ICE has been busy in the Bay Area this month raiding Mexican restuarants, picking up undocumented workers and harassing students outside their schools in Berkeley and Oakland. But their onslaught has not gone unanswered as community activists, students and even politicians have condemned ICE action.

From gathering in the hundreds to protest outside ICE offices in San Francisco to sending out 'ICE-alerts' on the NLG Immigrant Committee list-serve to getting pro-bono attorneys for arrestees, the Bay Area Immigration Coalition has taken on the task to challenge the ICE.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee released a press statement, in which she stated

"To conduct such an operation near or around a public school campus is a violation of the sanctity of the education process, and is intentionally meant to intimidate those who live in the community.  I do not support these intimidation policies and I am planning a district outreach event in the future to hear directly from my constituents about their experiences with agency officials."

Incensed with the raids and unwanted presence of the ICE, students at Berkeley High school formed a new organization called Fighting for Immigrant Rights and  Equality (FIRE) to first and foremost form a protective human chain around the school and later hold a protest day with teach-ins to send a strong message that the ICE was unwelcome in sanctuary cities.

When ICE officers were hanging around "like commandoes" (in the words of one student) near Oakland and Berkeley schools, the Bay Area Immigrant Coalition and other community activists were organizing legal observers and documented persons to pick up students from school at 3 p.m.

According to an old internal Immigration Office of Operations memo that I managed to obtain, the ICE must NOT conduct operations at schools: "It is a policy of the Service to attempt to avoid apprehension of persons and to tightly control investigative operations on the premises of schools..." Is there a newer amended memo whereby the ICE has changed its modus operandi and now instigate fear and disrupt the education of our students by standing guard outside school property?