Activists in El Cajon held a rally to denounce the operation and push local officials for answers, reports NBC 7’s Shelby Bremer.
A group of activists rallied in El Cajon on Tuesday, both in response to a federal immigration enforcement operation in East San Diego County days before and to push local officials following the passage of a controversial resolution affirming the city’s intent to cooperate with immigration officials.
“What has happened is just an attack on our community, and it makes me realize that we still have a far ways to go,” said Mairene Branham, the president of Latinos en Acción. Branham came to El Cajon undocumented at 8 months old and is now a U.S. citizen and small business owner.
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Latinos en Acción organized Tuesday's demonstration outside city hall, following the immigration enforcement operation at San Diego Powder and Protective Coatings in unincorporated El Cajon on Thursday.
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Federal law enforcement from multiple agencies descended on the business, executing a search warrant that stemmed from a 2022 drug trafficking investigation that evolved into a probe of employees who were not authorized to work in the U.S.
Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego said 11 people were arrested on criminal charges and five on immigration violations.
“These types of actions cause tremendous trauma to members of our communities,” Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee said.
“If El Cajon is not safe, nor is the rest of San Diego County, nor is North County, East County, South Bay, central. No one is safe until El Cajon and all of our Latinx brothers and sisters are safe,” Yusef Miller of Activist San Diego said.
The group rallying on Tuesday made note of the resolution the El Cajon City Council passed on its third attempt in February, affirming the city’s intent to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as the debate over local law enforcement’s role in that effort continues.
“We want to be cooperating with the federal government,” said Mayor Bill Wells, who championed that resolution. “We think it’s important that we follow the rule of law. And I think that this is what the people voted for, so they want it.”
Latinos en Acción marched into El Cajon’s city hall Tuesday to file an open records request, asking for Wells and other members of the city council’s correspondence with federal immigration officials, including President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, who Wells has met with previously.
“It’s so important that the community knows when their own local mayor is having more conversations with people in Mar-a-Lago or Washington, D.C., than their own community’s residents,” said Salvador Sarmiento of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
“People are worried about it. People have questions. People are upset about it, and it’s an issue of public interest, right?” Sarmiento said. “So people should know transparency doesn’t work in a vacuum. We need to make it work.”
“It’s fine. People do that all the time,” Wells said of that public records request. “That’s fine. I have nothing to hide. I don’t think anybody else has either.”
Branham said the ongoing immigration battle awakened a new generation of activists in El Cajon and beyond.
“This is the resistance, actually, I think that we needed,” she said. “Thank you for that push because, now, moving forward, you are going to see me at every turn of the page.”
“At every stroke of the pen that they are willing to do, we're going to be right there to remind them that this cannot go on any further anymore,” Branham said.
