Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf: Cities must keep pushing for immigrant rights
Libby Schaaf
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Demonstrators supporting immigrant rights gather in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood for a march toward downtown in May 2007.Darryl Bush / The Chronicle 2007
Three years ago Oakland sounded an alarm when we learned of a secret operation by President Donald Trump to attempt mass deportations of immigrants from our community. I knew the impending ICE raid on our city would have undoubtedly torn parents away from children, husbands away from wives.
Instead of standing down, we chose to speak up.
It’s hard to look back and make sense of the despotic, tyrannical cloud we all lived under. Immediately after our warning in Oakland, the U.S. attorney general attempted to ban federal aid to Oakland and all sanctuary cities. The president of the United States called for my imprisonment — a punishment I said I would accept — and then moved to hold immigrant children in cages. A Republican congressman from Iowa wrote federal legislation called “the Libby Schaaf Act” that promised to jail elected officials who alert their residents to ICE operations.