Satima Flaherty was working from her West Oakland home on Wednesday when she heard tires screeching and a loud smash outside her door.
She rushed to her front window, assuming there had been a car crash — and hoped it didn’t involve hers.
“I go outside, I look, it’s my car,” she recalled. “I was almost in tears.”
Flaherty said she saw an older man, who appeared to be limping, get out of the grey Dodge Charger that rammed into the front of her black Honda and take off down the street.
At first, she thought it had been a typical hit-and-run until neighbors informed her that the officers on scene were federal immigration officials who had been following the man.
The collision occurred after 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, shortly before reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had been spotted conducting a targeted enforcement operation nearby Hoover Elementary School.
The commotion led to secure lockout procedures at Hoover and Harriet Tubman Child Development Center and standard protocol for ICE activity at other nearby Oakland Unified School District sites.
According to Councilmember Carroll Fife, the targeted man had been dropping a child off at school that morning when he was “chased by masked men,” believed to be ICE officers.
The crash came just months after Oakland loosened its vehicle chase policies for local law enforcement, reversing restrictions from 2022 intended to protect bystanders during high-speed pursuits. Oakland’s rules don’t apply to state and federal agencies, including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. The speed at which the agents and the pursued vehicle were traveling is unknown.
Flaherty said that when she went outside to check on her car, she approached the agents, who were searching through the Dodge. They told her that Oakland Police would follow up on the incident and drove away, she said, guessing they were still in pursuit of the man they had aimed to detain.
“It left me with a huge amount of damage and no accountability,” she said.
The front bumper of Flaherty’s car was completely totaled and undrivable, she said.
She filed a police report with OPD later that day, but said she hasn’t been contacted. In a statement on Wednesday, OPD said it was investigating the collision.
“It’s kind of like I’m just left dangling here,” Flaherty told KQED. “It’s going to be a setback, especially during the holidays.”
The 38-year-old Oakland native, who lives with her nine-year-old daughter and mother, said she doesn’t have a reliable way to take her child to school or visit the clients she serves as a social worker. She is also pregnant and relies on her car to get to and from prenatal doctor’s appointments.
Her mother has a car, but it isn’t in reliable condition, she said.
Flaherty said Fife offered to help her get reimbursed for a rental car, but she doesn’t have one yet. Instead, she’s used Uber to travel to and from her daughter’s school at pick-up and drop-off and took Thursday off from work.
She has insurance and said she’s begun the claim process, but isn’t expecting to get enough compensation to replace the car. She started a fundraiser on GoFundMe asking neighbors to help her raise money to purchase a new vehicle in the meantime.
She said she wanted to be able to be independent again, but didn’t want to see the driver get in trouble.
“It caused a huge setback for me, but for me, it’s material stuff and for him, it’s his life. When he was running, he was running for his life,” she said.
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