The Abridged version:
- Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty laid out how the city will respond to federal immigration agents operating in the city.
- The mayor met Friday with four leaders from Sacramento City Unified to strengthen communications between the city and the district on ICE activity.
- City leaders are facing pressure from a coalition of 29 activist groups urging for stronger immigration protections.
After a string of recent immigration enforcement arrests near Sacramento schools, city and school leaders are promising to work closer with one another on a new notification system.
Mayor Kevin McCarty said at a news conference Friday that the city and Sacramento City Unified leaders are “united in vehement opposition” to ICE activity around Sacramento schools.
Those remarks followed a meeting at City Hall where four leaders from the school district called for the city to take a stronger stance toward ICE operations near local schools. The group included Superintendent Cancy McArn and board trustees Jasjit Singh, April Ibarra and Chinua Rhodes.
“We fall short of being a sanctuary city when we’re not collaborating,” said City Councilmember Mai Vang.
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Vang added that the two institutions agreed to have stronger lines of communication between the city manager and the school superintendent when it comes to immigration enforcement in the city.
McCarty said he wants to see both the city and the school district share information about ICE activities in the area, rather than depending on social media.
“The more we can have official government-to-government communication, the more we can make us safer,” McCarty said.
“The biggest thing we’re walking away with is an intention to work together,” Singh added.
City Manager tells local police not to assist ICE
School leaders noted an uptick in the presence of federal immigration agents and possible arrests near Sacramento schools.
On Oct. 27, the school district released a video urging parents to make sure the “safest person” available is helping with school pick-ups and drop-offs for students.
“If you are undocumented, you are at risk,” Singh said at the time.
Earlier this week, the father of an Earl Warren Elementary student was arrested three blocks away from the school, The Sacramento Bee reported.
Two weeks ago, a man was following an ICE vehicle to observe it and was pulled over by a Sacramento Police Department officer for a traffic stop near Ethel Phillips Elementary, according to Fox40.
The latter event saw City Manager Maraskeshia Smith issue a memo calling on Sacramento police officers to not act as a “security detail” to ICE.
“The mere presence of individuals observing federal agents, even when those agents find the attention unwelcome or uncomfortable, does not establish a public safety emergency or justify a police response,” Smith’s memo states.
The memo adds that Sacramento police can only respond to a “legitimate emergency involving ICE personnel” and that their involvement should be limited to “addressing the specific threat, criminal conduct, or public safety emergency.”
The mayor’s comments arrived as local leaders are seeing more pressure from immigrant rights groups to take a stronger stance on protections for local immigrant communities as well.
On Thursday, a coalition of 29 activist organizations said Sacramento’s current sanctuary city policies were only “empty statements.” The collective is calling on the city to end its contracts for automated license plate readers, which have personal data the coalition says has been accessed by the federal government.
The group also accused the Sacramento Police Department of “citing and brutalizing” protestors outside of the John Moss Federal Building in Downtown. The building houses local ICE offices and immigration court, and has been the site of frequent protests during the second Trump Administration.
