Officials detain and cite volunteers documenting ICE arrests at San Diego federal building
The change seems to target volunteers who have conducted legal observation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers’ behavior in immigration court hallways and the corridor outside ICE offices for months.
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp
Officials detained and cited four volunteers on Thursday who were standing in a hallway at the federal building in downtown San Diego to support immigrants showing up for court hearings or check-in appointments.
Federal Protective Service officers told volunteers that an overnight rule change meant they could no longer stand in hallways to document immigration arrests or support those with hearings and appointments in the building. When volunteers asked clarifying questions, the officers told them they were not complying and detained them, the volunteers said.
“It concerns me that citizens are not allowed to be in a public space seeing what federal officers, paid with public funds, are doing,” said Jocelyn Ahlers, one of the volunteers detained.
Robert Kovelman, another of the cited volunteers, said the overnight change felt unreasonable.
“This seems like, again, another case where certain federal agencies are trying to change the rules to their benefit just because they feel like it, and not for any other reason,” Kovelman said.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Protective Service did not respond to requests for comment.
San Diego has seen coordinated immigration arrest efforts at its immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in the past year. Volunteers have shown up to document these arrests and support those affected since May, when the agency first arrested people in the immigration court hallways.
That has included recording arrests of pregnant women, grandparents, people with canes or walkers and people with serious medical conditions. And, last week, it included documenting the detainment of a young boy who came to the ICE office with a man and another child.
Volunteers were worried about the child, who went with two ICE officers into the elevator that normally takes people to the agency's holding cells.
When Daylight asked about the child, ICE said that officials had detained his mother at Naval Base San Diego and that a judge had already ordered her deported. ICE said that the agency deported a mother and child on a plane to Venezuela two days after volunteers saw the child detained. It is unclear how long the child was alone before officials took him to his mother.
Volunteers with an interfaith group have offered prayers for people going into hearings and check-in appointments. On many mornings, immigrant families gathered around a volunteer's rosary to pray together before going into the ICE office.
In November, the Department of Homeland Security published new rules on activities near federal buildings that gave Federal Protective Service more power to charge people with crimes if they break the rules. Local advocates worried that the regulation change would eventually be used against the volunteers monitoring ICE and supporting immigrants inside the federal building.
Now it appears those worries are becoming reality.
One of the people cited volunteers with an interfaith group that accompanies and prays with immigrants in the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building. The other three volunteer with the collective Detention Resistance and document arrests made by ICE.
Patrick Corrigan, who volunteers with the interfaith group, said one of the Federal Protective Service officers, who identified herself as Officer Panama, had, during one of his recent volunteer shifts, taken a picture of his face and told him he was going into a database.
ICE's top official denied the existence of a database tracking activists at a recent Congressional hearing.
All four volunteers were inside the federal building before 8 a.m., as they typically are, when Panama and another officer approached three of them, accused them of loitering and told them to leave, they said. She told them there had been a change overnight and that they could no longer stand in the hallways.
Panama indicated to Daylight a new sign on the wall of the federal building describing the overnight change.
“No loitering. All public areas, corridors, elevator lobbies and waiting areas are to be unobstructed. Please do not sit, lie down or place items on the floor that obstruct the flow of people and/or materials,” the sign says.
The sign then lists a part of the November rule that says, “Any person on federal property must at all times comply with official signs of a prohibitory, regulatory, or directive nature and with the lawful direction of security personnel.”
After reviewing the sign, the volunteers said they concluded that they were not loitering because they were not obstructing the hallways, and they were not sitting, lying down or placing items on the floor. They returned to the hallway near the ICE office.
The Federal Protective Service officers returned.
“They said, ‘We told you to leave so you need to leave,’” Jill Weigt recalled.
The volunteers said they asked questions to try to clarify what the sign meant by loitering, and Panama told them that they weren't complying so they were now detained and would be cited.
Corrigan said that the other three volunteers were already detained when he found them. He decided to stay with them because he believes that they were not doing anything wrong. The officers cited him, too.
“I feel strongly that we have a right to be here. I know the migrants are always thanking us for being here,” Corrigan said. “I think it's valuable what we do.”
Kovelman said the officers initially told them the ticket would be for loitering. But the citations each person received said, “failure to comply with official signs of prohibitory, regulatory or directory nature and with lawful direction of security personnel.” Each citation came with a $284 fine.
“In a nonfascist country, you should be able to ask questions of authority figures without going to a place of threats,” Weigt said.
Kovelman said the officers told the four that they were banned from the federal building for the rest of the day.
The volunteers said they felt lucky that they walked out of the building. They have seen so many people detained by federal officials who end up in the basement holding cells, and they have seen the videos online of federal officials attacking and even killing legal observers in Minnesota, they said.
The volunteers said they intend to keep supporting immigrants at the federal building. They intend to fight their citations in court.
Rev. Hung Nguyen of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, who helps organize the faith volunteers, said that he went inside later in the morning to try to speak with a supervisor about what happened. He said Panama told him that he would need to talk with the General Services Administration and to Google for the agency's contact information.
She told him that he had no business in the building and would have to leave, he said.
He and other faith volunteers went to the immigration court in the afternoon, and they were waiting to be allowed into courtrooms when a group of about eight Federal Protective Service officers approached them. The officers told them that they were loitering and needed to leave.
Nguyen said that he calmly told the officers that the group was waiting for court. The officers insisted that the group didn't have business in the building and needed to leave.
He said one of the officers accused them of conspiracy because they were loitering as a group and said that would come with a $250,000 fine. However, court staff told the officers that the group could stay in the waiting room while they were waiting to go into public court hearings.
The officers left, Nguyen said.
“What we're looking for is really that door to dialogue, to conversation, so that we can be clear about what we're permitted to do so that we can carry out our ministry and exercise our freedom of religion to accompany people who are in need,” Ngyuen said.
