Immigration attorneys and activists have condemned the recent arrests of Latino immigrants outside courthouses in northern California.
This comes after six Mexican nationals were arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at courthouses within three weeks.
The attorneys say that these actions violate a longstanding legal precedent that protects those appearing at court from arrest. They also contradict a recent policy that disallows civil arrests while an individual is attending court.
“We care a lot about due process and the rule of law – both of those are being violated,” Yolanda Jackson, the executive director of the Bar Association of San Francisco, said during a 9 March press conference at the San Francisco hall of justice. “This behavior deters people from attending their mandatory hearings appearing in cases.”
The first of these arrests were Antonio Hernandez Lopez and Pedro Romero Aguirre on 18 February outside a court in Sonoma county. Over the next week a further three people were arrested by Ice at various Santa Clara county courthouses.
On 26 February, Miguel Garzon-Mota, 44, was arrested at a courthouse in Palo Alto and Baudelio Arredando-Campos, 42, was arrested the day after by Ice outside the county’s hall of justice in San Jose.
And most recently on 3 March, Mateo Hernandez-Hernandez, 28, and Alberto Uc Ponce, 43, were arrested outside halls of justice in Santa Clara and San Francisco. Uc Ponce is currently being held in an immigration detention center in Bakersfield.
Ice says courthouse arrests would not be necessary if local law enforcement adhered to exemptions in California’s sanctuary state law, SB 54 that do not protect undocumented people with certain felony and misdemeanor convictions.
“I would much rather have the sheriff pick them up at the jail,” David Jennings, the director of Ice’s San Francisco field office told the Guardian. “It’s a safe, secure location where the person has been searched.”
“The question everyone needs to ask is ‘who does it help to help this guy,’ Jennings continued. “I don’t understand why we’re backing a law that helps criminal aliens.”
Sanctuary cities and states are jurisdictions that have implemented laws that are meant to block various Ice officials’ actions. SB 54, which was passed in 2017, disallows California’s state and local law enforcement from “using money or personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes”. Prior to SB 54’s passing, several cities across the United States had declared themselves sanctuary cities. The locales were opposed by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, and since becoming president he’s attempted to withhold federal funding from these places.
This year another law, AB 668, went into effect and gives judges the power to block “activities that threaten access to courthouses” including civil arrests.
“When California passed AB 668 the state was saying ‘we believe in access to courts, not ambushes by Ice agents,’ Emi MacLean, a San Francisco public defender and Uc Ponce’s attorney said during a 9 March press conference.
“We refuse to endorse Ice’s propaganda campaign against sanctuary cities,” MacLean continued. “Courts must be safe spaces, everyone deserves access to justice, they should be able to come to court without fear.”
Even with these local and statewide provisions, the federal government gives Ice officials the authority to arrest and issue federal arrest warrants for undocumented people. However, in Uc Ponce’s case, an administrative warrant signed by an Ice official, not a judge, was used as grounds for his arrest. This, MacLean says, makes Uc Ponce’s and other courthouse arrests illegal, and another way Ice and the Trump administration attempt to use local courts to carry out federal immigration actions.
“The Trump administration wants use local law enforcement as pawn to do the dirty work of federal immigration enforcement,” MacLean said.
“Diverse communities are going to be harmed when people with precarious immigration status are afraid of going to access resources they need to protect themselves,” she continued.
