ICE agents attempt to arrest undocumented man at his Santa Rosa home

Santa Rosa resident Genesis Hernandez had just been dropped off at home Wednesday morning by her boyfriend when he called her and said federal immigration agents were trying to pull him over.

By the time Henandez got to the door, her boyfriend had parked out front of the Barndance Lane home the couple share with her family and was running inside, she said. They’d prepared for a day like this because her boyfriend is undocumented, but they hoped it would never come.

“Ever since Trump came into the presidency, we always had a plan,” Hernandez, 19, said.

The two-hour standoff that ensued while Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents blocked off the residential street west of Stony Point Road in southwest Santa Rosa, trying to get the man to come outside, was another public sign of what local immigrant advocates fear is an escalation of the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration enforcement in places with sanctuary policies.

The first signal came Tuesday when Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents arrested two men at the Sonoma County Superior Court campus, one in a parking lot and another outside a courtroom, local court officials said. Both actions violated state law barring immigration enforcement at California courthouses, and drew condemnation from top Sonoma County criminal justice officials, who said the arrests undermined due process.

An estimated half-dozen men were arrested by Immigration Customs and Enforcement in Sonoma County this week, according to local attorneys and immigrant advocates.

“They are trying to retaliate against this county for its protection of its community,” said Susan Shaw, executive director of the North Bay Organizing Project, who answered Hernandez’s boyfriend’s frantic call to the group’s 24-hour emergency hotline for undocumented immigrants caught up in apprehension operations.

The agents ultimately left without taking him into custody because they had no warrant. Hernandez, who declined to identify the man out of concern for his freedom, said their preparations for an encounter with ICE agents included how he should run into a home, church or any other building if immigration officials tried to detain him.

“They said to tell him to come out, and I was like ‘OK, if you want me to tell him to come out, I will. ?Gladly,’?” Hernandez said. “But show me the warrant.”

David Jennings, San Francisco field office director for ICE, said in a statement that sanctuary policies prevent meaningful collaboration between local and federal law enforcement and “shield criminal aliens who prey on people in their own and other communities.”

“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” Jennings said.

Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro said the department’s dispatch center received several calls from ICE agents Wednesday alerting the department they were conducting missions in various parts of the city.

Navarro said his department does not participate in civil immigration enforcement missions that do not involve serious criminal investigations, and his department does not interfere with other law enforcement activities.

“Our biggest thing, and I can’t stress it enough, is we want to make sure the public feels safe to call us if they need assistance,” Navarro said. “We’re not part of these (federal immigration) operations.”

Navarro said he is concerned that message is lost when ICE agents wear vests with the word “police” on the back, as they did Wednesday in Santa Rosa. That might make people think Santa Rosa police officers are enforcing federal immigration laws - which they do not, the chief reiterated. Navarro said he plans to discuss his concerns about the uniform with the local ICE supervisor.

“We can’t dictate what other law enforcement agencies wear because they have their own dress policy and code,” Navarro said. “Our concern is that people think they’re local law enforcement - but we’re not taking part in these (immigration) operations.”

ICE officials have released the names of two men arrested at the courthouse Tuesday, who are in federal custody and awaiting immigration proceedings.

Antonio Hernandez Lopez, 37, a Mexican national, was facing local charges after his Dec. 24, arrest by Santa Rosa police on suspicion of domestic violence against a partner, drunken driving and preventing a witness from reporting, Moor said. Lopez had a DUI conviction from 2005. He’d been apprehended by federal immigration agents four times between 2004 and 2007 and voluntarily returned to Mexico, according to spokesman Jonathan Moor.

Pedro Romero Aguirre, 35, a Mexican national, was facing a probation violation stemming from a 2019 conviction for misdemeanor battery, according to ICE and court records. He has prior convictions for misdemeanor trespassing, driving without a license and misdemeanor drunken driving, plus a previous immigration violation for illegal entry, federal officials said. He was apprehended six times by federal immigration agents in 2010 alone, according to Moor.

Sonoma County Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi said she spoke with a witness who saw a third man being led away by federal immigration agents at the courthouse within minutes of the other arrests, and she is trying to determine if he was released or if his arrest wasn’t publicly acknowledged by ICE.

It’s been years, and perhaps as long as a decade, since federal immigration agents last made such arrests in the courthouse or campus, she said.

“The law says they can’t make arrests in the courthouse,” Pozzi said. “There is a multitude of reasons. It puts fear in the community.”

Jennings, the ICE field office director, criticized California’s sanctuary policies, specifically the new law effective this year barring civil arrests at courthouses, but said state laws “cannot and will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly-enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.”

ICE officials did not provide information on any other people taken into custody.

Private defense attorney Walter Rubenstein said that the mother of one of his clients called him Tuesday to say her son had been arrested by ICE agents outside their home. Rubenstein declined to provide the man’s name or criminal history but said he’d been living here at least six years and had a construction job, a child and other family here.

About 6 a.m. Wednesday, two men were apprehended by ICE agents as they were being released from the minimum security jail in north Santa Rosa, Pozzi said. The men were being picked up by representatives of residential alcohol treatment programs mandated by court orders, but were instead taken into federal custody, Pozzi said.

She criticized the timing of the deportation sweep before they could complete treatment programs.

“Both have families,” Pozzi said.

Wednesday morning about 10 o’clock when the ICE agents came to Barndance Lane, Hernandez left her boyfriend in the house and went outside to meet the officers in the street.

About 10 heavily armed ICE agents wearing tactical gear and vests with the word “police” on them were outside. Hernandez told the officers she needed to see a warrant for her boyfriend’s arrest. The agents initially said they had one then said they would acquire one, but instead announced over a loudspeaker that they planned to close off the street, Hernandez said.

The agents’ unmarked vehicles were parked askance in the street with flashing red and blue lights, drawing neighbors outside.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend had called the emergency hotline and was talking to Shaw about his rights. She deployed seven volunteers, which advocates call legal observers, to Barndance Lane to monitor whatever action the federal agents might take. They stayed at the scene throughout the encounter and posted photographs of the agents on social media.

Shaw said she provided the man with information about constitutional protections that give him the right to refuse entry to law enforcement officers who don’t have judicial warrants. The constitution also gives people the right to stay silent, Shaw said.

“I can’t even think of what’s next, I can’t even think of what’s going to happen after this,” Hernadez said.