Tensions rise between San Diego mayor and local activists over ICE
After six people were arrested during a sit-in at Todd Gloria’s office Friday, some community members are still pushing for a meeting and answers on police response to immigration enforcement.
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp and Maya Srikrishnan
A dozen people gathered outside San Diego police headquarters on Monday to question Mayor Todd Gloria's response to a sit-in at his office about the city's handling of immigration enforcement.
Six people spent last Friday in part of the mayor's office, saying that they would not leave until they spoke with Gloria about San Diego police showing up during raids to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement and not other residents. Police arrested the activists after the building closed, and the mayor issued a statement saying they had created a “public safety hazard” and that they intimidated city employees.
“We didn't break a single thing. We weren't being violent,” said Jeane Wong, one of the activists arrested on Friday. “If you're scared of me, a little preschool grandma, what are you going to do with Trump? You're not the mayor for this time. You're just not.”
Video of the activists' actions show them in an otherwise empty office writing notes to the mayor, moving a couch to watch television and knocking on a wooden door and desk while chanting for the mayor to meet with them. They also barricaded a glass door that appeared to be the main entrance to the office. Wong said they used tent poles that they found in a utility closet, wrapping them in gauze to avoid damaging the door.
Wong, who leads a group called SD Bike Brigade that monitors for ICE activity around schools during drop-off time and organizes rallies outside the local ICE detention center, said they used an end table and folding chair to block a back door and decided not to block a side door firmly because they didn't want police to break anything when they came in. Wong said they spent most of the day watching “Friends” and eating burritos delivered via Grubhub.
Gloria told CBS8 that he knows the activists and that they frequently speak up about issues in the city.
“I think it's probably in our collective interest not to provide them with more airtime,” Gloria told the channel.
Another of the arrested activists, who identified himself as Bbbiggz at Monday's press conference, said he saw Friday's civil disobedience as part of the same activism that led to the development of Chicano Park. The mostly Latino community in Barrio Logan and Logan Heights protested a planned California Highway Patrol station in their neighborhood by taking over the property and making a park in 1970. Today the park is a national historic landmark.
Sit-ins have long been a mainstay of civil rights activist movements.
In 1960, a group known as the Greensboro Four sat at a “White only” lunch counter at a Woolworth department store in North Carolina to challenge racial segregation. The sit-in movement grew to include 70,000 people, and led to the removal of racial segregation policies at the F.W. Woolworth department store chain and beyond.
Bbbiggz said with news of the recent killings by immigration officials, the world is catching up to what his community in Logan Heights has known for a long time.
“We're under an oppressive, colonialistic power,” Bbbiggz said. “If you really look into the history, our people have been targeted. It's insane the amount of torture and cruel and unusual punishment we have endured.”
He said he felt called to represent his community at a meeting with the mayor.
“This is an ancestral rage,” he said. “I carry the pain of my ancestors. I carry the pain of the past.”
David Rolland, spokesman for the mayor's office, said that the mayor's point person on immigration issues initially decided to meet with the activists on Friday.
“But then they chose to escalate by shouting and banging the doors,” Rolland said.
At least two of the mayor's staffers posted about the experience on social media, criticizing the group.
“I met with them all literally last week. The mayor has signed an executive order directing SDPD to not participate in ICE operations,” Nick Serrano, deputy chief of staff, wrote on X. “We are not the enemy.”
In a post on Facebook, Serrano thanked his friends and family for checking on him.
“These are deeply emotional issues and people are hurting,” he wrote. “At the same time, I believe what happened today crossed a line.”
In a two-page document printed for the mayor and later taped to the glass doors of the office, the activists asked what they called a central question — “When an unarmed resident contacts SDPD requesting assistance during an encounter with federal immigration agents, what exactly are SDPD officers directed to do?”
The rest of the poster offered two options that the activists believed would be acceptable to them. Either San Diego police should protect civilians from federal agents, including by demanding badge numbers, names and mask removal, or they should stop showing up when federal immigration officials call for backup, the demands posters say.
The question goes back to an early July immigration arrest in Linda Vista, where Wong and others showed up to document ICE's activity. In addition to a Guatemalan man whom immigration officials arrested out of his car in an apartment complex parking lot, Wong and two other U.S. citizens were arrested and held overnight in the basement of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Federal officials charged all four people with assaulting a federal agent. The charges against the Guatemalan man and one of the U.S. citizens, Raul Kuilon, have since been dropped.
Immigration officials had called 911 to request San Diego police assistance after a small group gathered to watch and document the officers’ actions. Kuilon also called 911 to ask for help before his arrest. After San Diego police officers arrived at the scene, they watched as immigration officials forced Kuilon across police lines and to the ground. He appeared in court later with his arm in a cast.
Later that month, Gloria issued an executive order telling San Diego police to report to him any time officers respond to a call involving federal immigration officials. It also instructed police not to engage in, support or facilitate immigration enforcement activities in accordance with California law.
“San Diego’s policy regarding immigration enforcement is unambiguous,” Rolland told Daylight on Monday. “The city does not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement operations. This policy follows California law and has been further strengthened by the executive order the Mayor signed last summer, which was crafted with the assistance of trusted immigrants’ right (sic) advocates.”
The executive order said Gloria's staff would support federal and state bills that would strengthen and clarify identification requirements for federal officers.
California passed a bill making it illegal for law enforcement officials to mask themselves in most situations. The Trump administration has sued to block the law. Los Angeles County supervisors also banned masks on law enforcement locally.
A Los Angeles judge heard arguments in the federal case in mid-January.
The activists’ demands about mask removal would seem to align with the new California law, but it's not clear how San Diego police would enforce it.
When asked by Daylight about enforcing the new law, the San Diego Police Department pointed to a policy written for its own officers. The policy does not indicate what officers should do if they come across officers from another agency who are breaking the law. The San Diego Police Department did not respond to a follow up question about this.
In mid-November, immigration officials chased a TikTok influencer and community ICE spotter around the 47th Street Trolley Station. Other activists showed up to support, and immigration officials once again called San Diego police.
In a video from that day, a federal official asks San Diego police to escort a man in handcuffs to the official's unmarked SUV. One of the three officers shakes his head, but the other two begin walking with the man and the third officer follows. The person filming yells to someone else that the man is being arrested because the agents claim that he assaulted them but that it wasn't true. Daylight could not find any court records to indicate that the man is facing charges in either federal or state court.
Since July, Wong and others have made periodic requests for a meeting with the mayor to discuss what more could be done regarding separating San Diego police and ICE. Before Gloria's State of the City speech two weeks ago, they again demanded a meeting. Two members of his staff met with the group, but not the mayor.
“We engaged in good-faith conversations, only to be met with hostility,” Rolland said. “We have listened carefully and explained, clearly, what the city can and cannot do under the law.”
But to Wong, that meeting was a place to emphasize the group's need to speak with the mayor directly, not a substitute for meeting with him.
“It's an emergency,” Wong said. “They're going to kill us.”
During the State of the City speech, Wong and several other activists stood one by one in protest and were each escorted out of the City Council chambers.
On Friday, they went to Gloria's office. After seeing immigration officials shoot three people in Minnesota, killing two, so far this year, the group felt like time was running out.
Holly Taylor, another one of the arrested activists, said she was frustrated that other mayors, particularly New York's Zohran Mamdani, seemed to be taking more action than Gloria. Mamdani has repeatedly called for ICE to be abolished and has spoken forcefully about the need for federal officials to reveal their faces instead of hiding behind masks.
“We have a mayor who won't look at us unless we're wearing a suit worth three times San Diego rent,” Taylor said. “We sat pretty for too long, dressed nice for him, and it's not working.”
“It's only a matter of time before what happened in Minneapolis happens here,” added Ian Cruz-Achord, who was also part of the sit-in.
Around 5 p.m. when the building closed, San Diego police came into the office to arrest the six for trespassing.
Wong said officers initially took the group to a parking garage and planned to book them and release them without taking them to jail. Then, Wong said, police received an order to take them to jail.
“They were ready to let us go. They let us know that,” Wong said. “They said it came from the top.”
The San Diego Police Department did not directly respond to this claim.
“The people inside were given the opportunity to leave of their free will. Some chose to leave; their information was taken, and they were released,” Lt. Cesar Jimenez wrote in an email. “For those who had to be removed in handcuffs, they were warned they would be arrested and still chose to stay, resulting in a custodial arrest.”
The six activists will have court hearings in March.
