The Oakland resident continued: “When I see the people that they’re taking away on television, I see people that look like me. I see people who could be my uncle, who could be my auntie, and I don’t want to wait too late to speak up and to take a stand. If not now, then when? We got to do it now.”
Lee, who represented Oakland in Congress for more than two decades before being elected mayor in April, told the crowd she was born in El Paso, Texas, a city located on the Rio Grande along the Mexico–U.S. border.
“We stand firmly with Los Angeles families, firmly with our Los Angeles brothers and sisters facing federal immigration raids,” Lee said. “The Bay Area and Los Angeles are united. When any community is threatened, we all respond with compassion, with strength and with action.
“Immigrant communities — yes, our immigrant communities — are the heartbeat of Oakland, enriching our neighborhoods with diverse cultures, languages and experience, and deserve the quality of life that every human being deserves.”
Activists provided a hotline number and told people to report ICE sightings and arrests, like those that took place earlier Tuesday at immigration courts in San Francisco and Concord.
On Tuesday, San Francisco’s immigration court was shut down for the day after more than 100 people rallied against the arrests of at least two immigrants by federal officers at the downtown building. The arrests were the first in more than two weeks at the 100 Montgomery St. site, where ICE officers began making unprecedented detainments of people reporting for asylum hearings last month.
Last week, ICE officials detained at least 15 immigrants, including a 3-year-old child, attending check-in appointments at the ICE field office in San Francisco. On Friday, a man was arrested at the city’s federal courthouse after appearing for an immigration hearing there.
The return of ICE agents to the downtown immigration court comes after two nights of protests across San Francisco denouncing the ramped-up enforcement efforts and the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops — usually under states’ direction — to Los Angeles to quell protests there.
More than 150 people were arrested after an offshoot of a San Francisco protest became violent Sunday night, and further arrests were made following a peaceful march that brought thousands of people to the Mission District on Monday evening.
On Tuesday night in Oakland, about 500 people peacefully gathered at Fruitvale Plaza, standing beneath blooming lavender jacaranda trees. Some attendees waved Mexican flags, while others held candles or signs that read “Keep families together,” “Can’t spell cowardice without ICE,” and “I prefer my ICE crushed.”
