‘We don't deserve this.' Women held in limbo at ICE's downtown S.F. center awaiting bed space
The 27-year-old Colombian woman from San Jose said in an interview she was held overnight in a cell on the sixth floor of 630 Sansome St., along with two other women who were also detained on Wednesday afternoon at the U.S. Department of Justice's San Francisco Immigration Court. She described the room as a small space with a toilet, a bench, a thin mattress and a small window where she could see officers standing outside.
ICE representatives did not immediately respond to questions about the woman's arrest and detention. The Chronicle is not naming her, per its anonymous source policy, due to her fears of retaliation.
The women are among many immigrants who have been held at the San Francisco ICE field office in recent weeks while officials make arrangements to transfer people to detention centers, said Jessica Yamane, an immigration attorney with Pangea Legal Services and Santa Clara County's Rapid Response Network. Some have been held for days, she said, a source of additional trauma as they already face uncertainty over what will happen to them.
Yamane said ICE representatives told her that the woman was being held at the field office because there were no available beds at migrant detention facilities. Detained migrants from the Bay Area are typically transferred to detention centers in Southern California.
Immigration attorneys and advocates have reported overcrowding and deteriorating conditions at ICE detention facilities across the country. An ICE representative told NPR that 'some ICE facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations' and implementing measures to manage capacity.
ICE typically places immigrants in holding cells in its field offices for a few hours at a time before transferring them elsewhere, but there have been reports of longer stays and overcrowding in these facilities as well.
Yamane said the overnight detentions at the 630 Sansome St. building reminded her of when immigration officials used the upper floors of the building as a detention center for Chinese immigrants post-World War II. 'It's been the same mechanism of terror through detention that have broken people's spirits for generations,' she said.
On Thursday afternoon in a cold visitation room, the Colombian woman told the Chronicle through a glass window that plainclothes ICE officers arrested her as she exited a courtroom at 100 Montgomery St. around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. An asylum seeker, the woman said she had just attended her first courthouse appointment, where the judge rescheduled her appointment for October because she didn't have an attorney.
'Everything was going well. I didn't see any risk because the judge gave me another date,' she said.
Two men identified themselves as ICE agents, handcuffed her and walked out the building through a back door, she said. They forcefully pushed her into an unmarked car and told her they were taking her to the ICE field office, she said.
'They were hurting me,' she said, tears falling down her cheeks. 'I hadn't done anything wrong.'
She was placed in a cell with two other women. During the interview with the Chronicle, an immigration official walked into the visitation room to drop off a meal — a bean and cheese burrito, a breakfast bar and bottled water. She said ICE officials have not told her where she will be sent.
'They're treating us like criminals,' she said. 'We don't deserve this treatment. We are just trying to do the right thing.'
She said she flew to Mexico and crossed the U.S. border in December 2022, fleeing violence she experienced in her hometown of Bogota. In the U.S., she moved in with her boyfriend in San Jose and worked at a local restaurant and delivered food via UberEats with her partner. Their dream, she said, was to save enough money to open their own auto repair and body shop.
'It's a dream that I don't know will happen now,' she said.
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