Hooray for Mayor Libby Schaff!
Guest Blogger: Madeleine Zacks: University of San Francisco law student:
Last week, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff warned her constituents of upcoming ICE raids. In response, the acting ICE director Thomas Homan said of her warnings: “What she did is no better than a gang lookout yelling ‘police’ when a police cruiser comes in the neighborhood, except she did it to a whole community. This is beyond the pale.”
When I read of her choice to warn her community of the upcoming raids, I felt pride for the community we live in and pride at concrete action taken by politicians in a time when it’s so easy to forget that there are moral leaders out there. Of course, I understand the critiques from conservative people, though Homan’s comments were misleading, suggesting that she was protecting violent criminals with her warnings. Schaff is being demonized in the nationwide media but largely celebrated here in the Bay Area, further clarifying that she took not only a legally sound action but that she accurately represented the people whom she serves in the public sphere.
From what I understand, Mayor Schaff’s actions were not illegal. Based on her comments that she learned of the raids through “unofficial channels,” she did not betray the confidence of ICE or any federal immigration control. She did not encourage illegal behavior or for those being targeted to take any physical action against ICE; she merely spread the awareness that the possibility of a raid was coming. She encouraged the nearly 1/3 immigrant population of Oakland to understand their rights, specifically their right to remain silent and the principal that without a valid warrant, ICE cannot enter their homes without their permission. Mayor Schaff was doing her part to bring some semblance of power to a community that for the last year or so has lived in near constant fear, with endless uncertainty of where they stand in the eyes of the law.
Oakland, as a sanctuary city, does not have to cooperate with ICE. They don’t have to hold any person arrested of criminal activity until ICE can come to the station and detain them. Oakland has chosen to adopt a form of “don’t ask, don’t tell” when it comes to immigration status in an effort to encourage cooperation with local law enforcement that makes the community safer for everyone. By not putting immigrants in fear of local police, the City of Oakland is able to strive for cooperation between immigrants who have perhaps been witnesses to or victims of crimes to step forward to ensure a safer community. While local law enforcement and political leaders certainly cannot stand in the way of federal action and law, warning her constituents does not seem like a violation of any federal or state law.
However, I’d like to know more information about the planned raids themselves. Was ICE planning on sweeping businesses? Were they planning on knocking on private residences?
ICE has said that their raids in Northern California have been targeting “public safety threats.” Do they have specific warrants? Are they arresting people who have been accused of committing violent crimes or are they merely sweeping up any undocumented person in their wake?
Finally, ICE’s suggestion that the raids were called off because the warning threatened the officer’s safety was curious. Surely, Homan wasn’t suggesting that the people ICE was intending to arrest posed some kind of physical threat to the ICE agents? The idea that immigrants would be violent towards the agents is difficult to fathom. Perhaps immigrants rights advocates could have turned violent, but the more likely reason for calling off the raids seems to be that the more educated the people in the community were about their rights, the less successful ICE would be in their sweeps.
bh