Phoenix protesters demand to be heard as council moves to address ICE accountability

Armed with a brass band, megaphones and signs, constituents made themselves heard at the Phoenix City Council work study session held on Tuesday to discuss a Community Transparency Initiative to ensure protections for the community from federal immigration raids. This comes amid not only a record number of migrants in ICE custody — over 70,000 detainees, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data obtained by CBS News — but nationwide backlash in wake of the recent killings of Keith Porter Jr., Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

Tuesday’s disruptions prompted the council to end the study session early.

The council voted 8-1 in favor of directing city staff to draft an ordinance on how to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the DHS accountable should their operations increase in the city. Staff is to come back within 45 days with an ordinance addressing documenting federal enforcement activities that violate the law, looking at how ICE activity can impact city services and training city staff for federal interactions.

The crowd persisted even as the vote went through over the chants of “ICE out!” 

“This work study session does not allow public comment, so the council is having these very important conversations about our lives, about keeping us safe from ICE, without allowing public input, without allowing us to provide our opinions, our recommendations for what the city needs to do to protect us. So, we are here to let them know that they cannot silence us, that we are paying attention to what they're doing… This is very reactive to talk about this, to put this on the table, and [Mayor Gallego] knows that what they're trying to pass is not enough. And that's why we think she's not allowing [the] community to provide input,” Isabel Garcia, co-director at Poder in Action, said outside of council chambers alongside the growing crowd of protestors and additional organizations, like Puente Movement for Migrant Justice and Organized Power in Numbers (OPIN).

Despite the lack of public comment taken during this special session, community members created their own public forum, interjecting with calls on city officials for more proactive solutions following the 8-1 ruling against a community-proposed Resolution for Thriving Communities petition brought forth by grassroots organizers last summer, which addressed racial profiling and immigration enforcement violence in the city. 

“What it says to me, and I think what it says to our community, is that we cannot trust this council to protect us. That this council is actually just trying to protect themselves, and that they are not willing to step up to be brave, to be courageous, to be imaginative, to be creative, to actually protect Phoenix residents,” Garcia said about the Tuesday study session. “We read the proposals that they are going to try to discuss today, and they are very reactive and they're weak. They don't even meet the bare minimum of protections. It's all about data collection and potentially being able to sue the federal government. That's reactive, that's after the fact. It does nothing to prevent our communities from being brutalized, from being murdered and from being separated from our families and our communities. So, we need proactive action. We need actual proposals, actual things that are gonna prevent that brutalization from happening in the first place.”

These community groups and non-profit organizations have been present at council meetings since last spring, hoping to have a conversation with the council members regarding community protection from immigration raids that have been rapidly increasing in the state and across the country.

“We're here in community. We're going to be out here, holding space, making noise, making sure that they know that — both inside and outside — people are watching them and that we are not going to be silenced. And I think folks are out here expecting that [the] council will cancel this meeting and actually open up a meeting for community to provide public input,” Garcia said from outside the chambers before the study session began, citing a list of 14 demands drafted by organizers, five of them highlighted to be included in the city’s proposals. “We want them to publicly fund deportation defense, to ban ICE’s use of city-owned properties, to prohibit protest suppression — especially by the Phoenix Police — to end the arrest-to-deportation pipeline and end city collaboration with corporations that are profiting from ICE.”

With an increase in ICE activity and triple the amount of arrests in Arizona alone — as reported in a CALÓ News analysis — Valley residents fear federal enforcement tactics similar to reports coming out of Minneapolis during what’s been dubbed as Operation Metro Surge, with thousands of federal agents flooding the Twin Cities’ streets. 

Just last week, a Surprise City Council meeting stretched for hours as hundreds of residents presented testimony and pleas calling for local officials to stop the proposed ICE detention center that was quietly purchased by DHS for $70 million with no prior notification made to residents or city officials; one of the many detention centers popping up throughout the country with the excessive $45 billion boost for facility expansion granted by President Trump. 

Analisa Valdez (she/her) is a freelance journalist based in Phoenix. Her reporting includes community & culture, social justice, arts, business, and politics.