Three immigrants were arrested by plainclothes ICE agents at San Francisco’s immigration court Tuesday morning, prompting protesters to rush to the scene and attempt to block the arrests.
According to Faith in Action Bay Area, the individuals were detained – without warrants – during scheduled court hearings. Witnesses described seeing masked agents dressed in plainclothes shoving at least one man into an unmarked silver Dodge Grand Caravan. A group of about a dozen people tried to stop the van from leaving, standing in front of it and attempting to pry open its sliding door.
The door briefly slid open before a masked agent inside sprayed protesters with pepper spray. The driver, also masked and dressed in plain clothes, continued down Sutter Street as two unmarked silver Ford Impalas with flashing dashboard lights and sirens cut across the intersection to escort the van away.
Protesters returned to the courthouse entrance. One young man shouted, “This is fascism!” when asked to describe what had just happened.
• Read more: ICE makes rare courthouse arrests in S.F. Advocates call it part of a larger crackdown
Rebecca Bush, who came to support SEIU Local 87 at the courthouse, said she arrived just in time to witness the detentions.
“ICE people came out with three people that were being detained and put them into a van… We attempted to ask the people who were taken their names and if they wanted us to call anyone, but they didn’t hear us,” she said. Bush said she was pepper-sprayed in the process.
Another witness, Jesse, who asked to be identified by first name only, described the arrests as resembling a kidnapping.
“I just saw somebody be taken out the way somebody kidnapped would be taken out, not a person being arrested,” he said.
Luna Osleger-Montañez, an organizer with the We Fight Back Coalition, emphasized the chilling effect these types of arrests can have.
“It’s critically important that immigrants are still going to their hearings and still able to come to court,” Osleger-Montañez said. “The exact reason that ICE is doing what they’re doing is to scare people away from their court hearings, so they can be more easily detained in absentia.”
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Rapid Response Network confirmed a separate ICE arrest in Concord.
Back in San Francisco, the community’s response was swift. Within 30 minutes of the courthouse arrests, nearly 100 protesters had gathered on site. Their numbers soon doubled, including families with children as young as four, elders in their eighties, and even several dogs. Protesters marched on both sides of the courthouse entrance, holding hastily made signs and chanting slogans echoing those of earlier demonstrations that week.
By 1:30 p.m., demonstrators were told the courthouse had been shut down. Immigration hearings scheduled for that afternoon were postponed.