People are scared. We are hearing that every day, from our friends, from community-based organizations, from officials in the public sector. The threat of ICE raids in San Francisco has a lot of folks on edge.
But the advice we are getting from the experts: Don’t panic. The Trump Administration is all about sowing fear. We don’t have to let that happen.
San Francisco is a Sanctuary City, so the local cops, the sheriffs, the people at San Francisco General Hospital, the schools … nobody can or will cooperate with ICE. The city has a very robust defense network for immigrants. And everyone, even people living here without documents, has legal rights.
“I’ve never met a person [arrested by ICE] who didn’t have a path to victory,” Cisco Ugarte, the head of the Immigration Unit at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, told me. “Some of the cases are harder than others, but they are not hopeless.”
For some perspective: There are fewer ICE agents in all of Northern California than there are police officers in San Francisco. “It’s impossible for ICE to be everywhere,” Ugarte said. “They don’t have the capacity.”
That doesn’t mean everyone in the city is safe: At some point, Trump may order ICE agents from around the region to flood San Francisco for a few days. It’s going to be difficult and for some, dangerous.
But, Ugarte said, “The immigration legal services network in San Francisco is stronger than it’s ever been.”
Here are some key resources for people concerned about ICE:
For starters, the city has a Rapid Response Network hotline. Write the number down, put it in your phone, memorize it: 415-200-1548. Services are available in Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. If you see ICE action, call—the operators will first verify whether federal agents are actually in the city, then mobilize the network to provide both community support and immediate legal help for anyone who is detained or facing enforcement action.
The city has plenty of resources for immigrants, including counsel for people detained by ICE, and you can find a list of them here.
CARACEN SF has a free immigration legal program to help with a wide range of issues.
The national Immigrant Legal Resource Center offers extensive advice, including an immigration preparedness toolkit, a place to report ICE activity anywhere in California, and a primer on legal rights, including a Know Your Rights Handbook in eight languages. It’s all here.
The ILRC also offers so-called “red cards” that list your rights and include a written message to hand to ICE agents. You can download and print the cards here.
Undocumented people in the US still have Constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent. ICE agents can’t enter a home without a warrant signed by a judge that has a specific name and address on it.
The Trump crackdown is an assault on some of the most vulnerable workers in society, people who are already heavily exploited, people who pay taxes but have no right to vote, who pay into social security and Medicare but aren’t eligible to receive them.
San Francisco isn’t going along.
