I was invited to a small meeting at the Eastside Library a few weeks back. The City Administrator, Police Chief, Eastside Councilmember, the Riviera Councilmember, and some community members and activists were present. I appreciated the need for the meeting – to respond to ICE’s activities in our community, and the feeling of some in the community that SBPD wasn’t handling it properly. I learned quite a bit that day, but here are the main points I want to discuss:
- Police are no longer notified by ICE that they will be operating in our jurisdiction. The former professional protocol of inter-agency cooperation is gone. SBPD found out ICE was in our city from the 911 calls that initially sounded like a huge fight in the street. Our mayor wrote in these pages recently hoping for a return of that protocol, but that’s not going to happen. What will happen is further escalation between ICE and our community.
- Some of our police are struggling with what ICE is doing in our community, understandably.
- Activists would like police to become part of the resistance to ICE. This isn’t feasible.
However, our police swore an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of California. As of this writing, these documents are still in effect, mostly. Given that professional inter-agency cooperation from federal authorities is now gone, our police can and should legally and defensibly take these actions to best protect the public within their jurisdiction.
- Insist that ICE produce warrants and provide badges of personnel operating in our area, and remove their facemasks. The Constitution protects against unreasonable search and seizure via the Fourth Amendment. There are stories of men dressed in gear similar to that worn by ICE to kidnap and rape women. Our police have every right to protect our community by ensuring those presenting as ICE officers are operating here legally and legitimately.
- The Fourth Amendment covers homes, persons, and personal property (like phones or cars). Our police can intervene when they see federal agents breaking the law in entering homes without a warrant.
- Uphold our community’s First Amendment right to be on sidewalks, filming, observing, and protesting.
- Film and document actions taken by ICE. If police are wearing bodycams, they have a great tool for documenting what is happening on the ground.
To the activists observing, filming, and protesting ICE actions in our community: you need to change your tactics ASAP. Your passion is admirable, but when you attack ICE officers, get in their faces, or block them, they’ve already shown you they will escalate. They have arrested Americans, detained them in the “American section” in the detention camps, and shot and killed Americans on the street in full view of others. This administration welcomes your interference with ICE officers because it reinforces their narrative that the Left is violent, and gives them the opening they’re seeking to invoke the Insurrection Act and shutdown all public protest, as outlined in Project 2025.
Do not play into their hands.
Instead, relearn the history of Martin Luther King’s non-violence movement, and deploy the highly effective tactics they used. Protests are not just about standing up for what we believe in. We are also trying to reach those who don’t agree with us. We want them to help us exert pressure on the federal government to stop this reckless and inhumane path of ICE enforcement. The way to do that is to invite them to come alongside us, and we can best do that when we stop playing the role of the radical, violent Left their media and president are harping on as the problem.
Americans who presently believe immigration is a problem, and think the protesters are wrong and violent, will struggle mightily to hold onto that view when they see videos of attacks by federal authorities on peaceful activists, whose crime is holding hands on signs on a sidewalk, singing uplifting songs like “This Little Light Of Mine” and “We Shall Overcome.” Singing Resistance in Minneapolis is using non-violent protest techniques, after ICE shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and it is deeply moving to watch.
We are in unprecedented times, where the rules are changing quickly, and former protocols and protections have been eviscerated. One election is not going to fix this. As a community, we can stand together, invite others to join us, and enlist our local government as an ally. We can be a force that demonstrates to other communities they too can stand up. We can use the tools of the U.S. Constitution and California law still available to us, and we must do all of this if we want to stand against tyranny.
