On Tuesday, July 8, at around noon, a person who gave her name as Sorin was sitting on the sidewalk of Sutter Street getting her bleeding leg bandaged. SFPD officers were stationed on either end of the block, but none were approaching to help. About a half-dozen activists had gathered, some holding signs as others dressed Sorin’s wound.
Shaken, Sorin explained what happened: “I was with a few comrades who were trying to block the ICE car and a few of us were on the windshield and ICE just took off and we fell off.” The gash on Sorin’s leg, just below their knee, looked like it would benefit from some medical attention.
According to witnesses, as many as four ICE agents had just removed someone from the side exit of 100 Montgomery, the location of San Francisco’s immigration courts and a place where agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been grabbing alleged illegal immigrants for deportation as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. One witness described agents taking a man in his 40s into an unmarked car with no front plate. Agents were allegedly holding batons and shoving the group of protesters trying to stop them. “Once they got the man that they were kidnapping into the car, they just started driving like full speed,” said the witness, who declined to give their name.
“I couldn't hold on as well as my comrade,” said Sorin, 32. “I'm concerned about her because I saw it take off with her. I've heard that she's okay — or as okay as you can be after that.”
ICE agents have become a regular presence in the city in the last month — as have groups of activists pushing back against them and drawing attention to the randomness and brutality of their actions. Though ICE detainments happen most days, Tuesdays are when ICE processes cases in groups, the unnamed witness explained.
“Tuesday is the specific day; this is the third time that people tried to be here on Tuesdays,” said another witness who gave their name as J. (Gazetteer has previously reported on an ICE abduction that took place on a Tuesday.) Many of the activists present wore masks and preferred not to have their voices recorded for fear of retaliation.
