Protesters gathered outside Escondido City Hall on Thursday to again call for city leaders to end a contract with ICE that allows agents to train at the city-owned firing range, after a public records request revealed officers who train there were deployed to Los Angeles and Minneapolis, among other new details.<\/p>\n
ICE pays Escondido $22,500 a year to use the facility off Valley Center Road, per a new contract that began in January, with the option to renew for two more years, totaling $67,500 if those options are exercised. The agency has been using the firing range for more than a decade, but that agreement was only made public by an LA Taco report in January.<\/p>\n
After the agreement was made public, protesters packed a City Council meeting in February to request the contract be canceled. The City Council declined, citing the need for training.<\/p>\n
Around that same time, community organizations filed public records requests seeking more information on the contract and communications between the city and ICE. That records request turned up emails showing agents had been sent to Los Angeles during unrest in June 2025, as well as Minneapolis in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means that the resources here in Escondido are enabling the abuses, the violence that we\u2019re seeing on TV happening in cities across the country,\u201d said Salvador G. Sarmiento, an attorney with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. \u201cIt\u2019s really concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contract itself shows the police chief signed it on Jan. 14, which residents noted was one week after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, sparking protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel outrage. I feel embarrassed. I feel sad,\u201d said Maria Wallace, who\u2019s lived in Escondido for 30 years and noted the city is 52% Hispanic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re brown,\u201d she said. \u201cLots of us are brown. I’m afraid sometimes that I can be picked up. It doesn’t matter if I’m a U.S. citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Dane White, his office, the Escondido Police Department and Chief Ken Plunkett all did not respond to request for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n
The contract is not on the agenda, but protesters said they planned to attend the next City Council meeting on Sept. 30 to speak during public comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot in our name do we want to support this,\u201d said Escondido resident Laura Hunter. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot we can do, but this we can do. We can stop cooperating by letting them use our gun range where they learn how to shoot people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters gathered outside Escondido City Hall on Thursday to again call for city leaders to end a contract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10428,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-475227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-escondido","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475227","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=475227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}