From denouncing raids to providing food assistance and legal aid to families impacted by federal immigration enforcement, Latino leaders across Santa Clara County this week committed to supporting a community that they say is under attack under the Trump administration.
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Gathering at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in the Mayfair neighborhood of east San Jose on Monday afternoon, more than a dozen current and former local elected leaders signed onto the “Latino and Immigrant Justice Pledge.” Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas, who spearheaded the effort, said the pledge is not symbolic, but instead “policy that is connected to this promise.”
Fear has been growing across California’s immigrant and Latino communities as President Donald Trump executes plans to carry out “the largest mass deportation operation of illegal aliens in history.” U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents — who often wear masks to conceal their identities — have been detaining people showing up for court hearings and sweeping work sites.
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Caught in the crossfires of Trump’s agenda, American-born Latinos have reported being detained by ICE officials despite showing proof of citizenship, raising concerns about racial profiling and who’s being targeted.
“We can’t let ourselves be fooled — these attacks on our community have nothing to do with national (security) or public safety, they have everything to do with fear and division,” Arenas, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said in Spanish. “Their purpose is to rob our people of our dignity, to take away our voice, to erase our achievements and to push us even further into the shadows.”
The pledge is made up of 12 action items ranging from championing comprehensive immigration reform and supporting policies that welcome immigrants to investing in education, housing, health care and infrastructure in Latino neighborhoods. In the 24 hours since its unveiling, more than 80 local elected officials and community leaders have signed on.
Santa Clara County is considered a “sanctuary” jurisdiction, having adopted policies that prohibit the use of local law enforcement for federal immigration enforcement. In recent weeks, though, the strength of those policies has been called into question as ICE agents have been using the county’s publicly available online portals and jail staffers to determine release times of those they are seeking to deport.
Arenas said in a statement that “public inmate locators and court records were designed to promote transparency and access — not to serve as backdoors for immigration enforcement.
“ICE is mining public data to track and target individuals who have served their time and are working at rebuilding their lives, further eroding public trust and instilling fear into our communities.”
Arenas added that the county can’t prohibit the federal government from accessing publicly available information, but said she intends to ensure the county “closely monitors this troubling tactic.”
Morgan Hill Councilmember Yvonne Martínez Beltrán said that families being separated and U.S. citizens being wrongfully detained by ICE are matters of “public safety.”
“We must prepare ourselves and that is what you see us doing here today, because unless we demand change, we will see no difference,” she said. “Think about the erosion of public trust that this is creating and breeding in our communities when people do not know who they can trust to uphold their basic rights. Fear spreads. It silences. It isolates.”
Sergio Jimenez, who represented District 2 on the San Jose City Council until late last year, called the pledge an “unwavering stand by some of the most prominent Latino leaders in the county.”
“It’s a shared public commitment to accountability and action and transformational change,” he said. “Latino communities have long contributed to the prosperity of this country … and deserve the same protections, opportunities and respect afforded to all.”
Luis Melecio-Zambrano contributed to this report.
