Interim San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell is reportedly willing to go to jail to ensure his city always remains a “sanctuary city.”
Farrell assured hundreds of amnesty activists last week who were blocking and protesting in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building that San Francisco will forever be a “sanctuary city.” He also, according to ABC7, “said he is willing to get arrested if that’s what it takes to defend sanctuary city policies,” echoing comments that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf recently made.
The activists gathered to protest after ICE detained more than 200 illegal immigrants, nearly half of whom had criminal records, last week in various Bay Area raids. After Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tipped off illegal immigrants that ICE would be conducting sweeps, Thomas Homan, the agency’s acting director, said on last week that more than 800 illegal immigrants remained at large in the community because of Schaaf’s “irresponsible decision.”
According to KTVU, the “Power, not Panic Emergency Response Committee” organized the emergency rally. The group is composed of entities like: the “ACLU, the Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership, Full Rights Equality & Empowerment SF, Contra Costa East Bay Interfaith Immigration Coalition, the Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network, Centro Legal de la Raza, the California Immigrant Policy Center.”
The activists had signs that read “ICE, go melt yourself,” “ICE out of CA,” “Stop Racist Deportations,” and “Sanctuary for All.” They also chanted “Shut down ICE.”
ICE said sanctuary cities like “San Francisco and Oakland force” the agency to “focus additional resources to conduct at-large arrests in the community, putting officers, the general public and aliens at greater risk and increasing the incidents of collateral arrests.” In 2015, an illegal immigrant who had been previously deported multiple times told authorities after he murdered Kate Steinle that he came to San Francisco because he knew it was a “sanctuary city.” Steinle’s tragic death allowed Donald Trump to make illegal immigration a national issue, which enabled him to surge to the front of the GOP field and never look back.
ICE also singled out two illegal immigrants currently believed to be living in Oakland who were not detained possibly because of Schaaf’s “irresponsible” alert:
a Honduran citizen who was previously arrested in San Francisco County multiple times for cocaine possession and transport, probation violations and sex with a minor under 16, and;
a citizen of Mexico who was previously arrested and convicted for carrying a loaded firearm, transportation and sale of narcotics and DUI.
A recent NBC Bay Area investigation of the sanctuary city also found “more than 300 piles of feces and 100 drug needles” lining downtown San Francisco, and an infectious disease expert at U.C. Berkeley said the contamination is “much greater” than the slums in developing nations like India, Brazil, and Kenya.