A public records request by Oakland Privacy member Mike Katz Lacabe for pictures from the Urban Shield 2017 counterterrorism drill revealed Homeland Security Investigations/ICE participated in Urban Shield, despite there being no listing for HSI or ICE in the participant list.
East Bay Express coverage: Alameda County Sheriff Hosted ICE at Urban Shield
Telmundo coverage: Activista: Agentes De ICE Entrenados A La Bahia
“It’s easy to look at it this way: The Department of Homeland Security equals ICE equals training at Urban Shield equals terrorizing communities,” Alameda County spokesperson Sgt. Ray Kelly said. “It’s a lot more complicated than that”.
It was Homeland Security Investigations or HSI which raided West Oakland on August of 2017, six weeks after the City of Oakland canceled their memorandum of understanding with the agency. The raid resulted in the detention and pending deportation of a 25 year old undocumented Oakland resident. A hearing by Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commisson concluded that the Oakland Police Department’s assistance in that raid constituted a violation of the City’s Sanctuary legislation and led to a resolution ending all municipal cooperation with HSI or ICE by the City of Oakland.
Since the West Oakland ICE raid, California passed SB 54 to establish California as a “sanctuary state”, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf made headlines warning the Bay Area of incoming retalitory ICE raids, a warning ICE director Mike Homan credited with preventing 850+ potential deportations, and the Trump DOJ has threatened the Bay Area’s sanctuary cities, which include San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose with dire consequences. Alameda County is a sanctuary county and has been since 2014.