Latest Travel Ban Blasted By Immigrant Rights Groups

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, June 6, 2025…

• Immigrant-serving groups across the Bay Area are condemning a Trump administration travel ban that will bar most of the citizens of nineteen countries from entering the U.S.
• Immigration lawyers and advocates say at least 15 people including some children were arrested outside of ICE offices in San Francisco on Wednesday.
• A Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge has approved a temporary restraining order blocking efforts to restart the Refugio Oil Spill pipeline.

Bay Area Immigrant Groups React To Trump’s ‘Draconian’ New Travel Ban

Immigrant-serving groups across the Bay Area condemned a new Trump administration travel ban that — with a handful of exceptions — will bar most citizens of nineteen countries from entering the U.S.

The ban, announced in a proclamation by President Donald Trump Wednesday night, will “fully restrict and limit the entry” of nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It will partially restrict entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. People who hold a U.S. green card, and immediate family members of U.S. citizens, are among those exempted.

Aarti Kohli, executive director of San Francisco’s Asian Law Caucus, called the ban “draconian” and said it echoed other episodes of discriminatory profiling, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the surveillance of Muslim Americans after the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center bombing. “For most of us, there is nothing we wouldn’t do to make sure our families are safe and together …  This policy will tear families apart worldwide,” said Kohli. “This sweeping travel ban is just one tool in a broader strategy to consolidate power by scapegoating communities and manufacturing fear.”

The president’s proclamation revives, in altered form, a travel ban Trump imposed in his first term. And it comes as part of a broader crackdown on immigrants, including arrests at immigration courts and routine immigration check-ins, an attempt to revoke thousands of international student visas, suspension of the nation’s refugee program and a shut-down of asylum consideration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

ICE Arrests 15 People In San Francisco

More than a dozen people, including a 3-year-old child, were arrested at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Francisco on Wednesday, according to advocates and local political leaders.

At least 15 people were taken into custody after appearing for ICE check-in appointments, according to the SF Rapid Response Network, a coalition of legal and immigration groups. An ICE spokesperson did not confirm the number of people detained, but said those arrested “had executable final orders of removal by an immigration judge and had not complied with that order.”

Priya Patel, a supervising attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said multiple families were detained, including three sets of mothers and children. All of these families were held overnight at 630 Sansome, ICE’s offices in San Francisco, Patel said. By Thursday afternoon, one of those families was routed to ICE’s South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, Patel said. That facility was shuttered under the Biden administration due to operational costs, but has been reopened by Trump for the practice of detaining families.

Santa Barbara County Judge Halts Restart Of Refugio Oil Spill Pipeline

A Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge has approved a temporary restraining order blocking efforts to restart the Refugio Oil Spill pipeline.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Defense Center sued the State Fire Marshal for approving Sable Offshore’s plans to reopen the Los Flores Pipeline System without an environmental review. This week, a judge approved the order, which prohibits any attempts to bring the pipeline system back online until a July 18 hearing. The system was shut down 10 years ago after one of its pipelines ruptured, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean.

At the July hearing, a court approval could keep the restraining order in place until the Environmental Defense Center’s lawsuit against the Fire Marshal is resolved– a process that could take months.