The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will vote on adopting \u201cICE-free zones” next Tuesday, following a referral from supervisors Nikki Fortunato Bas and Elisa M\u00e1rquez. The policy would add physical barriers and signs to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, from using facilities owned or operated by Alameda County.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Supervisors Fortunato Bas and M\u00e1rquez clarified at an Alameda County Together, or ACT, for All Committee meeting on Thursday that the policy would need three out of five Alameda County Supervisors in favor to pass. Similar ordinances have been adopted and considered in cities throughout the Bay Area \u2014 including Berkeley, which directed the city manager to identify city-owned buildings in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel very proud to be in a community where local electeds are doing everything in their power to ensure that we have policies that provide a semblance of safety and protection in the face of the decisions being made and the protocols being violated under this national administration,\u201d said District 4 Councilmember Igor Tregub.<\/p>\n
To implement the policy, Alameda County has to identify all non-public areas of buildings, parking lots, vacant lots and garages that the county controls, according to Fortunato Bas. County building security guards will need a month of training on how to prevent ICE agents without judicial warrants from entering non-public areas, stated General Services Agency director Kimberly Gasaway.<\/p>\n
Tregub worries that \u201cICE-free zones\u201d cannot effectively keep residents safe, given the Trump administration\u2019s pattern of violating the rule of law. However, he noted if a violation were to occur by the federal government, he believes the policy could help make challenges more compelling in court.<\/p>\n
In the meeting, Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez, District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson and Public Defender Brendon Woods discussed the challenges of implementing \u201cICE-free zones\u201d around state-run courthouses that set their own policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur county must act,\u201d Woods said at the meeting. \u201cWe are accountable to our residents, our constituents, our community and these resolutions that (Supervisors Fortunato Bas and M\u00e1rquez) have put forward bring us closer to being able to provide basic protections that people are looking to us to provide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
All 34 public comments at the ACT for All Committee meeting were in favor of the proposed \u201cICE-free zones.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Several commenters decried ICE\u2019s alleged reliance on companies such as Flock Safety and Palantir for artificial intelligence-based surveillance, which some said disproportionately affect immigrants and protestors. In addition, multiple public commenters suggested amending the policy to bar ICE from using county services and personnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything that we can do to collaborate between (the) state, the region and the local community just makes us that little bit more prepared for the worst case scenario of the White House deciding to go after the Bay Area next,\u201d Tregub said.<\/p>\n
Multiple county residents also implored the Board of Supervisors to join the Dublin City Council in opposition to the construction of an immigrant detention center in Dublin. While Gasaway stated that the land in question was federally owned, Supervisors Fortunato Bas and M\u00e1rquez discussed drafting a policy statement against the Dublin detention center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I am not an immigrant, my life is deeply connected to my immigrant neighbors,\u201d said Oakland resident and public commenter Alberto Parra, speaking in Spanish. \u201cWe are co-workers, parents at the same schools, tenants in the same buildings and elders and youth in the same communities. When immigrant families are afraid, the whole community feels it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will vote on adopting \u201cICE-free zones” next Tuesday, following a referral from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,57536,71394,764,71390,7626,71393,71385,35940,71387,2871,14328,2778,71388,137,16582,143,145,144,71392,71391,101,88,198,71389,71386,1519],"class_list":["post-142157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-alameda-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-alberto-parra","tag-berkeley","tag-district-attorney-ursula-jones-dickson","tag-dublin","tag-dublin-city-council","tag-elisa-mrquez","tag-flock","tag-general-services-agency","tag-ice","tag-igor-tregub","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-kimberly-gasaway","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-nikki-fortunato-bas","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-palantir","tag-public-defender-brendon-woods","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-jose","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-sheriff-yesenia-sanchez","tag-together-for-all-ad-hoc-committee","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}