Orange City Council members will not ask ICE and other federal agents to wear visible IDs and remove their masks when operating in the city after deportation sweeps began last month.
On Tuesday, a majority of city council members narrowly voted 4-3 to table a resolution asking federal law enforcement to identify themselves when operating in Orange despite a host of residents demanding them to approve it.
Councilmembers Arianna Barrios, Ana Gutierrez and John Gyllenhammer were the dissenting votes.
“Regardless of how we feel about this issue, I honestly don’t think the federal government is going to listen to what the Orange City Council has to say,” Mayor Dan Slater said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Santa Ana and LA are finding out the hard way that their efforts in this regard are being completely dismissed, and in fact, they’ve been made targets. This issue belongs squarely at the feet of Congress and the courts.”
Barrios and Gutierrez spearheaded the resolution after community fears of immigration raids conducted by masked federal agents who don’t always identify themselves.
At the same time, there been increasing reports of people impersonating ICE agents and committing crimes like sexual assault.
[Read: Calls for Unmasking ICE Could Grow in Orange County]
Gutierrez described witnessing an ICE detention outside her house.
“It’s very hard to watch my community and my ethnicity being just racially profiled and treated in this matter. And like I said last time, this is my country, the only country I know, and it’s very hard for me to see what is happening, because this is not the America that I grew up in,” she said.
She said it’s making people feel unsafe.
“It’s hard because I don’t feel safe for my own son and my daughter or my husband to even cut the hedges around my house, because he’ll be cutting the hedges and wearing his straw hat … with his very thick accent that he speaks, it’s not safe. I don’t feel safe,” Gutierrez said.
Barrios said while she supports efforts to deport criminals, the sweeping deportation efforts threaten civil rights.
“What I’m not supportive of is indiscriminate sweeps of our streets and neighborhoods that are snatching the undocumented, legal residents and citizens alike,” Barrios said.
A majority of city council members said they were against ICE agents wearing masks to conduct deportation sweeps, but also said the resolution was unenforceable and they have no say over federal immigration enforcement.
They instead directed residents to raise their concerns with members of congress.
“I cannot tell the federal government what to do, but you have two great congressmen who cover Orange – Young Kim and Lou Correa,” said Councilwoman Kathy Tavoularis, who noted she was the only naturalized immigrant on the dais.
“I can’t be a hypocrite and tell the federal government what to do. I can’t as a city councilwoman, but you can. You have more power in this than we do. You can tell the feds.”
That same night, Anaheim City Council members voted unanimously behind closed doors to join a federal lawsuit challenging the ICE raids in Southern California – making the city the second in OC to join the lawsuit alleging federal immigration officers are racial profiling people to make arrests.
[Read: Anaheim Looks to Join Lawsuit Against ICE Raids]
As part of that lawsuit, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction against roving deportation raids throughout much of Southern California.
Unmasking ICE
Both federal and state legislators are considering new laws to ban federal immigration officers from wearing masks during the sweeps and require them to wear visible IDs and badges.
[Read: Santana: Unmasking ICE]
Barrios said that masked agents conducting immigration raids creates a public safety problem and opens the door for people to easily impersonate ICE agents.
“There are people who have accused both of us, that we’re being hysterical, that we’re, you know, just silly girls, and that this is not something that’s actually happening. It is happening,” she said.
“If you have to wear a mask and do your job, you’re doing it wrong.”
City Councilman Denis Bilodeau, who attended the meeting by teleconference, said ICE agents are being targeted.
“ICE agents have been doxed. Doxing is when people track these people’s identification down and they put their home address on the internet,” he said Tuesday. “They’re probably operating in a certain manner to protect themselves from harm.”
His comments drew a rebuttal from Gutierrez.
“As much as you are saying that you care about these ICE agents … you really need to care also about your residents where you live and this is backing up our community. This is saying we stand with them,” she said.
Gyllenhammer, who opposed tabling the resolution, said law enforcement officers should identify themselves and was against indiscriminate sweeps.
At the same time, Gyllenhammer said the resolution was unenforceable and worried that it could have unintended consequences.
“My one challenge here is that I believe if we take this out fully, we remove a tool that law enforcement should have access to keep them safe in certain instances,” he said.
“If a mask is a tool specifically leveraged for bomb squad or SWAT, it is entirely possible there’s an incident where something like this would require a mask,” Gyllenhammer said, adding the changes could gut the resolution.
Orange Police Chief Adam Jevec said his department does not take the same approach as federal immigration agents to policing the city and that police officers are held to a higher standard.
“The expectation of our community is that we are transparent and are held accountable. That’s why we wear body worn cameras, that’s why we have reports, that’s why we have uniforms, name badges and policies that represent that,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Jevec said the department can not interfere with immigration sweeps, but can bring transparency to the raids.
“We can be on scene hopefully to try to validate and verify that a crime of kidnapping is not occurring. We can hopefully provide neutrality and hopefully just our presence to provide calm and prevent some of the chaos that many described as happening after the incident of the detention,” he said.
City Councilman Jon Dumitru, who successfully called to table the resolution, said it will make no difference on how federal agents enforce immigration law.
“They don’t care. They don’t listen. They’re not going to care,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting. “They don’t have to listen to the City of Orange. So in the end, it’s a piece of paper that doesn’t matter.”
Dumitru added Orange County Supervisors have not passed a similar resolution.
But that could change.
In a Tuesday email statement, OC Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said he is considering proposing a resolution requiring federal law enforcement agents to disclose identification during immigration detentions.
Meanwhile, a majority of Orange officials dismissed a request by Gutierrez and Barrios last month to launch an online immigration resource page on the city website amid fears about the impacts recent ICE sweeps have had on Latino families in the city.
“We wouldn’t even be here if you had put a page on our website – a simple page on our website,” Barrios said at Tuesday’s meeting. “This is just despicable.”
[Read: Division Over ICE Raids Flares up in Orange]
At that same meeting in June, Dumitru voiced support for using fire hoses against protesters that break the law – remarks a couple of residents criticized on Tuesday.
Dumitru said it bothers him “that there’s a bunch of folks running around that aren’t in uniform.”
“I think that it’s an expectation of a society that’s governed in transparency and accountability, and I think that when you add in confusion, it creates unnecessary tension for everyone involved,” he said Tuesday about law enforcement wearing masks.
“At the same time, we have rioters wearing masks that are destroying public property. They’re destroying police cars, they’re destroying private property, they’re looting. It’s all frightening. It shouldn’t be happening in a civilized world,” Dumitru said.
Charlene Cheng, a city spokeswoman, said in a Tuesday email there have not been any reported incidents of destruction of public property, police cars and looting amid anti-ICE protests in Orange this summer.
Orange Sounds Off on ICE
Tuesday’s decision comes after dozens of Orange residents showed up to the meeting – many dressed in white – to voice their support for the resolution, arguing that requiring ICE to identify themselves was important for public safety and to help ease fears in the community.
A couple of speakers compared the fear felt in the community to that of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in Occupied Netherlands during World War II.
“You don’t know what it’s like to live with this fear. People are being picked up by masked agents based off of what the color of their skin, the language they speak, and we shouldn’t be scared. You’re not the ones getting stopped, questioned or snatched. We are,” said Cynthia Gonzalez, a resident, at Tuesday’s meeting.
John Reina, the only resident to speak out against the resolution Tuesday, said it was illegal and unenforceable.
“This resolution hinders and interferes with federal officers’ ability to safely conduct their legal operations in our city,” he said at the meeting.
“The real danger to us is the rioters who shoot firearms, throw rocks, toss fireworks and hurl concrete blocks and other items at our law enforcement all the while wearing masks,” Reina said.
Mary Obershlake, a U.S. Army veteran and Orange resident, said elected leaders have a responsibility to act.
“We can start the fight against this encroaching evil in our midst, heavily armed men in masks without judicial warrants are denying our neighbors their rights – the very right from the constitution you’ve each sworn to uphold. Tonight, honor your oath, represent us,” she said.
“Be American.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.