Oakland Mayor Faces Off Against ICE Over Warning Residents About Immigration Sweep

On Tuesday night, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 150 people in Northern California suspected of being undocumented immigrants. More than 850 others, immigration officials said, slipped through their fingers.

That large number is being blamed on the actions of Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, who on Saturday made the controversial decision to go on television to warn the immigrant community in Oakland that she had heard from “multiple credible sources” that ICE was preparing an immediate, large-scale immigration raid in the Bay Area.

“My priority is for the well-being and safety of all residents — particularly our most vulnerable,” she said in a statement. She also directed undocumented immigrants and their friends and family to a resource about their rights.

ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan condemned Schaaf’s “irresponsible” actions, saying in a statement Wednesday that “sanctuary jurisdictions like San Francisco and Oakland shield dangerous criminal aliens from federal law enforcement at the expense of public safety. … The Oakland mayor’s decision to publicize her suspicions about ICE operations further increased [the] risk for my officers and alerted criminal aliens—making clear that this reckless decision was based on her political agenda with the very federal laws that ICE is sworn to uphold.”

Homan also asserted that “ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately, and the agency prioritizes public and national security threats, immigration fugitives and illegal reentrants.” However, roughly half of the immigrants rounded up in the raid had no criminal convictions.

Schaaf, who worked on deportation cases as an attorney earlier in her career and who has said she felt a moral obligation to warn residents, told the Washington Post on Tuesday that she made the decision as part of the resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

She told the Post that because she found out about the sweep through unofficial sources and not government channels, she does not think she obstructed justice or broke the law. At least one former federal prosecutor disagrees.

Charge her with being complicit in the commission of a crime..they're illegals which means they committed a crime ..they broke the law when they came over here illegaly..and she is harboring criminals..charge her with that as well..it's time to get tough and take America back...that should take care of any argument the federal prosecutor has..

If they are here illegaly they have already committed a crime..as far as the children one could give special dispensation...jmo..

Libby the liberal...

It's laughable. Oakland is facing potential bankruptcy, has an illegal alien MS-13 gang problem and an out of control homeless population
and the mayor has time for this? Her concern is more for the illegal
criminals that live in the city? She should be removed from office.

I've been to Oakland.

Prisons are cleaner.


She should be sentenced to 'life without',
in a bay area rapid transit subway station.