At a community meeting hosted Friday, the Rev. Jimmy Drennan’s voice broke as he talked about seeing families that had been separated when one of them was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He told a story of a 4-year-old calling her detained father’s phone each night, “knowing he will never answer that phone simply to hear his voice.”
Attendees speak during a Friday public meeting in San Antonio organized by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro’s office.
Isaiah Moseley/For the Express-News
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro speaks during a public meeting in San Antonio on Friday.
Isaiah Moseley/For the Express-News
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez speaks during a public meeting in San Antonio on Friday.
Isaiah Moseley/For the Express-News
State Rep. Barbara Gervin Hawkins speaks during a public meeting in San Antonio on Friday.
Isaiah Moseley/For the Express-News
Attendees speak during a Friday public meeting in San Antonio organized by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro’s office.
Isaiah Moseley/For the Express-News
The Rev. Jimmy Drennan, pastor at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, speaks during a Friday public meeting in San Antonio organized by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro’s office.
Isaiah Moseley/For the Express-News
Drennan, a longtime pastor of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, was one of the speakers during a Friday community meeting organized by the office of U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat.
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More than 150 people attended the meeting, which was dubbed “Examining the Community Impacts of Mass Deportation and Proposed ICE Warehouse,” while others watched online.
COPS/Metro Alliance, a nonpartisan grassroots coalition of 32 congregations, public schools, labor unions and nonprofits, brought the idea for the meeting to Castro’s office and helped fill the San Antonio Central Library. Many of the people in the audience were connected to the organization.
Speakers at the event criticized ICE and the Trump administration’s ramped-up enforcement of U.S. immigration law. They also spoke in opposition to the federal government’s plans to turn a warehouse on San Antonio’s East Side into an immigrant detention facility. ICE plans to use the building to house between 1,000 and 1,500 people per day during their immigration proceedings.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who attended the meeting, said the city was considering legal options to oppose the facility.
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In a Sept. 9 letter, Amin Tohmaz, the city’s development services director, asked ICE to provide written assurance by Sept. 30 that it would comply with legal requirements and coordinate with the city and community. The letter called on ICE to halt conversion work until it completed an environmental review, complied with city permitting processes and considered feedback from the city and residents.
Jones said the city received no response by that date, which she called the “deadline” for its latest inquiry.
In an interview after the meeting, Jones said the city “has some steps that we look forward to announcing” but declined to elaborate.
During the meeting, San Antonio City Council Member Phyllis Viagran urged residents to press for studies of the proposed ICE facility’s water and electricity demands at a planned Oct. 7 public meeting. She said the City Council wants to hold a work session Oct. 14 and consider action Oct. 15.
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“I will fully admit that as the city government, we have sat and we have waited. We have put forward (council consideration requests) that then, at the last minute, people say they don’t want to meet about, and that is unacceptable. And I apologize for that,” Viagran said. “The city needs to do more, and the city will do more.”
In a written statement Friday, ICE said facilities like the one proposed for San Antonio are “very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase.”
ICE did not say whether those reviews had been completed for the San Antonio facility.
The agency said the facility would bring more than 1,200 jobs to the area. “These economic benefits don’t even take into account that removing criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers,” ICE said.
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State Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, a San Antonio Democrat, said she would oppose the proposed facility through legal, legislative and policy efforts.
Speakers at Friday’s event talked about immigrants that “disappeared” into ICE custody, sometimes leaving relatives unable to locate them.
Drennan shared stories of parishioners he said were affected by federal immigration enforcement.
He mentioned a woman named Desiree, whose sister was deported to Nicaragua, and another named Kimberly, who was eight months pregnant when ICE agents entered her home and detained her husband.
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“The toll that this is having on their emotional and mental state is horrific,” Drennan said.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, an immigration attorney, criticized the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement practices.
“The deep human impact… is something that my office, as an immigration lawyer, deals with every day,” he said.
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In a statement after the hearing, COPS/Metro Alliance leader Arturo Rodriguez said fear was keeping some children home from school and making families hesitant to report crimes or cooperate with police, harming public safety and community trust.