Hundreds Rally in Oakland to Protest ICE Raids, Support Immigrant Communities

Hundreds gathered near Oakland’s Fruitvale BART Station on Tuesday night to protest increased immigration enforcement and show solidarity with Bay Area immigrant communities.

The interfaith vigil was planned in response to actions by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles over the weekend. The crowd held white church candles and protest signs as they listened to performances, speeches and rallying cries from faith leaders and local officials, including Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas.

“I feel that the president and the current administration is grossly overstepping and abusing their power. And I feel that, as a religious person, communities of faith need to show up and stand in solidarity with immigrants who are threatened and afraid,” Rabbi Chai Levy, an Albany resident, told KQED. “It’s important to show up as people of conscience and morality and say that we’re against what our government is doing.”

Levy had a sign that read “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh,” a reference to the biblical story of the Israelites’ oppression in Egypt, and a broader tradition of standing up against injustice and authoritarian rule.

“It’s part of our religious tradition to care for the stranger, to love our neighbor and to stand up to tyrants,” said Levy, 53.

Dennis Kim, a registered nurse and Oakland resident, said he attended the vigil to stand in solidarity with other families.

“I’m standing with my family — with my son, with my partner — and with all these beautiful people out here, because this is what Fruitvale is about,” Kim, 47, said. “This is what Oakland is about. This is what the Bay is about.”

The Oakland resident continued: “When I see the people that they’re taking away on television, I see people that look like me. I see people who could be my uncle, who could be my auntie, and I don’t want to wait too late to speak up and to take a stand. If not now, then when? We got to do it now.”

Lee, who represented Oakland in Congress for more than two decades before being elected mayor in April, told the crowd she was born in El Paso, Texas, a city located on the Rio Grande along the Mexico–U.S. border.

“We stand firmly with Los Angeles families, firmly with our Los Angeles brothers and sisters facing federal immigration raids,” Lee said. “The Bay Area and Los Angeles are united. When any community is threatened, we all respond with compassion, with strength and with action.

“Immigrant communities — yes, our immigrant communities — are the heartbeat of Oakland, enriching our neighborhoods with diverse cultures, languages and experience, and deserve the quality of life that every human being deserves.”

Activists provided a hotline number and told people to report ICE sightings and arrests, like those that took place earlier Tuesday at immigration courts in San Francisco and Concord.

On Tuesday, San Francisco’s immigration court was shut down for the day after more than 100 people rallied against the arrests of at least two immigrants by federal officers at the downtown building. The arrests were the first in more than two weeks at the 100 Montgomery St. site, where ICE officers began making unprecedented detainments of people reporting for asylum hearings last month.

Last week, ICE officials detained at least 15 immigrants, including a 3-year-old child, attending check-in appointments at the ICE field office in San Francisco. On Friday, a man was arrested at the city’s federal courthouse after appearing for an immigration hearing there.

The return of ICE agents to the downtown immigration court comes after two nights of protests across San Francisco denouncing the ramped-up enforcement efforts and the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops — usually under states’ direction — to Los Angeles to quell protests there.

More than 150 people were arrested after an offshoot of a San Francisco protest became violent Sunday night, and further arrests were made following a peaceful march that brought thousands of people to the Mission District on Monday evening.

On Tuesday night in Oakland, about 500 people peacefully gathered at Fruitvale Plaza, standing beneath blooming lavender jacaranda trees. Some attendees waved Mexican flags, while others held candles or signs that read “Keep families together,” “Can’t spell cowardice without ICE,” and “I prefer my ICE crushed.”

“It is time for us to say, ‘Not in our city.’ We will stop, we will block, we will drive out ICE,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, the Oakland teachers union president. “We will protect our classrooms. We will protect our streets. We will protect our homes. Together, we rise for the dignity of our families and our right to live without fear.”

The crowd was both tense and energetic as community leaders and organizers took turns expressing support for immigrants. In between their remarks, a live band coaxed the crowd to dance to cumbia beats. The event had the feel of a family gathering.

But just feet from where the vigil was taking place, a group of workers feverishly cut two-by-fours and sheets of plywood to board up the windows of a Citibank branch.

Jovanna Diaz waved a large Mexican flag from atop a trash can. The Oakland resident said she attended the vigil to honor her father, who was deported following an ICE raid in 2006. He died soon afterward from a heart condition, and she was never able to see him again.

“I’m here to make him proud,” Diaz, 31, said. “I want him to see me from above and see that I’m using my voice for him, for me and all our people.”