At its regular meeting Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council passed Mayor Adena Ishii\u2019s urgent agenda item preventing federal immigration enforcement from using city-owned or city-managed property to stage immigration action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The resolution instructs the city manager and attorney to start the process of identifying \u201ccity-owned and controlled properties,\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While President Donald Trump called off the previously announced \u201cfederal surge\u201d last week, according to a press release, Ishii believes this could change at any moment.Given this \u201cemergency situation,\u201d she hopes to fulfill the city\u2019s promise to protect Berkeley\u2019s immigrant communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur city and our city council are very united in being a sanctuary city,\u201d Ishii said. \u201cI know some folks have asked us, \u2018Is this fluff?\u2019 And no, we\u2019re really seriously doing everything we can to make sure not only that people feel safe, but that they actually are safe in our city.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The goal, the mayor said, is to prevent the use of the city\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ishii said the idea for this policy proposal came about after she was tagged on an Instagram post that highlighted Santa Clara County\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ishii shared the post with her staff and decided to get to work on a similar resolution in Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She indicated that Trump\u2019s announcement regarding the planned Oct. 23 arrival of immigration authorities to the Bay Area was \u201ca really scary situation.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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?\u201d Ishii said. \u201cAt the same time, I\u2019m grateful that we had an opportunity to test it out. Things were in place like they were supposed to be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n