The Weekly Dispatch
Community-powered immigration news from the Bay Area.
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Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Erica Hellerstein, senior immigration, labor, and economics reporter.
A few weeks ago, I met up with a former colleague, who was in town from the U.K. to study the Trump administration’s immigration and border enforcement policies. His research focuses on international migration, and we had met while I worked as a reporter for a global newsroom, often covering the intersection between immigration enforcement and technology.
We discussed the federal government’s crackdown in places like Minneapolis before our attention turned to the Bay Area. Then came the question I had been expecting, but didn’t quite know how to answer: Why had the region not experienced the kind of large-scale, sweeping ICE raids that had paralyzed life in the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Los Angeles? After all, the Bay has a large immigrant population and well-established liberal bonafides. It seems like a natural target for the Trump administration.
Over the past few months, I’ve encountered this question various times. While theories abound, I’ve had yet to encounter deeply researched analysis about why the Bay Area, so far, has been spared from Minneapolis-style ICE raids. That’s why I was intrigued by a new report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, which offers insight into the question my colleague and I had discussed.
The study focuses on the economic ripple effects of both small and large-scale immigration enforcement actions in the Bay Area, which is home to approximately 477,000 undocumented immigrants. It appears to be the most comprehensive report yet examining the economic impacts of the federal government’s immigration policies in the Bay Area, which is one of the world’s largest regional economies.
The study estimates that the undocumented workforce in the Bay Area earns an estimated $21.5 billion annually, contributing billions in state and federal income taxes. The mass detention and deportation of this workforce, which numbers roughly 350,000, would have significant impacts on the Bay Area’s economy and the industries most reliant on undocumented workers, such as construction or hospitality. Without these workers, the report estimates that the Bay Area’s economy could shrink by $67 billion a year.
The study was undertaken because no research to date has quantified the economic impacts of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Bay Area. The report’s author, Abby Raisz, who is vice president of research for the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, told me that its emphasis on the economic ramifications of the government’s immigration policies might resonate with people who may otherwise be unmoved by moral arguments.
“This paper is an economics paper that is meant to talk to people who really are not swayed by the humanitarian aspect of this,” she said.
Limitations on mass deportations in the Bay
Many of the projected economic losses in the report are hypothetical, illustrating what could happen if a large-scale enforcement blitz descends upon the Bay Area. So why hasn’t it happened yet?
This is where the study offers an explanation. It highlights four main “structural constraints” in the Bay Area that make it more difficult for the federal government to conduct mass raids.
The first of these constraints is a strong regional network of sanctuary policies that limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials. While these policies are well-established in Bay Area cities like Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley, over the past several months there has been momentum to build on these protections with the enactment of “ICE-Free Zones” across Bay Area cities and counties that restrict immigration agents from using public property for enforcement.
By comparison, the report points out that Minnesota has relatively uneven sanctuary policies across jurisdictions. Unlike California, Minnesota is not enshrined in policy as a sanctuary state. Minneapolis has stronger protections in place, such as a local ordinance limiting local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials. But Minneapolis is just 40 miles from a county jail that contracts with ICE to hold immigrant detainees.
Which brings us to our second constraint. All of California’s immigration detention facilities are located in the central or southern part of the state. And many city and county jails in California do not contract with ICE to detain immigrants. The three privately operated ICE detention centers that serve Northern California are in Kern County, and the closest facility to the Bay Area is outside of Bakersfield, roughly 260 miles from Oakland and San Francisco. This distance, the report explains, “complicates transportation, staffing, and detention logistics, making rapid, high-volume arrests difficult to sustain.” Compare this geographic landscape to Los Angeles, where there are closer nearby immigration detention centers, including two facilities in San Bernardino County.
The lack of nearby detention centers in the Bay Area helps to contextualize some of the widespread opposition to the rumored reopening of the shuttered former women’s prison in Dublin, FCI Dublin, into an immigration detention center. Converting the prison into a detention center would likely make it easier to detain larger numbers of Bay Area residents. Last week, Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors passed a largely symbolic resolution unanimously opposing the prison’s conversion into a detention center.
The third constraint is a robust immigrant-serving regional ecosystem made up of rapid response phone hotlines, legal service providers, labor unions, and nonprofits. These networks work closely with each other, across city and county lines, to respond quickly to immigration enforcement, verifying ICE sightings in real-time and providing legal support to people facing detention and deportation. For more on how these networks work together, check out our postmortem from October after the threatened National Guard and ICE deployment to the Bay Area.
Finally, the fourth element is strong coordination and communication between local government officials, community groups, and business leaders, which the report argues has played an important role in “de-escalating larger-scale immigration enforcement in the Bay Area.” An oft-cited example of this dynamic was the back-channeling between San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and a handful of high-profile tech executives following the White House’s threatened Bay Area ICE surge, which never materialized.
Perhaps this persuasion, between the Bay Area’s tech and business leaders and the White House, is what spared it from the mass enforcement seen in Chicago, a city that has strong sanctuary protections, no nearby center for long-term detention, and a relatively robust immigrant-serving infrastructure. Maybe this structural constraint was not as present in Chicago as it has been in the Bay.
Of course, it’s not a perfect science. As Raisz pointed out, “some of it is just luck and chance.”
While the calculus for the administration could change, thus far, these four factors have worked together to raise the logistical, financial, and operational cost of conducting large-scale raids in the region, the report argues. I’ll continue to track the evolution of each of these four constraints, paying especially close attention to the fight over FCI Dublin and local proposals to expand sanctuary protections. As always, feel free to reach out to me at ehellerstein@eltimpano.org with any questions, tips, or reflections.
Thank you, see you next week.
—Erica Hellerstein
Resource of the week
El TImpano’s Spanish-language immigration FAQ highlights the Bay Area’s network of rapid response hotlines, legal service providers, and nonprofits working closely with each other to respond to immigration enforcement, verify ICE sightings and provide legal support to those facing detention and deportation.
We’d appreciate it if you shared this guide with anyone who could use it and let them know they can text us any questions at (510) 800-8305.
Ear to the Ground
Hi, I’m Vanessa Flores, El Tímpano’s community reporter. El Tímpano’s text messaging (SMS) service reaches more than 6,500 Spanish-speaking immigrants across the Bay Area. In February, we heard from a Hayward subscriber who desperately reached out for help with her rent. “I’m a single mother of a one-year-old baby and a 10-year-old boy, and I am looking for help with my rent payment for this month,” she texted. “I work, but my income just isn’t enough to cover it this time.”
In the days that followed, we shared multiple resources that might help. Since the beginning of the year, rent assistance has emerged as a significant and ongoing need for our SMS community. It’s also one of the more difficult resources for community members to access, we’ve noticed. Depending on their location, options and funding may be limited, eligibility requirements may prevent them from receiving help, and lengthy response times can be challenging.
For some of our SMS subscribers, a combination of limited job opportunities, health issues, and childcare has made it difficult to find stable work. In the case of the Hayward subscriber, her one-year-old fell ill, requiring her to stay home with him for three weeks. This, along with recurring immigration appointments, led her to resign from a new job because she “felt embarrassed” about how often she had to be away from work, she told us. As a result, she decided to start working as a DoorDash driver.
After a month of checking in with her, she still had not received any assistance with her rent. “I’m absolutely desperate. Today is the end of the month, and I think I’ll have to move into a room [from an apartment],” she told us on March 31.
We will keep following this situation and story as it impacts our SMS subscribers. You can reach me at vflores@eltimpano.org if you have any tips, ideas, or information.
—Vanessa Flores
From the El Tímpano Newsroom
El Tímpano’s Gabriela Calvillo Alvarez and Hiram Durán bring us a story and photo essay about a Spanish-language book club that has grown into a source of community at the Newark Library in South Alameda County.
At a Spanish language book club in Newark, residents read to remember themselves
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