At the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Courthouse in downtown San Diego, a coalition of activists, volunteers and clergy members patiently congregate. Gathered in the narrow, windowless corridors, they wait for migrants to emerge from their check-in meetings with immigration officials.
A collective called Detention Resistance has accompanied people to their court proceedings and check-in meetings for years, but when they noticed a shift last May, they called for more volunteers: people were now being detained after their hearings.
Xavier Vasquez has been following immigration issues for five years, but became involved with Detention Resistance in May, turning his attention to the courthouse due to the new immigration enforcement practices.
In June, a group of interfaith clergy showed up at the courthouse. Vasquez said his Detention Resistance colleagues noticed it was the first day ICE hadn’t detained anyone at the courthouse since the agents’ tactics began to escalate in May.
After that, the clergy formed their own group – FAITH – and coordinated among themselves to show up every day alongside Detention Resistance.
As the Trump administration’s mass deportation push has played out daily in immigration court, the courthouse itself has increasingly become a daily site of opposition for immigrant rights groups.
Their presence has allowed the groups to track in real time how the administration’s immigration enforcement policies are changing. Federal officials don’t publicly announce those shifts. But the trends are clear at the courthouse, and volunteers are keeping a record.
Ruth Mendez, another member of Detention Resistance, said the group recognized by mid-summer an increase in people with decades-old cases being summoned for immigration hearings.
Five members of United Women in Faith hold signs sharing their message at San Diego’s Immigration Courthouse. (Photo by Sophia Sleap)In the fall, they started seeing ICE summoning immigrants for routine check-ins — and then arresting them following routine hearings. Many immigrants were taken away by masked agents and held downstairs in a makeshift prison — sometimes for days — in the cold basement of the courthouse before being transferred to a detention center. People soon stopped attending their appointments and check-ins.
“ICE/DHS operations have essentially made our immigration courts a dangerous place for people who would otherwise be complying with immigration law,” Mendez said.
Mendez said volunteers are now documenting the expansion of targets for detention.
“DHS has pushed further and further towards mandatory detention, regardless of what process or circumstances someone may be in,” she said.
Mia Marie, a local activist in the coalition who livestreams ICE detentions on social media, said ICE agents regularly follow her social media and livestreams in real time.
“Having more volunteers and eyes on them does make them uncomfortable,” Marie said. “They know they’re being watched – it makes them aware that everybody is watching and that these things aren’t going to be done in the dark.”
While Detention Resistance gathers inside the courthouse to document detentions and how immigration officials treat immigrants, groups of activists regularly protest outside.
United Women in Faith is a group of retired women who post up twice a week with signs and bright pink T-shirts emblazoned with their name. They hold signs reading “Love thy neighbor” and “Compassion, not cruelty.”
When they heard what was happening at the courthouse at the beginning of summer, they decided to come from Methodist churches across the county to support immigrants.
“We feel called to step up, to do our best to help the least of these and people on the margins,” said Randa Krakow, 80. “Jesus called us to welcome the stranger, so we believe in welcoming immigrants.”
She said they’re there to bear witness.
The coalition of various groups at the courthouse has since come together to hold larger rallies, such as a prayer vigil, held there last month. Krakow thinks United Women in Faith’s small, regular protest has made an impact.
“We’ve heard from some of the attorneys that our presence and the presence of the other groups have made a difference in the degree of cruelty,” she said. “That maybe the authorities are not being quite so rough as they take people away. And we’d like to think that we’ve influenced that a little bit.”
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