Community members and leaders demonstrated in City Heights on Wednesday afternoon to condemn heightened immigration enforcement operations throughout the county, including reported arrests near schools.
Read more ‘All these projects have problems.’ County approves East County solar and battery project
“It makes me angry. It makes me sad,” San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera told the crowd at the corner of Fairmount and University avenues. “No community should have to endure what these families are enduring.”
Wednesday’s rally and march came as community groups that monitor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity have sensed an increase in operations. Last week, a San Diego City College student was arrested near campus, and two parents were arrested near an elementary school in City Heights. In both incidents, the individuals arrested were Haitian immigrants.
The protest was held in the same area where additional ICE activity occurred Tuesday.
At least 200 people — including Mayor Todd Gloria, state Sen. Akilah Weber and county Supervisor Paloma Aguirre — listened to speakers before marching to nearby Euclid Elementary School.
“The student trying to get to school has value. The child wondering if their parents will come back tonight has value,” Pastor Johny Oxeda from Fairmount Haitian Community Church said during the rally. “These are not statistics. They are all neighbors.”
Pedro Ríos, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program, said community organizations continue to get reports about ICE’s presence on a daily basis, as they have over the past few weeks. “There’s too much activity,” he said.
Read more Photos: City Heights ICE rally
Data obtained from ICE by the Deportation Data Project via a public records request and analyzed by the Union-Tribune shows that ICE made about 9,200 arrests from Jan. 1 to Aug. 6 of this year, nearly 2,000 of which were in July alone — the busiest month of the second Trump administration to date.
“I have heard from a family too afraid to buy groceries, too afraid to go to work, too afraid to send their children to school,” said Oxeda. “This is not only about our community, Haitian families, Mexican families, every immigrant and refugee family in City Heights — different languages, different stories, but the same fear,” he added.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the San Diego City College student who was arrested had entered illegally in 2023 and was “released into the country by the Biden administration.” In the case of the parents, the federal agency said the couple entered lawfully in 2022, and that “in violation of our nation’s laws, they overstayed their welcome and refused to depart.”
A DHS spokesperson said Wednesday in a statement that “ICE does not target schools.”
“This is just another false narrative to try and demonize our brave ICE law enforcement who are facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats,” the spokesperson said.
School officials have condemned such arrests.
“When immigration enforcement occurs near a school, the effects do not end with the individual being detained. Children see it. Families hear about it. Fear travels quickly through classrooms, playgrounds, and neighborhoods. Students arrive at school carrying questions and anxiety that no child, especially our youngest learners, should have to carry,” the San Diego Unified School District said last week in a statement.
Read more Speaker Johnson recesses the House early as Rep. Thomas Massie pushes Hegseth impeachment
