What should you do when ICE comes to the ballpark? Bay Area teams are already preparing
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents went knocking on the door of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and they might soon be coming to a ballpark or stadium near you.
Bay Area sports teams are quietly — very quietly — bracing for the increasing probability that ICE will show up and knock down the invisible wall that shields sports from real-world political turmoil and fear.
The eyes of the sports world are now on the Dodgers, who are facing what might be called a courage check. They might have to choose between cooperating with ICE as it zeroes in on Los Angeles in its mass-deportation campaign, and siding with their fans and fellow Angelenos.
Thursday, the Dodgers reportedly denied entrance to a Dodger Stadium parking lot to ICE vehicles. Coincidentally or not, ICE tried to move into the lot on the day the Dodgers were going to announce team plans to assist local immigrant communities affected by recent ICE raids.
The Dodgers are walking a tightrope. In April, the team ignored pleas and protests of many by visiting the White House, to be honored as World Series champions. It was just weeks after President Donald Trump's Department of Defense removed a tribute to Dodgers great Jackie Robinson — a veteran as well as a sports trailblazer — from its website. Trump had already ordered the deportation of one million undocumented immigrants per year. About 47% of Los Angeles residents are Latino, and the Dodgers claim that more than 40% of their fans are Latino.
The Dodgers were also criticized for not taking a public stand against recent ICE raids in Los Angeles, and they drew more fire for reportedly telling last Saturday's pregame national anthem singer that she could not sing the anthem in Spanish. She did so anyway, and said the team was irate, which the Dodgers deny.
While the Dodgers team has long been seen as the on-field enemy by Bay Area sports fans, local teams and restaurant owners in Northern California worry that they might soon be sharing the Dodgers' pain.
'Those (ICE) people are so vindictive, so belligerent, they're going to single someone out,' said one long-time Bay Area restaurant owner. 'They'd love to show off in San Francisco.'
One Bay Area pro sports team earlier this year sent a memo to its game-crew supervisors, detailing how employees should react in the event of an ICE raid, summarizing the rights of employees and outlining the legal limits of ICE agents' actions.
It's not unusual for a sports team to issue instructions on emergency procedures and personal rights. Live-shooter training, for instance, has become standard. What is unusual is for multiple team executives to ask — plead, actually — that their team name not be used in a news report about ICE raids, for fear of the team becoming a target of the increasingly aggressive raids and roundups.
'We don't want somebody back there (ICE headquarters in Washington D.C.) seeing our name and saying, 'Hey, let's visit those guys,'' an executive for one Bay Area team said with genuine concern. 'We don't want to get in their crosshairs.'
Many see ICE using fear as a tool in its efforts to meet Trump's reported deportation quota of about 3,000 per day. In response to Trump's recent demand to increase arrests in cities run by elected Democrats, the Chronicle sent a query to ICE asking if detention and deportation efforts would increase in San Francisco. This is the email response, attributable to Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin:
'The President has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE's efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safe guard (sic) public safety, national security and economic stability. These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation.'
The statement, a boilerplate response also sent to other news organizations, has an element of irony. The president himself seems incredibly un clear on his own deportation strategy. He recently said that ICE would no longer target agriculture and hospitality industry sites. Two days later he urged ICE to intensify its raids in all sectors.
The fear and the confusion are real. The Chronicle reached out to several pro sports teams in the Bay Area (and one in Los Angeles) and to some San Francisco restaurants, asking if they have alerted their employees to their rights and procedures in the event of an ICE visit.
The only on-the-record response was from the Oakland Coliseum and Arena.
'We try to make sure that the people we hire are here legally,' said Henry Gardner, executive director of the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum Joint Powers Authority Commission, which oversees both venues. 'It's not a perfect system. But we don't want our staff to be intimidated, so we do have protocols in place for how they should behave and how our senior managers should behave should (ICE) show up.'
No other team spokesperson or restaurant owner would speak on the record.
'We don't want to put a target on our back,' said one team's representative.
'Please leave us out of this' story, a restaurant owner pleaded. 'I don't trust those crazy (ICE) people.'
It's not that teams and businesses fear being punished for hiring undocumented immigrants. All claim that their employees and their vendors' employees are vetted and in compliance with U.S. work rules.
The problem is that many of the ICE raids appear to have been indiscriminate, with agents rounding up workers now and asking questions later, while employing tactics of questionable legality, morality and use of force.
The service workforce in California has a high percentage of Latino workers. Trump has an ongoing and escalating feud with this state and its governor. Trump has also threatened to withhold federal funding to California over the state's refusal to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports.
Such economic threats have been a staple of this White House, and it's not hard to envision a team's perceived refusal to cooperate being used as reason to punish the team economically or legally. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, recently said of anyone suspected of aiding undocumented immigrants or shielding them from ICE, 'When they cross the line of harboring and concealing, that's a felony.'
That 'line,' however, often defies clear definition. A week ago last Friday, David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, which has 3,200 members working at sports venues in the state, was arrested at the Los Angeles protests and charged with felony obstruction.
'It's scary as hell to think that they (ICE agents) could just come in here and do what they're going to do,' said an usher for a San Francisco sports team. 'I'd say more than half the people I work with … are just targets for (ICE). It's horrifying. I have a lot of friends who work in immigrant communities, and they've been saying a lot of people are just staying home, they're not going to work, they're so afraid.'
Even the athletes might not be immune. As ICE targets undocumented people from Central and South America, the San Francisco Giants have five players from the Dominican Republic and one from Venezuela on their roster. Latino players make up a large segment of the rosters of Bay Area pro soccer teams.
The Chronicle obtained the ICE memo that one local team distributed to its game-day workforce supervisors earlier this year, shortly after Trump took office.
The two-page memo, titled 'Workplace Guidance for Handling Potential ICE Interactions,' seems carefully worded, perhaps to avoid the appearance of being antagonistic or obstructionist.
The memo's first item is, 'Stay Calm and Professional' if ICE agents arrive in or near the venue. Other items drill down on the legal rights of employees, immigrants or otherwise, and explain the limits of ICE powers. Among memo items:
• 'Do Not Provide Access Without a Warrant'
• 'Do not bring an employee to ICE or direct them to an exit.'
• 'What to Do if ICE is Waiting Outside'
• 'Do Not Consent to a Search — ICE agents may ask to search your belongings. You have the right to refuse unless they have a warrant.'
The various labor unions whose workers service stadiums and arenas have been working to inform and protect their members since Trump took office.
'Our union contract protects workers from ICE raids by obligating the employer to demand a warrant before allowing any searches in the workplace or of I-9 documents (verifying employment eligibility), and our members know their rights,' said Yulisa Elenes, vice president of the Unite Here Local 2, which represents food service workers at Oracle Park, the Oakland Coliseum/Arena, and other venues. 'We're currently in contract negotiations with Aramark, and given the climate of fear about workplace raids, we're negotiating for even stronger protections.'
Last February, Huerta told the Chronicle, 'We do know-your-rights training and make available legal counseling. … We're considering (requesting) legislation that would obligate employers to post and make available know-your-rights information, so workers feel a sense that they are protected, whether they're at work or at home.'
But the concept of protection becomes increasingly nebulous with every new account of commando-style raids by heavily-armed ICE agents wearing masks, showing no ID, asking no questions and making workers disappear.
A San Francisco restaurant owner told this story: 'We ran out of ice the other night. I called for more, and I told our hostess to alert the kitchen staff when the delivery arrived. It got here, the hostess popped her head into the kitchen and shouted, 'The ice is here!'
'Everyone disappeared. One guy was hiding on top of the walk-in refrigerator, three of them were in a closet.'
The restaurant owner told the story without so much as a smile. He knows he might soon face his own courage check.
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