San Rafael Minutemen Counter Protest March 31, 2007

San Rafael, March 6, 2007 at 5:00 a.m.

While the rest of Marin County was sleeping on the morning of March 6, 2007, agents of the ominously named I.C.E (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raided the city’s Canal district, a close knit community which is predominantly Latino, as well as other such areas in Novato, arresting 66 people, 28 of which have been deported as of the time of this writing. These people have fallen prey to the notorious and callously named Operation Return to Sender, which was initiated last summer by the Department of Homeland Security. The rough and intimidating nature of the raid has caused terror in a community of people struggling to integrate into American life and hoping to share the American dream. This operation has come under fire for grossly ignoring the humanity of the people it arrests and should be condemned by freedom loving people everywhere, as the deplorable actions of the I.C.E in the Canal as well as all around the country demonstrate.

The I.C.E’s official spokesperson Lori Haley cited the purpose of Operation Return to Sender as to "…restore the integrity of our nation's immigration system…" by "…identifying and arresting criminal aliens and immigrant fugitives." On their official website you have lists of individuals who were rapists, violent criminals, gang members, in short, the people who the I.C.E is supposedly going after. There are also those who are criminals because of the heinous and violent crime of violating their final deportation orders. San Pablo Mayor Paul Morris defended the I.C.E. actions, saying,

"I have heard that certain individuals have been targeted: felons, people who have committed crimes," Morris said, "not these mass sweeps, picking people off the streets and out of their communities in droves."

However, reports from places were the I.C.E has struck have told a different story about who the I.C.E is arresting. In nearby Contra Costa County, out of 119 detainees taken from January 8 to the 19th, 94 were reportedly “encountered in the process,” meaning there had been no warrant for them; they had been picked up off the street. Gayle McLaughlin, mayor of nearby Richmond, described the effects on his community as leaving a “state of terror.” According to foreign policy analyst Laura Carlsen,

“In a weeklong series of raids in the Los Angeles area last January, the ICE detained 750 migrants. According to its own figures, less than 20% belonged to the target group of individuals with previous deportation orders. In raids across the country, ICE reports show that most of those captured have no previous criminal record.”

Indeed, many of the warrants that I.C.E officers had in their raid in San Rafael were for people who no longer lived at the residences they raided, thus I.C.E officers entering the homes and questioning the new residents about their legal status was as illegal as someone raising a family and working a job without a VISA. As a matter of fact, the I.C.E had come with 30 arrest warrants, only 5 of which had actually been for one of the 66 individuals they ended up actually taking. "They went right into buildings and pulled people from their homes…" said Edgar Hernandez, a local resident, said, "…These are just working people, not criminals. Everyone in the Canal is now afraid."
The reason that they could get into people’s homes so easily was that they identified themselves as “police” upon knocking. One young girl who opened the door explained “I was not afraid because the police have come by to check out the neighborhood…but then I saw the back of their jackets, which had the letters I.C.E.”
Among the “criminals” and “fugitives” arrested was the single father of seven-year old Daniel Reyes, an American citizen who was forced to accompany his father into custody because they couldn’t find anyone to take care of him that early in the morning. He remained in jail with his father until an aunt could come pick him up. In addition, local business owner and community leader Fernando Quezada was on the street around 7 a.m. and observed that an agent, "… just walked up to a guy, he didn't ask him any questions, and he pulled him out of his truck and hauled him away." Besides gross and blatant intimidation, I.C.E officers were unnecessarily humiliating in their work. Tom Wilson, director of Canal Community Alliance, alleged that“…Some people were taken out in their boxer shorts into the cold without a chance to put clothes on. " The humiliation and callous treatment continued in custody. One person commented that on his insistence that he be allowed to call a lawyer, or barring that, the consulate of his home country, the men holding him in custody responded that “they didn’t have the number readily available.”

Numerous civil and immigrant rights groups have condemned I.C.E tactics and Operation Return to Sender. The ACLU of Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area have jointly filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking records related to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's regional operations and procedures, but ominously, the I.C.E spokesman Lori Haley reportedly commented, “Anyone can file a FOIA request, that's their right to do. Just because they ask, doesn't mean they're going to get it." This is disturbing when you consider that many people didn’t know where their loved ones until more than a week after the fact, and that the mayor of San Rafael himself, Al Boro was reported saying "We will find out who the people are and we'll find out what the procedure is to notify the community," The I.C.E did give a number that people could call, but even then, the best response that people are getting is that people’s loved ones were being held at “one of four locations”


Besides violating standard mores of human decency and the basic laws against unlawful search and seizure and violations of the right to due process, Operation Return to Sender has had a tremendous negative social and economic impact on the city of San Rafael, as well as other places in the country where the 18,000 immigrants that have been picked up in the last five months lived and worked. The day after the raids, the Canal was almost a ghost town. The raid disrupted all facets of life in the community, including the right for children to go to school and get an education. At the local Bahia Vista Elementary school, 77 children didn’t show up to school on March 6th, where, on average only 10 kids are absent any given day. Says principal of the school Juan Rodriguez, "How can the kids take tests? All they can think right now is 'will my parents be taken?'” At the local shopping center, where normally hundreds of men hang around hoping to get work as day laborers, there was not a single soul to be found. Many people did not leave their homes, not even to go out and get food, according to Douglas Mundo, the director of the Canal Welcome Center. The local Pickleweed community Center and library was equally desolate, despite the fact that the ONEMARIN book campaign was supposed to hold a discussion for Spanish Speakers about Isabelle Allende’s book daughter of fortune. The library’s evening story-time, normally a popular event, yielded no visitors, as well as the computer class, which attracts 30 people on a normal day, only had two or three people show up. Lastly, the raids could have damaging effects on relations between local residents and the San Rafael Police Department, as a result of I.C.E agents identifying themselves as “police” when they knocked on doors.

Almost a year after the immigrant mega marches that swept through the country’s major cities, it seems like the anti-immigrant forces have stepped up their policies of repression and aggression against the hard-working people who are forced to come to this country of prosperity because it’s the free trade agreements with their home countries that have rendered these places jobless and unlivable. This “blame the victim” mentality is ludicrous, as we blame human beings for abandoning their homes because places like Mexico (where most illegal immigrants are from) lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 in industry from 2000 to 2005. The complaint that illegal immigrants take our tax dollars holds little water when you consider more tax money is probably being spent on I.C.E’s operations to round up people who are doing little but trying to achieve the basic human needs of housing, food, medicine and work. The argument is completely moot as far as the Canal district of San Rafael goes. In a county were the median family income is $88,934, Canal residents eke out less than half of this at $36, 364. Despite this economic disparity, and the fact that 58% of families live below the Federal Poverty Level, 92% of these families do not receive any form of public assistance. The people who the I.C.E Rounded up in Canal were not criminals, they were not murderers, thieves, rapists, or members of Al-Quaeda , but hard working men and women who are being callously denied the opportunity to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These people and their children were seeking the American dream, and have instead found an American nightmare.