The Bay Area has become a target of retaliatory scare tactics by the Immigrants and Customs Enforcement Agency. 

It targets undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies but also affects businesses, families, and communities. According to Fox-KTVU News, ICE conducted raids in sanctuary cities from California to Florida early January of this year. Bill Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, told Mercury News about the way the raids will be conducted at homes and workplaces in search of undocumented immigrants who missed their appointments.

“When they’re there, they’re going to ask everybody else for their documents — the so-called collateral arrests,” he said. “It might get ugly.”

According to Mercury News, these collateral arrests might happen due to ICE raids searching for undocumented immigrants with criminal records, affecting family members or coworkers that are at the wrong place and wrong time. This will break families apart which will negatively affect family businesses and communities. This is a scare tactic that will also prevent people from going to places like the 7-Eleven stores that have been targeted for raids. 

According to CBS News in the San Francisco Bay Area, raids targeted stores in Napa, Sebastopol, Santa Clara, Santa Rosa, Suisun City, and Petaluma. This fear of being caught in the middle of an ICE raid will drive people away from the affected chains and create a significant loss to those businesses simply for being associated with ICE raids.

 According to Fox – KTVU News, sanctuary state law limits California police forces’ cooperation with immigration authorities by preventing them from handing over detained immigrants to the federal agency, but it doesn’t stop ICE from conducting raids in those states on their own.  These unnecessary and irregular raids instill fear in immigrant communities. Law-abiding members of the community are paralyzed with a looming sense of dread anytime their doorbell rings or someone unexpectedly knocks on their door. 

Could ICE be here to arrest and deport them and their loved ones? It’s not only adults that are affected by this, parents remind their children to be wary of officials as they might have ulterior motives. 

According to CBS News, a University of California at Berkeley pre-law student, Luis Mora, was held in a prison facility for 20 days because he was detained in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in San Diego. He was released on January 21. He was detained because he was here with an illegal visa.  

Luis Mora came to the United States at 11 years old. ICE officials don’t differentiate between law-abiding students and felons. They solely focus on whether or not one is here legally. Because of this, students and hardworking individuals who are here to make a better life for themselves like Luis, are subjected to the same treatment as those who have committed crimes. 

Because of this new administration and their retaliation against government officials who offer sanctuary to the plenty of hard working immigrants and their families, we are seeing a negative impact of fear and loss within our communities that does nothing to solve or ameliorate the tensions between citizens and enforcement officials. 

Fox – KTVU News writes the sentiments of U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, “This is wrong. The administration is targeting immigrants to make a political statement. Immigrants are the backbone of our country and such raids will only incite fear in our communities and undermine public safety. We must stand up for their rights.”