ICE raids across California have struck fear into Alameda County’s immigrant population, taxing the budgets and resources of advocacy groups and public defenders tasked with protecting them.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors appropriated $3.5 million in March to reestablish an immigration enforcement hotline, add immigration public defenders and provide “Know Your Rights” trainings. But the immigrant community’s needs have outpaced advocates’ response to the aggressive ramp-up of immigration enforcement by the federal government, according to advocates.
“We’re very grateful for the county’s investment to date, but I think we all know $700,000 is not enough to set up an infrastructure that covers an entire county,” said Monique Berlanga, executive director for the legal defense nonprofit Centro Legal de la Raza. “Everything we’ve built so far can and will be tested in the upcoming months.”
Anxiety has escalated for the more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants who live in Alameda County as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up its activity. In Livermore, Miguel Lopez, a father who had lived in the country for 29 years, was deported on June 6 to Mexico, hours before a judge issued a temporary restraining order that ordered federal officials to keep him in the country.
ICE’s enforcement activity in the Bay Area has been limited in comparison to other metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, where protesters faced off with ICE agents during an operation to capture illegal immigrants outside a Home Depot. However, despite President Donald Trump’s administration declaration that it would focus on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records, ICE appears to be casting a wider net.
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These enforcement actions have strained the resources of community partners like Centro Legal de La Raza, Berlanga said. The county’s ICE hotline, which partners with Centro Legal de la Raza, is limited to weekday hours between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., which makes responding to calls on the weekends difficult, she said.
“Last week, there was some FBI activity at the NewPark Mall in Newark, and the hotline was getting calls, frantic calls, thinking that this was going to be another LA,” Berlanga said. “We’re not necessarily sure that our recommendation would be to commit to a 24/7 ongoing call line, but what we do need is additional funding or flexible funding to allow us to adapt with enforcement patterns.”
Supervisors Elisa Marquez and Nate Miley, the members of the Public Protection Committee, appeared responsive to the appeals for supplementary resources during the meeting. But as the Board of Supervisors convenes on Monday to plan the county’s budget for the next year, they will need to consider how much more the county can put toward immigration defense when approximately 60% of its budget comes from the state and federal government.
“We don’t know when or if raids will come to us, but we need to be prepared,” Marquez said.
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