A group of perhaps 100 protesters demonstrated in the predawn hours San Francisco’s federal outside immigration court at 630 Sansome St. on Tuesday, with a number of the protesters chaining themselves to the doors and blocking the entrance.
Faith leaders with their arms linked and chains criss-crossing their torsos sang, “If you come for them, you’ll have to go through us” while wearing religious garb from various denominations. Stoles featuring monarch butterflies, a symbol of migration, hung on their necks, and the group held a banner reading, “People of faith choose love over cruelty.”
“The goal is to shut this building down for the day,” said Allison Tanner, a pastor at the Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church in Oakland. The rally was put organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and featured faith leaders from across the Bay Area.
Tanner has been attending anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions and leading vigils for six months, and said she grew tired of watching immigrants entering this building, terrified, before being arrested in the courthouse halls. She wants the detentions to end.
Reverend Deborah Lee, the co-executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, echoed Tanner’s hopes: “Our goal is that no one get arrested from the immigrant community.”
Arrests of protesters, however, appear likely. Department of Homeland Security police were present at what was, as of 8 a.m., a peaceful scene. Both main entrances to the court building were blocked by protesters. They were holding large banners reading, “People of faith say: All people are sacred, liberation for all.” Chants included, “ICE your walls are crumbling, we can feel them quake.”
Interfaith leaders gathered in the predawn hours of Dec. 16 to blockade the immigration courthouse at 630 Sansome St. Photo by Mariana Garcia
The faith leaders gathered at Sansome Street at 6:30 this morning, 90 minutes before the building’s scheduled opening time. Immigrants are frequently arrested here during routine check-ins and immigration attorneys last week accused ICE of flouting a court order to improve conditions in holding cells.
“I’m here today because my faith tradition, like all spiritual traditions, teaches us to care and love for the stranger and to pursue justice,” says Rabbi Cat Savis of Berkeley’s Beyt Tikkun synagogue. This, she continued, “requires disrupting.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
The group of faith leaders outside 630 Sansome St. chained to the doors and singing. Video by Mariana Garcia.