Bay Area immigration attorneys warn of uptick in violent ICE arrests – Mission Local

Bay Area immigration attorneys warn of uptick in violent ICE arrests  Mission Local

Bay Area ICE arrests are growing more violent, attorneys say, and those targeted are ending up in the hospital. When masked immigration agents arrested Luz’s son in SoMa in San Francisco on Monday, they slammed him against a window. One plainclothes agent ran across the street with his gun drawn, according to an eyewitness and widely viewed surveillance footage. The agents pushed him to the concrete, breaking his glasses, Luz said. Luz’s son has lived in the United States since he was 6, working on farms in Monterey County. He has a son of his own. His arrest, five immigration attorneys say, is the latest of several across the Bay Area that reflect increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement.

Bay Area “rapid response” hotlines monitoring immigration arrests have seen an uptick in reports since this weekend, said Lisa Knox, co-executive director at California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. Knox is in contact with eight regional hotlines that field calls of reported arrests. The increased activity has extended to the San Francisco jail, where public defenders on Tuesday spotted two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the lobby, said Deputy Public Defender Francisco Ugarte. But their presence raises questions about potential violations of city and state Sanctuary City policies. Ugarte called the recent enforcement a “surge,” and compared it to ICE operations in 2007