ICE raids Mission hotel
Unusual attack on immigrant rights

By Camille T. Taiara

In a highly unusual raid, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the Hotel Sunrise, a residential hotel in the Mission District, about 6:30 a.m. on May 6 and emerged soon after with nine immigrants in shackles. At least seven of those immigrants – all from Mexico – were deported within 48 hours without access to a hearing, according to reports from family members and friends. The other two, both of whom tenants say are natives of India, may still be in ICE's custody.

As of press time, one of the Indian men – who residents say worked at the hotel, and who appeared to be the target of the raid – was being held at an immigration detention center in Arizona, Sunaina Maira, a volunteer with Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, told the Bay Guardian.

She had no details on the second Indian man: "We don't even know his name," she said. "A lot of immigrants from California get shipped out and lost in the system."

If ICE is to be believed, the raid wasn't part of any broader criminal investigation. As such, it represents a particularly brash disregard for San Francisco's five-year-old resolution declaring that the city won't participate in immigration raids.

"Like many of the raids that happen now, the feds just abused the opportunity to sweep up as many people as they could," said Ted Wong, policy director of Chinese for Affirmative Action.

Wong was involved in investigating the last immigration raid in the city, at a restaurant in Chinatown last summer. That sweep involved not only ICE but also agents from several federal and state agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the lead agency in that raid, never divulged the purpose of the operation, said Wong, who speculated it might have been part of an investigation into wage fraud or some sort of trafficking.

In this latest case, "the target was a fugitive alien with final removal orders," said ICE spokesperson Lori Haley, who described the sweep simply as "part of an ongoing enforcement operation." Haley wouldn't disclose whether other agencies were involved but did say the operation wasn't part of any criminal or terrorism-related investigation.

Immigrant Rights Commission executive director Dang Pham said he had put a call into the San Francisco Police Department to ask if local authorities played any role in helping ICE – which would violate the city's sanctuary ordinance directing local authorities not to cooperate with immigration officials. SFPD spokespeople didn't return our call by press time.

The seven Mexicans swept up during the operation were janitors who were either arriving from or on their way to work on the morning of the raid, and they just happened to be on the first-floor landing when the ICE agents arrived.

"We're not street criminals," a soft-spoken Mexican (who asked not to be named), who's been in the United States only eight months and whose son, nephew, and two friends were deported as a result of the raid, told us. "We're just here to work and make a life for ourselves."

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