The San Francisco Police Department claims that its officers are not helping ICE agents detain immigrants. Nonetheless, the Public Defender’s Office is calling on the public to look closer for evidence of any possible collusion and to work with its legal experts to submit complaints about SFPD to the city.
The effort comes amid ongoing conflicts between citizens and federal immigration officers on the streets of the city, especially downtown, where people have been hit by ICE vehicles, assaulted, and even pepper-sprayed while attempting to observe or disrupt the snatching and transport of immigrants.
(That includes this reporter, who was attacked at point-blank range by a purported ICE agent who refused to identify themself to bystanders.)
SFPD’s presence, or lack thereof, at these altercations is difficult to understand, said Angela Chan, assistant chief attorney at the Public Defender’s Office. Chan and Sarah Lee, a community organizer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, are leveraging the Integrity Unit at the Public Defender to offer the public a simplified way to flag any potential instances of SFPD aiding an immigration raid. The site can be found here.
“When SFPD officers stand guard to help ICE vans enter and exit or monitor protesters instead of ICE’s unlawful actions, they are in clear violation of these laws and policies,” Chan said.
Anyone can submit a complaint at any time to the city Department of Police Accountability, but going through the Public Defender’s Integrity Unit, which specializes in documenting police misconduct cases, can help bolster a complaint with legal expertise, expedite the process, and allow the Public Defender to keep tabs on the allegations, Chan said.
In addition to state and local Sanctuary laws, police have to follow rules laid out under a department-wide “General Order,” which are permanent directives adopted by the SFPD after review from the city Police Commission. The latest General Order on enforcement of immigration laws, implemented in 2020, strictly prohibits SFPD from cooperating with ICE or Customs and Border Patrol “in any investigation, detention, or arrest procedures” related to routine immigration crackdowns, Chan explained.
The only times SFPD is supposed to show up to an immigration enforcement is if there is an emergency that poses a “significant and immediate danger” to public safety or federal officers, according to the General Order. In those cases, SFPD supervisors are directed to “immediately respond to the location” to ensure that the assistance is “warranted.”
“The incidents we’ve witnessed this summer do not meet that standard, at least not for ICE. If anything, the real danger has been to the protesters at the hands of ICE, yet that is clearly not why SFPD officers have been deployed,” Chan said.
Chan’s observations are in line with those from others on the ground. In June, this reporter witnessed several SFPD patrol vehicles circling ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome St., openly waving at, and recording, protesters that were assembled on the sidewalk. In July, the activist Lea McGeever spotted a group of SFPD officers outside SF Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery standing by as protesters demanded SFPD intervene and check the identity of masked agents to ensure they are federal officers.
Officers were also at the scene on July 8 when an ICE agent attempted to drive through a group of protesters and another pointed a rifle at protesters; the police did not react, according to media reports and sources on the scene.
Meanwhile, SFPD officers may believe a task like setting a perimeter or clearing cars around a federal immigration facility is merely upholding traffic laws, but in practice, doing so is helping an ICE transport leave the scene, Lee and Chan argued.
“Immigrant rights organizations have witnessed SFPD acting as security for ICE,” Lee said. “This raises very serious questions about the use of our local taxpayer dollars to assist with immigration enforcement.”
Last week, Interim Police Chief Paul Yep sent a department-wide memo instructing officers to only intervene at an immigration enforcement to “safeguard life and property.” The memo, obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, specified it is okay for officers to be “rendering aid, responding to criminal activity, continuous observation and reassessment, maintaining a perimeter, directing traffic, de-escalating conflict or communicating with the public.”
The SFPD did not respond to questions from Gazetteer by press time.
