This article is adapted from an episode of our podcast, “Civic.” Click the audio player below to hear the full story.
Ever since President Donald Trump’s inauguration this year, thousands of residents and officials across the Bay Area have been showing support for municipal and state policies that protect undocumented immigrants.
Communities from San Mateo to Dublin have held protests each week in response to the Trump administration’s promises of mass deportation and threats to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities.
Sisters Genesis, Daisy and Dulce joined a 20-mile march on Jan. 18 from San Mateo through San Bruno, Daly City and San Francisco while holding signs stating, “My parents fought for my future. Now I will fight for theirs.”
They declined to provide a last name to protect their parents, who fled extreme poverty in Guatemala decades earlier.
“They just think we’re all criminals,” Daisy said, “but at the end of day, we’re not, we’re not — we’re just trying to work.”
Living in the United States without documentation is rarely considered a serious crime since entry without a visa is a misdemeanor, and overstaying a visa — the case with most undocumented immigrants — is a civil violation, not a criminal one. Individuals may be charged with a felony only if they are deported and re-enter illegally.
Nevertheless, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has characterized all undocumented immigrants as criminals while justifying Trump’s authorization for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter schools and churches.
“It’s not OK to enter this country illegally. It’s a crime,” Homan told CNN. “National security threats and public safety threats have no safe haven in this country, and we’ll go where we got to go.”
This episode of “Civic” examines the roots of U.S. immigration challenges, San Francisco’s 40-year history as a sanctuary city, the impact of the Trump administration’s threat of mass deportation, and how city officials and civil rights advocates are responding.
Ana Garcia, 35, who grew up in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program established in 2012, co-organized the 20-mile march. She urged 300 protestors gathered at city hall in Daly City to push back against rhetoric that demonizes immigrants.
“We work hard, and we take care of everyone who needs our help, and we don’t deserve to be treated this way,” Garcia said. “We don’t deserve to live in fear. We don’t deserve to be disrespected and dehumanized every time the president opens his mouth. Enough is enough.”
Sylvie Sturm / San Francisco Public Press
Hundreds of protestors gather on the steps of City Hall in Daly City on Feb. 14 for one stop on a 20-mile march from San Mateo through San Bruno, Daly City and San Francisco to oppose the Trump Administration’s plans to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.San Francisco has 43,000 undocumented immigrants — 5% of the city’s population, according to 2019 estimates by the Migration Policy Institute. And nearly 40% of them are from Central America.
Roberto Hernandez, a longtime Mission District community organizer, said many of those immigrants fled with their children to escape extreme poverty, violence and chaos wrought by U.S.-backed wars that propped up generations of corrupt regimes and weakened institutions.
“It’s inhumane,” Hernandez said. “You’ve been here 30 years, and you made a better life for yourself. You planted seeds because you came to live the American dream. And now the American dream is becoming the American nightmare.”
Historical U.S. involvement harmed Central America
U.S.-backed conflicts in the mid to late 20th century throughout Central America fueled political corruption, military crackdowns and deep social divisions, leading to a huge exodus.
One of the most notorious military actions occurred in the early 1980s when President Ronald Reagan authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to support the Contras, a right-wing Nicaraguan militia, to combat the influence of the leftist Sandinistas.
This kind of intervention goes back to 1912, when the U.S. Navy and Marines helped to overthrow a president seen as unfriendly to American business interests. Then from the 1930s to the 1970s, the United States propped up the Somoza dictatorship.
When the Sandinistas overthrew the regime in 1979, Washington drew Honduras into the conflict by training Contra forces there and building the largest American military base in the hemisphere outside the United States.
Honduras was already impoverished. American fruit corporations began turning it into a huge banana plantation at the start of the 20th century and dominated its economy and politics, making it the original “banana republic.”
In 1986, the International Court of Justice held that the United States had violated international law by supporting the Contras, whom Reagan called “freedom fighters,” and by planting mines in Nicaragua’s harbors.
Nevertheless, the Reagan administration largely refused to recognize Central Americans fleeing U.S.-backed wars as asylum seekers. So San Francisco and dozens of other cities began adopting policies aimed at providing sanctuary for traumatized refugees.
Four decades of sanctuary protections
In October 1985, San Francisco adopted its first official sanctuary city policy, the City of Refuge ordinance, which barred local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration officials unless required by superseding law.
San Francisco has remained steadfast despite federal attempts to punish and undermine its sanctuary city laws.
See related timeline: “San Francisco’s Sanctuary City Legacy”
In January 2017, Trump issued an executive order to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions. San Francisco filed a lawsuit arguing that the order violated the Tenth Amendment and the Separation of Powers doctrine. Federal courts sided with San Francisco, declaring the executive order unconstitutional and issuing a permanent nationwide injunction against its enforcement.
In February this year, new executive orders again threatened to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities. San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu is leading a coalition of cities and counties in a lawsuit alleging that these federal actions violate several aspects of the Constitution: the Tenth Amendment, the Separation of Powers clause, the Spending Clause, the Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedures Act.
“No human being is illegal,” Chiu said at a Jan. 18 rally in the Mission District. “We are safer when immigrant victims of crime and witnesses of crime know that they can trust law enforcement to work with us to keep us safe. And let me tell you, as your city attorney, I will do whatever within our power to stand up for our immigrant communities.”
Grassroots organizations and legal advocates in San Francisco are also working together to provide protection and resources that teach immigrants how to respond if approached by ICE agents. They’ve been handing out little red cards listing their civil rights like the right to remain silent, the right to refuse consent for a search without a warrant and the right to ask for an attorney.
Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, executive director of the Central American Resource Center San Francisco, said her community has faced sweeping deportations before, and the “know-your-rights” campaign is making a difference.
“One thing that’s very different this time is that the community knows that we’re the only ones that are going to save ourselves in the sense of upholding our rights,” Dugan-Cuadra said.
Border czar Homan has balked at such efforts, telling CNN, “They call it know your rights. I call it how to escape arrest.”
Homan maintained that undocumented residents who are subject to a judge’s order of removal are being protected by such campaigns. However, during civil rights information sessions, advocates inform undocumented populations that they may refuse ICE orders when there’s no paperwork or if a document is signed solely by the conveying ICE agent. But they make it clear that immigrants must obey ICE agents who have a valid arrest warrant signed by a judge.
