Federal agents ordered dozens of undocumented immigrants to report for check-ins this weekend at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Stockton, immigrant advocates told the Chronicle.
Several dozen people had reported to ICE’s Stockton office Saturday afternoon, said Lisa Knox, co-executive director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. Knox said ICE officials temporarily barred immigration attorneys from the building, accused them of being fake attorneys – even after showing their State Bar Association cards – and from meeting with their clients.
“People have the right to an attorney,” she said. “This is definitely a violation of their right to counsel.
A call to the Stockton ICE office seeking comment was not answered, and the agency did not immediately respond to an email requesting more information.
Six to eight people had been detained by 1 p.m., she said, including an asylum seeker and a man who was the sole breadwinner for his wife and newborn.
The agency’s actions come after a high-stakes showdown in the Bay Area, in which President Donald Trump said earlier this week he planned to dispatch scores of federal agents to the region, mirroring similar immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland, Ore. On Thursday, however, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that Trump had reversed course after the two spoke Wednesday evening.
Since taking office, Trump has moved swiftly to ramp up the deportation of immigrants across the country. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that the administration set a quota of 3,000 deportations per day, a claim the federal government later denied.
His administration has repeatedly defended its actions by saying it is targeting “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens – including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists,” but more than 70% of people in ICE detention have no criminal convictions, according to information from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data collection center at Syracuse University that reviews immigration data.
Some of the immigrants summoned to the Stockton office are part of an ICE program that allows them to live at home as their cases are processed. ICE says about 7.6 million immigrants are in the program, known as Alternatives to Detention or the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, as of October.
“ATD-ISAP enables aliens to remain in their communities – contributing to their families and community organizations and, as appropriate, concluding their affairs in the U.S. – as they move through immigration proceedings or prepare for departure,” the agency says on its website.
Until recently, it was uncommon for ICE to require people with pending immigration claims to report to its offices for weekend check-ins, and the Stockton office is typically closed over the weekend.
Earlier this summer, ICE made similar calls to Bay Area immigrants, ordering them to report to the agency’s office on Tehama Street in San Francisco, and a similar facility in Fresno. On a June weekend, the agency’s San Francisco office remained closed after issuing summons as hundreds of protesters sought to block the federal government from detaining more immigrants.
The immigrants ICE ordered to check in to the Stockton office are already under federal supervision and known to the agency, said Edwin Carmona-Cruz, CCIJ’s other co-executive director, and must comply with federal law to pursue their immigration cases.
The agency keeps tabs on noncitizens through ankle monitoring, phone check-ins, home visits and other methods of supervision, Carmona-Cruz said.
Knox said that after immigration attorneys fought for access, officials at the regional office eventually allowed them to enter the building, but as of 2 p.m. were letting those they’d called to the office meet with only one person – forcing them to choose between seeing their relatives or talking to an attorney.
“This is part and parcel of ICE’s campaign of terror,” Knox said in a phone call from outside ICE’s regional office in Stockton. “These people have been complying with the law. ICE already decided to release or not detain them, and now they are arbitrarily being called in and detained for no other reason than their quotas.”
This article originally published at Dozens of Northern California immigrants abruptly summoned to ICE office for weekend check-ins.