crackdown this year.
The inside of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, where immigrants are processed after being arrested across Northern California, including from the courtrooms below, was nearly empty. The only visible ICE official was sitting behind the front desk.
ICE began routinely detaining asylum-seekers on the sixth floor in June, and Fielder has long decried the arrests.
On Thursday, she was joined by Jennifer Friedman, a San Francisco deputy public defender; Milli Atkinson, director of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s immigration team; and three journalists (including Mission Local).
All visited one of the waiting rooms, a small, grey and barren space with a low-hanging ceiling. It was split by a glass divider. Telephones hung on the wall. On the attorney’s side of the glass divider were two metal stools bolted to the floor. The rooms are designed to accommodate four attorneys and four clients.
But that many people are hardly ever in there, Friedman said. Moreover, she said, some of the telephones do not work.
Fielder was allowed to walk unaccompanied into the waiting rooms, but ICE officials did not allow her inside the actual detention area.
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed a lawsuit alleging that some detainees have been held on the sixth floor for as long as six days at a time without access to adequate hygiene, medical attention or sleeping facilities.
These conditions, they allege, are “punitive and inhumane.”
The ACLU also alleged that ICE forced asylum-seekers to pay for phone calls with “poor audio quality.”
Fielder said she is “concerned” about detention conditions and pledged to advocate for more funding towards immigration services. She also pointed out that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s newest fund for immigration — which is aimed to support the family members of those detained — is “set up for emergency purposes.”
More money, she said, is needed to strengthen immigration services at large.
Friedman said that ICE only lets people from one detention area into the waiting room at a time. If a detainee from the women’s section is using the room to consult with her attorney, no one from the men’s detention area is allowed in until they are finished, and vice versa.
Often, pro-bono attorneys arrive ready to meet with clients, but can’t because of this rule. Friedman said, “Sometimes we have more lawyers than those able to meet.”
In detention cases, time and efficiency is everything, according to Friedman. Attorneys are currently trying to meet with clients while juggling an unprecedented number of cases.
“There is a real capacity need here, and we’ve been scrambling to meet it,” Friedman said.
The legal aid provided by the Bar Association, said Atkinson, is incredibly cost-effective: Dozens of habeas corpus petitions have been filed since August to release asylum-seekers from detention, says Atkinson. All of them have been successful.
But, Atkinson said, each habeas petition normally requires a team of four to five people to file the petition and to follow a case to its end.
Due to the high volume, volunteer attorneys are taking on multiple cases. “One attorney did four or five petitions back-to-back” Atkinson said, but it was too much to sustain. “She had to tap out.”
“Lawyers are incredibly overwhelmed,” Fielder said. “A lot of them are burnt out.” Atkinson agreed. “It’s not sustainable.”
Earlier that day, before the group entered the sixth floor, Fielder told Mission Local: “I hope the board can provide more funding for the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative.” She added that the “attorney of the day program is extremely underfunded.”
Only moments before, Fielder saw the couple who would be sent into detention. She sat in Judge Patrick S. O’Brien’s courtroom as an immigration hearing unfolded and watched an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security move to dismiss their cases. O’Brien instead scheduled their next hearing.
But, as often happens, O’Brien’s attempts to allow for due process were ignored. Two ICE officers wearing surgical masks waited outside. They handcuffed the pair, as they often do, while a third officer without a mask read their rights aloud. The woman, seemingly in her early 20s, began to silently cry.
The supervisor departed before the second hearing at 10:30 a.m., when two more men were arrested, even after the judge scheduled their next hearings.
As the two men stepped outside the courtroom, ICE agents handcuffed them before escorting them out of eyesight and up to the sixth floor.
Hey Supervisor Fielder, why don’t you visit 24th St. and Mission? I walk by there all the time and I’m concerned about conditions there. And THAT is actually in your district.
What is Supervisor Fielder doing about conditions on the streets of her District? I have seen her in my neighborhood never, not once, which is even worse than Hilary Ronen after she checked out. I know there’s a lot going on in the world and that immigration enforcement is an important issue for many of Fielder’s constituents. Potholes, traffic safety, encampments, prostitution on our doorsteps, and trash everywhere are real issues too. Why are our Supervisors usually running for the next thing vs. being here for us, now?
Curious if she has ever visited Marshall school?
One wonders how the visit went — and what, exactly, the Supervisor intends to do to address this issue.
In the meantime, the situation at the corner of Mission & 16th keeps getting worse.
Hmmm.
Fielder has no jurisdiction over Federal buildings so this “visit” can only be seen as her appearing to be doing something when in reality she cannot control anything that happens there.
You have no jurisdiction either, but elected leaders paying attention > you not.
Assuming nobody ever walks outside, sure?
Nothing bad can happen it can only good happen!
Great. Performative politics going to look at something you have absolutely zero power over. Maybe you should come by 16th & Mission sometime.
Back when Ammiano was on the losing end of 9-2, 10-1 votes, he set out to organize San Francisco residents against Willie Brown’s corruption.
Not only is Fielder not picking up that mantle, she’s ignoring surging public squalor around 16th and Mission so that she can be performative against ICE.
Unclear on the concept of how funding immigrant legal services before an administration that has declared both a war on immgrants and itself lawless would be a win.
It is more like “do something, do anything, do it now” so that you can be seen doing it.
Fielder should have left the D9 supervisor position to someone interested in doing something for the neighborhood. It seems like she would be better suited (or enjoy more) waving signs and heckling ICE officers. She is completely unserious.