Sara Rubin here, reminded that regular people matter, and local government matters.
This reminder came from the news yesterday, reported by my colleagues Royvi Hernandez and Celia Jiménez, about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Seaside (where two people were detained on Sunday) and in Salinas (where one person was detained on Tuesday).
Hernandez reported in the morning that volunteer legal observers were on the scene outside the Monterey County Jail, where ICE officers had been observed, and they planned to be there in shifts throughout the whole week. There were about 10 observers still on scene when Jiménez returned around 5:30pm. (More were on site today.) By Tuesday afternoon, dozens of protesters gathered—and ICE was back, with roughly 10 vehicles outside the sallyport gate, where inmates come and go from the facility.
County Supervisor Wendy Root Askew had also visited at lunchtime where she thanked legal observers for their service, helping protect the rights of our immigrant community. When Root Askew returned later in the afternoon, she encountered the same energetic group of protesters confronting ICE agents.
Root Askew walked up to the agents, one by one, and spoke to them, in most cases through a vehicle window cracked slightly, and to a person in a mask who declined to name himself. She says she introduced herself by name and title, as chair of the board, and asked: “Are you aware we have a county policy that says you can’t conduct immigration enforcement from county property?” The response, in each case, was no. “I am informing you now and asking you to leave,” she told them.
She also told them something they seemed not to know—that the jail had been locked down at about 5pm, and no inmates were being released. “I informed each one of [the officers] they are not welcome here, and we are not handing anyone over to them,” Root Askew says. “You can go do your work somewhere else but it can’t be here.”
Around 6:30pm, faced with that reality—that whoever they were waiting for was not coming out, and a throng of protesters captured in images and photos by freelance photographer Nic Coury—the ICE officers left.
This does not mean they won’t come back, but it shows that even an unenforceable county policy can make a difference. (“No County-owned or County-controlled property shall be used as a staging area, processing location or operations base for civil immigration enforcement purposes,” according to the policy adopted unanimously by the board last month.)
Root Askew says it was only after ICE left and she got home that she realized how grateful she was things went smoothly. “I thought, that was a tense situation that could’ve played out differently.” But her interactions with ICE never scared her in the moment. “There was a whole community of people standing with me, and I was not alone in any way. I was surrounded by my community, speaking for a community that is so much bigger than me.
“It was the right thing.”
Unfortunately, I anticipate more such moments in our future. The Trump administration has been forthcoming about its intimidation tactics in the days leading up to the Nov. 3 election, and as Chrissa Olson reported yesterday, the Department of Justice hand-delivered a threatening letter to the Monterey County Register of Voters last Friday. But more moments of intimidation by the federal government mean each of us will have more opportunities to stand up and do the right thing.