The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this week to approve a pair of ordinances designed to help shield residents from an increasingly chaotic federal immigration crackdown.
The new rules, authored by Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas, direct county staff to develop an immigration enforcement response plan and to create “ICE-Free Zones” on county-owned and controlled properties.
Fortunato Bas said she developed the proposals last fall as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents began staging at Coast Guard Island in the Oakland Estuary in preparation for a major Bay Area operation that was eventually called off.
Since then, federal agents have redoubled their efforts at rounding up thousands of immigrants, many here legally, in places like Minneapolis, where federal immigration agents recently shot and killed two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“The attacks on our communities by the federal administration, as we all know, have been relentless and the supercharged enforcement is causing fear and trauma, separating families and harming communities,” Fortunato Bas said during the Tuesday meeting at which the plans were approved.
“The lawless violence we are witnessing is an assault on our American and Alameda County values, our Constitution and our human dignity,” she said.
The County Administrator’s Office will now draft a plan that includes “rapid-response protocols” for county agencies and community groups that will feature staff training, public communication strategies and other measures to make sure people can safely access county services, courts, hospitals and health care facilities.
The plan is based on a similar effort in Santa Clara County and will include elements from such plans implemented in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
The ICE-Free Zones will be established at county-owned or county-controlled properties, including parking lots, vacant lots, garages and the nonpublic areas of county buildings.
Those areas will be off-limits to federal agents engaged in civil immigration enforcement activities and who might seek to use them as staging areas, processing areas or operations bases, among other things. The zones will be marked by signs and blocked off with physical barriers where appropriate.
In addition to the ICE-Free Zones and the rapid response plan, supervisors have previously approved more than $7 million for things like legal and deportation defense services for immigrant communities, a hotline people can call to help track ICE activity in real time, and other resources. Many of the speakers in the public comments session at the meeting — which was extended due to the number of people waiting to participate — also urged the county to signal its opposition to any future use of the now-shuttered Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin by ICE.
“We don’t want to be caught off guard, we want to do everything possible as elected officials to protect our people,” Fortunato Bas said.
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