The mayor of Oakland, Calif., this weekend warned her residents of coming ICE sweeps, saying it was her "duty and moral obligation" to warn immigrants when a threat "appears imminent."
In a statement released Saturday night, Mayor Libby Schaaf wrote that "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to conduct an operation in the Bay Area, including Oakland, starting as soon as within the next 24 hours.
"As Mayor of Oakland, I am sharing this information publicly not to panic our residents but to protect them," the statement said.
As of Monday morning, any large-scale sweeps appeared not to have happened, though immigrant advocates said they documented 11 immigration arrests in Northern California on Sunday.
ICE officials did not respond to a question about whether a San Francisco Bay Area operation was planned this weekend. In a statement, ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley said only that immigration agents "conduct targeted enforcement operations on a daily basis in Northern California and across the nation."
She said that while agents focus on "individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security," others who do not fall into those categories are also arrested and deported.
"ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately. However, ICE no longer exempts classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States," she said.
Haley noted, as ICE officials have in the past, that cities that consider themselves sanctuaries, like Oakland, face an increase in "arrests in the community."
"While the vast majority of cities in America do cooperate with ICE, others force ICE to assign additional resources to conduct at-large arrests in the community, putting officers, the general public and the aliens at greater risk and increasing the incidence of collateral arrests," she said.
A coalition of immigrant advocates said they had confirmed a number of ICE arrests throughout Northern California on Sunday, including "five arrests in Merced County, two arrests each in Contra Costa and Sacramento counties, and one each in Monterey and Napa counties."
The group, which includes the Alameda County Immigration Legal & Education Partnership, the Monterey County Rapid Response Network and others, criticized the federal government for using "enforcement to terrorize communities of color and bully cities and jurisdictions which have protected due process with 'Sanctuary' policies."
"We will continue to stand up for our values and respond with power, not panic," the statement said.
In a news conference Sunday, Schaaf told reporters she issued the statement because her "priority is to keep this community safe."
"It is not my wish to panic people but to ensure that they are prepared with information. That they know their rights as well as their responsibilities and know about the resources that this community offers," she told reporters.
Schaaf said she weighed whether to issue the release because in the past, rumors about immigration enforcement activities have caused widespread panic in immigrant communities.
"Spreading rumors of ICE activities has been used as a tactic to strike fear and paralysis in the immigrant communities," she said. "This is something I thought about very carefully before bringing this information forward but due to the reliability of my sources and the fact that I received this from multiple sources I felt that it was my duty to share the information."
