Marin County Jail Protest Calls to Scrap ICE

SAN RAFAEL (06-07) – Protesters outside the Marin County Jail calling for “ICE Out of Marin” charged Sheriff Jamie Scardina with complicity for continuing to assist in the arrests of undocumented county prisoners upon their release from jail by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Scardina, who has remained intransient in not removing the release dates of prisoners from the department’s online Public Booking Log as demanded by activists, has created a lucrative relationship under the federal government ‘s State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) for his department. Release dates in the log along with other personal information provided by the sheriff’s office to ICE allows for the arrest of undocumented individuals as they are released from jail before being swept way for deportation.

The sheriff’s office in turn is paid a bounty of $1,000 for every undocumented immigrant ICE arrest. In the past three years, they have received $1.2 million for their participation under the program that has seen the removal of over 1,000 immigrant neighbors, friends and family in Marin.

Recently an increase of such arrests has begun, with 11 Marin community members having been “kidnapped” in May of this year as ICE expands its deportation efforts across the country.

None of this goes undocumented, however, as trained volunteers from the nonprofit Marin Rapid Response Network (MRRN), wearing distinctive pink aprons act as legal observers, by positioning themselves as “lookouts” outside the county jail twice daily ahead of prisoner release times to document arrests.

The volunteers who have a legal right to bear witness take notes, photograph and video tape the arrests and in turn assist in contacting family member of arrestees offering them legal, and financial assistance along with access to other community resources.

During the protest, three speakers addressed the crowd. Cecelia Jenkins a “lookout” for MRRN related her experience at the jail when she documented an arrest while alone on May 3rd. She spoke emotionally of her witnessing an inmate being walked out of the jail in handcuffs escorted by two ICE agents and taken to a waiting black car, saying that her “heart dropped and her mind panicked.”

“He looked at me, but he never spoke. But he saw me and I saw him and I hope at that moment he knew he was not alone. That there was someone there to bear witness.” While not knowing anything about the man, she expressed great empathy for him as “her neighbor. You have rights that are being violated, you have loved ones that are repeatedly being traumatized. You are missed and, in your honor, and in the honor of all our migrant neighbors, we will continue to fight the good fight.”

Lisa Bennett, director of the Marin Rapid Response Network, reflected on the human trauma felt by the children of those detained by ICE and its effect on their eating, sleeping and going to school in not knowing what has happened to their fathers who have been whisked away and if or when they will ever see them again.

Assistance by MRRN for those arrested may take a few days to put in place to help the detainee and their family which includes placing $100 in the detainee’s commissary account to purchase food and make phone calls while in jail along with rent and personal assistance for family members. Bennett closed by reminding everyone that it was “Power not Panic” that would move them all forward and promised they would “Never let ICE break us up.”

Everyone was reminded, too, by Amarantha Silva, organizer at Parent Voices Marin on the importance of speaking out against injustice and that by remaining silent injustice grows. “When we look away, we send a message that this is acceptable. Do not remain silent, get organized, talk to your neighbors, raise your voice, because this fight is not only about human rights. It’s a fight for human beings. It’s a fight for justice; it’s a fight for the future for our children.”

In closing, Patty Hoyt, community organizer and rapid response coordinator at MRRN, said that the reason that ICE can “snatch people as he [Scardina] lets them out of jail, is because they [ICE] are looking at the Booking Log. What he is doing is cooperating with ICE, and we need to stop it. But in the meantime, come join us, lookout, protect yourself.”

On a second front, activists continue attending monthly county Board of Supervisors meetings imploring them to act by passing an ordinance to instruct the sheriff to desist in cooperating or assisting ICE in any way and to “SCRAP SCAAP.”

They have also demanded that the sheriff refuse all ICE requests without a judicial warrant and that the sheriff stop publishing the booking logs and implement a searchable system like those used by San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz counties, where instead of listing inmates’ information, they require users to enter the name of an inmate before only minimal information can be accessed.

Thus far, the Board of Supervisors has taken no action and the demands made to the sheriff have fallen on deaf ears.

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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