At its regular meeting Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council passed Mayor Adena Ishii’s urgent agenda item preventing federal immigration enforcement from using city-owned or city-managed property to stage immigration action.
The resolution instructs the city manager and attorney to start the process of identifying “city-owned and controlled properties,” including open spaces and publicly accessible parking lots. It also directs them to develop a use ordinance ensuring city property is only used for city purposes.
While President Donald Trump called off the previously announced “federal surge” last week, according to a press release, Ishii believes this could change at any moment.Given this “emergency situation,” she hopes to fulfill the city’s promise to protect Berkeley’s immigrant communities.
“Our city and our city council are very united in being a sanctuary city,” Ishii said. “I know some folks have asked us, ‘Is this fluff?’ And no, we’re really seriously doing everything we can to make sure not only that people feel safe, but that they actually are safe in our city.”
The goal, the mayor said, is to prevent the use of the city’s parks or open spaces as staging areas for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to conduct large-scale operations within Berkeley. The city is attempting to undertake these efforts in coordination with other entities that hold large areas of open space such as UC Berkeley and the Berkeley Unified School District.
Ishii said the idea for this policy proposal came about after she was tagged on an Instagram post that highlighted Santa Clara County’s efforts to draft a similar ordinance. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors passed an item Oct. 21 to draft an ordinance preventing immigration enforcement from being conducted on county-owned and county-operated properties.
Ishii shared the post with her staff and decided to get to work on a similar resolution in Berkeley.
She indicated that Trump’s announcement regarding the planned Oct. 23 arrival of immigration authorities to the Bay Area was “a really scary situation.” As the news reached Ishii, she immediately started to reach out to the city manager, chief of police, city council and community partners to prepare.
“The things that were running through my mind (were) what kind of resources, what kind of support have we already been planning for this? How do we get things into place?” Ishii said. “At the same time, I’m grateful that we had an opportunity to test it out. Things were in place like they were supposed to be.”
Beyond this policy, Ishii said in her Oct. 22 State of the City Address that her office has made efforts to educate the public by sponsoring know your rights workshops. During the address, the mayor also highlighted that the city has set aside $200,000 for legal services to support these communities.
Ultimately, Ishii said she wants folks to stay safe during these times.
“I think it’s really important that we are protecting each other and also that we are taking care of ourselves,” Ishii said.