*Oakland’s Public Safety Committee will take up the ICE raid on November 14 at 6pm at City Hall after chair Desley Brooks and at-large council rep Rebecca Kaplan asked for the report. The Chief of Police is expected to attend.*
After completing an investigation of the West Oakland ICE raid of August 16, Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission concluded that “all evidence presently known supports that the Oakland Police Department participated in a raid on August 16 that led only to a civil immigration arrest, in violation of Oakland’s Sanctuary City policy and OPD Immigration Policy 415.”
The Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council require the Oakland Chief of Police present a report on this raid to the Council at a public hearing.
The investigation further concluded that “of the nine most material representations on the matter made by the Oakland Chief of Police, research supported that six were false and one more is likely false.”
Video of the Privacy Advisory Commission Public Hearing on October 5, 2017
The investigation findings and exhibits can be read here.
On October 3, the Oakland City Council unanimously approved a new ordinance subjecting all local law enforcement agreements with federal partners to abide by the city’s laws and undergo civil rights and privacy reviews.
238 human rights organizations,(including Oakland Privacy), demanded that the White House rescind the latest iteration of the unconstitutional and discriminatory “Muslim ban” executive travel order. In an open letter released on September 27, 2017, the groups stated ““If you refuse to rescind this unlawful order, we commit to do all in our power to protect those communities being targeted by EO-3 and to support litigation to defeat this unconstitutional ban. History will long remember, and we will not quickly forget, this singular assault on America’s commitment to freedom of religion.”
This September 2017 article in the NYU Law Review by Elizabeth Joh gives a few shoutouts to the work of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission and OP member Mike Katz-Lacabe.
A dozen community members affiliated with various Bay Area nonprofit organizations observed the 2017 Urban Shield Expo and Anti-Terrorism training drill. The Stop Urban Shield coalition collated their observations and issued an event report card.