Anti-Deportation Activists Call for Ending Trump’s ICE Roundup

SAN FRANSICO (02-08) – As part of the Global Day of Action to Stop Mass Deportations, activists demonstrated outside of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) offices in downtown San Francisco to show solidarity with working class immigrants. Holding signs calling for an end to the mass round up and deportation of non-criminal undocumented immigrants along with the firing of Elon Musk, those present heard from speakers condemning the administration’s various tactics.

In a show of force, the sidewalk around the building was barricaded with police as several officers guarded its entrance. Without exaggeration, one speaker noted there were as many police present as there were protesters.

In addressing the crowd, another speaker questioned why Congress and labor unions have been slow to react in support of stopping deportations of non-criminal immigrants, as many workers are also union members, noting that their lack of action in resisting the round up and deportations is dividing workers in a “war on the working class.”

To demonstrate how vital the labor of immigrants is to the US economy and what impact their labor has, a protest “Un Dia Sin Immigrantes” (a day without immigrants) was held on February 3 in the largely Hispanic Mission District here and in cities across the country. The action called for “No Escuela, No Compras y No Trabajo,” no school, no shopping, no work for the day. The action demonstrated how the US economy has become overwhelmingly dependent on immigrant labor to function as immigrants across the country participated in the stoppage.

The non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), reported that in 2022 undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes and that “most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments” amounting to $8,889 for each of the 11 million undocumented individuals.

Regarding local and state sanctuary laws in protecting undocumented immigrants from round up and deportation, one speaker referred to the Project 2025 playbook as a “fascist plan” that calls for the federal government to “set financial disincentives for jurisdictions that implement either official or unofficial sanctuary policies.”

On February 7, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu filed a lawsuit along with three other cities in defiance of being forced by the Trump administration to comply with Trump’s executive order, PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST INVASION, on immigration policy compliance and in not assisting ICE under threats of defunding and prosecution. In calling for punishment for noncompliance, the order states that “ ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to federal funds…the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security shall evaluate and undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on any such jurisdiction’s practices that interfere with the enforcement of federal law.”

Chiu characterized the threats as “illegal and authoritarian,” while California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in Sacramento on the same day allocating $50 million in state funds earmarked to mount a legal response of Trump’s immigration plans. The funds would be used for non-criminal immigrants’ legal aid and related litigation costs in standing firm in California’s commitment to preserve sanctuary cities.

Another issue taken up by protesters is that of the jailing of those rounded up by placing them in the Guantánamo Migrants Operation Center (GMOC) after Trump signed a presidential memorandum for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to create detention encampments to imprison 30,000 undocumented immigrants to be run by ICE at the Naval Station. Regarding those who are not accepted for repatriation by their home countries, Trump stated that they would “be held there indefinitely.”

The action of mass roundups and incarceration evokes the adage of “First they came for the immigrants” an extrapolation of the famous Nazi era poem by Reverand Martin Niemoeller that embodies silence in the face of oppression, leading to greater societal harm for all.

Not to be forgotten, too, is President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s well-known 1953 quote: “Our heritage of freedom is…a heritage of immigrants, and our strength lies in the diversity of our people.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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