A federal judge who previously ruled that conditions at San Francisco's ICE facility are inhumane for the detention of immigrants, has now temporarily halted all arrests of immigrants at courthouses in Northern California and the Pacific Islands, citing lack of due process and violations of civil rights.

It will likely be appealed by the Trump administration, and it represents just a small piece of the massive deportation machine that the administration has built over the last 11 months, but immigration courts in Northern California and the Pacific Islands will not be allowed, for now, to be used as traps where ICE rounds up innocent, law-abiding pepole to deport them.

US District Judge Casey Pitts, a Biden appointee, issued a ruling Friday that puts a pause on Homeland Security's practice of making immigration arrests at immigrations courts.

In a 67-page order, first reported on by Mission Local, Judge Pitts ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in a class-action suit, Garro Pinchi v. Noem, that was brought by the ACLU and a partner firm in October.

The suit, which challenges DHS's "re-detention" policy for immigrants previously released by the courts pending individualized determinations in their cases, was brought on behalf of three undocumented people, Frescia Garro Pinchi, Juany Galo Santos, and Jose Teletor Sente.

"In May 2025, DHS officers began re-arresting and re-detaining noncitizens whom DHS had previously released… which has resulted in a staggering wave of arrests," Pitts writes. "News reports cited by plaintiffs suggest that DHS has re-detained hundreds, if not thousands, of other noncitizens in recent months in ICE’s San Francisco area of responsibility alone... [and] While the extraordinary pace and scale of the change to DHS’s re-detention practices are clear, the reasons for it are not."

Pitts's ruling finds that DHS's actions represent the "deprivation of physical liberty by detention” and the "deprivation of constitutional rights," saying this has caused "irreparable harm" to the detained individuals and their families.

The ruling applies to ICE's "San Francisco area of responsibility," at the downtown courthouse, which includes cases across NorCal, as well as Guam, Saipan, and Hawaii.

Pitts, who previously put a halt to ICE detentions at its subpar facility on Sansome Street, found that there is no "contemporaneous rationale" for the re-detention process, and that it therefore appears "arbitrary and capricious."

The ruling certifies the class in the class-action suit, and pauses all ICE arrests until a final judgment is made.

Previously: Federal Judge Orders ICE to Stop Holding Immigrants at 630 Sansome Due to Inhumane Conditions

More than 17,000 California commercial driver’s licenses issued to immigrants have been revoked, as the state speeds up to comply with new federal rules that driver’s licenses can’t be valid for those no longer legally allowed to be in the US.

One of President Trump’s latest crusades against immigrants was prompted by an August crash in Florida where an immigrant driving a commercial semi truck made an illegal u-turn and caused a crash that killed three people. Federal prosecutors allege that driver had entered the US illegally, though was still granted commercial driver’s licenses in the states of California and Washington.  

This has led to something of a Trump administration crackdown. And California just complied with some of the new rules that came out of this crackdown, as the Associated Press reports that the state of California has just revoked 17,0000 immigrants’ commercial driver’s licenses.

The state is coming into compliance with a new law that driver’s licenses should expire once an immigrant's legal status in the US has expired. So the Gavin Newsom administration did follow the Trump directives, but the Trump administration still seems determined to tar and feather Newsom over this one.

"After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we've exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement to the AP. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses."

Of course, California is the only state that has been audited in this regard, though other states audits were started but delayed by the government shutdown. The Trump administration has threatened to yank about $200 million in total funding to the state if it does not comply.

Those drivers whose licenses have been revoked received a notice that their license would expire within 60 days.

Related: Newsom Signs Bill Allowing Immigrant Parents to Name Caretakers for Their Kids If They’re Deported [SFist]

Image: SAN CLEMENTE, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 18: Traffic at the 5 Freeway on October 18, 2025 in San Clemente, California. A 17-mile stretch of the 5 Freeway was temporarily closed on Saturday due to a live-ammunition demonstration at Camp Pendleton, held in celebration of the U.S. Marine Corps' 250th anniversary. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

A trio of Latinx drag performers are putting on a show Friday in Oakland in protest of ICE — and the cast includes recently detained performer Hilary Rivers, who spent three months in ICE detention.

Among the many immigrants who have been entrapped and tossed into detention by ICE agents in the Bay Area during the first 10 months of the second Trump administration, when they lawfully showed up for court hearings regarding their asylum or other legal immigration cases was Hilary Rivers. Rivers was born in El Salvador and raised in Guatemala, and as she told 48 Hills last week, she was stalked by threats of violence and actual violence ever since coming out as gay, both in her home country and in Mexico, where she fled first as an adult.

“I survived an assassination attempt and many attacks. I left for Mexico first, hoping to stay there, but violence followed me," Rivers tells 48 Hills. "Eventually, I moved to San Francisco for work. Here, I finally felt accepted for who I am."

But when Rivers decided to show up for a regularly scheduled hearing at immigration court in San Francisco, at 630 Sansome Street, regarding her asylum case, on June 26, she became one of the many who were summarily swept up by ICE agents in Trump's broad and immoral campaign against non-white immigrants.

As she tells 48 Hills, "A few days before my court date, friends warned me not to appear because people were being picked up. But I wanted to do things right. I knew if I didn’t show up, I could get an automatic deportation order. So I went to court with my lawyer.”

She was quickly approached by ICE and carted off to ICE's Golden State Annex detention center in McFarland, California, where she spent most of the last three months.

Thankfully, she was granted asylum after her case was given proper due process, which has not been the case for many immigrants, and she returned to San Francisco in late September.

She now tells 48 Hills that she was subjected to harassment and other indignities while at the detention center, and she describes the inhumane conditions of a holding cell where detainees had to take turns sitting down. "We had to stand for hours because there was no space to sit, no air, and we were freezing," Rivers says.

Though she continues to have physical ailments following her detention, Rivers says that freedom "gives me strength." And as KQED reports, she'll be one of three performers featured Friday at Oakland's White Horse Inn, at a show titled "Caballo Blanco Against ICE," presented by Chillonas and Sabes Que. The event starts at 10 pm, and presale tickets are $10, with $15 tickets at the door.

Other featured performers Xochitl and Tori Tia.

As Rivers tells 48 Hills,  "I paid a high price, but nothing is impossible."

Her advice to other immigrants: "Don’t let them break you. Don’t sign things you don’t understand. Know your rights."

Rivers has also launched a GoFundMe to help cover the expenses of getting back on her feet in the Bay Area, and over $6,000 has been raised so far.

Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a fairly sensible-sounding bill allowing immigrant parents to name a caregiver for their kids in case they are deported. Crazed conservatives are reacting by calling it the “Legalized Child Kidnapping Bill.”

You are well aware by now that in the Bay Area, and nationwide, the Trump administration is detaining and deporting people like mad, even some who are legitimately US citizens. Many of the people being detained and deported are parents with children.

So what happens to the kids when their parents are deported? A recent CNN article notes that many have “ended up in the care of relatives, neighbors, friends, coworkers and even strangers after ICE detained or deported their parents,” and adds that quite a few just end up shoved into the foster care system.

Governor Gavin Newsom's office says that “In California, nearly a million US citizen children are estimated to be at risk of being separated from a parent because of immigration enforcement.” And for that reason, Newsom just signed a bill allowing immigrant parents to designate a caretaker for their children, as the Associated Press reports.

“Our children deserve to feel safe at home, in school and in the community,” Newsom said in a Sunday night press release after he signed the bill. “We are putting on record that we stand by our families and their right to keep their private information safe, maintain parental rights and help families prepare in case of emergencies.”

There are a few other aspects to this AB 495 bill that’s dubbed "Family Preparedness Plan Act of 2025." The bill also bars childcare providers from collecting immigration information about parents, and allows parents to nominate designated temporary legal guardians in family court. But the part allowing for parents who are the victims of family separation to “expand the type of relative who is authorized to execute a caregiver’s authorization affidavit,” (that is, letting relatives become the child’s caretaker when the parent suddenly disappears) has provoked right-wing outrage.

What kind of right-wing outrage?

Check out the tweet above from the Monterey County Republican Party, with an AI-generated Devil Gavin, calling the bill “A Child Trafficker’s and Kidnapper’s Dream Bill” and saying it “creates legal loopholes that make kidnapping children easy.” The inference seems to be that immigrants’ relatives are somehow much more likely to be kidnappers or involved in child trafficking.

Funny, though… who exactly have we seen legally kidnapping children here?

California has passed a number of other bills trying to push back against ICE in the current legislative session, though many of them are unlikely to accomplish anything. ICE is a federal agency that the state cannot control, and they will continue their lawbreaking at Trump’s behest regardless. But this particular new law could at least influence things, because ICE does not have jurisdiction over family courts, and how those courts resolve custody matters.

And there are likely many more cases of custody involving parents who’ve been deported coming to those family courts in the weeks and months to come.

Related: Leaders Across Bay Area Launch Fund for Families of Immigrants Targeted by ICE [SFist]

Image: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 21: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on August 21, 2025 in Sacramento, California. In a move to counter Texas House Republicans’ plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, California Democrats took up a proposed constitutional amendment to temporarily redraw their own congressional maps, potentially creating five additional U.S. House seats for their party. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The Mission District storefront that claims to house a “Law Group” does not, in fact, have any attorneys, and a court just ruled they have to pay $600,000 for conning payments from immigrants seeking legal services for years.

Right next to the Safeway at Mission and 30th streets, nestled between a La Alteña taqueria and a Stiiizy pot dispensary, sits a storefront calling itself “Lacayo.” Its website advertises tax preparation and notary services, but the same storefront also advertises “Iscandari Law Group.”

We have seen some right-wing political signs in the window, though never a Trump sign, but Mission Local has popped in during 2016 and saw Trump signs on the office’s interior. We will say that some of the conservative-leaning signage in the window seems like it would scare off immigrants instead of enticing them, given the current climate.

The fact that Mission Local visited in 2016 is no accident, as proprietor Leo Lacayo was accused at the time of fraudulently impersonating an immigration attorney. This has apparently been going on for nearly nine years since, as today the Chronicle reports that a court just fined Lacayo $600,000 for what the City Attorney calls an unlawful and “predatory immigration consulting business.”

This case goes back to 2016 when Dennis Herrera was City Attorney, and the Lacayo & Associates firm was allegedly presenting themselves as immigration attorneys, despite having no credentials to do so. Herrera said Lacayo had been doing shoddy and bogus legal work for years, charging immigrants untold thousands of dollars.

“Leonard Lacayo has demonstrated zero regard for the law or the immigrant communities he claims to serve,” SF City Attorney Chiu said in a Tuesday announcement. “For years, he has targeted vulnerable immigrants, taking their money while putting them in legal jeopardy. His actions are particularly egregious during a time of mass deportations and heightened fear in our immigrant communities. Immigration services are desperately needed right now, but I want the public to know that Lacayo is not legally allowed to provide immigration services of any kind.”

Mission Local’s reporting says Lacayo blames his prosecution on his support for Donald Trump.  

But a look at Lacayo & Associates’s Yelp reviews shows the stark contrast that reviewers are very pleased with their tax preparation services, but feel completely scammed by their immigration consultant services.

As noted, the front signage advertises an “Iscandari Law Group.” There is an Iscandari Law Group in Oakland, with a valid California Bar license. But Chiu’s announcement today says that Lacayo & Associates “has never been licensed to practice law,” and adds that “Lacayo had falsely portrayed himself as an attorney and either provided services he was not qualified to provide or simply failed to provide any service at all.”

Lacayo has been hit with injunctions and penalties since 2017, and has reportedly simply ignored them.

A  San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled that “Defendant’s conduct is egregious and ongoing and more restrained corrective actions have not been effective. The court imposes civil penalties in the amount of $500 per day between the date of the court’s 2022 enforcement order and the filing of the People’s present motion, for a total of $503,500.”

Lacayo & Associates is still open for business as of Tuesday afternoon. But the legal ruling bars the firm from providing any immigration services through September 2032, and demands that Lacayo hand over the contact information for anyone for whom he did provide immigration services, so their mess can hopefully be cleaned up.

Images: Joe Kukura, SFist

Local leaders are launching the Stand Together Bay Area Fund, which will provide living expenses to families of local immigrants who’ve been deported or detained by ICE. Applicants can sign up through the SF-based Mission Asset Fund.

As the Chronicle reports, San Francisco Mayor Lurie, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, and dozens of other Bay Area leaders announced the launch of the fund on Friday, which will be overseen by the nonprofit, San Francisco Foundation. Their goal is to raise $10 million — the foundation pledged $2 million, and the rest of the funds will be collected from private groups, such as corporations, individuals, and charities, as Bay City News reports. The foundation has raised an estimated half a million dollars so far, according to the foundation’s CEO, Fred Blackwell.

“The tactics being used in this country — arrests, raids and fear-based policies — are not just cruel, they are un-American,” Lurie said.

“This fund will help keep a roof over people’s heads,” he continued. “It will put food on the table. It will ease the burden for people who are being targeted, and it will send a clear message that San Francisco and the Bay Area will not turn our backs on our neighbors.”

Per the Chronicle, Alameda County supervisors Elisa Márquez and Nikki Fortunato Bas have pledged $50,000 each, once approved.

“When even one family member is detained, it’s not just a household that suffers; caregivers are lost, small businesses are disrupted, children miss school, and the ripple effects strain our entire local economy,” said Márquez.

All immigrants who qualify will be accepted, per the Chronicle.

Image: San Francisco Foundation/Facebook

A new iPhone app purports to be “Waze but for ICE sightings” and lets users share the location of ICE operations they see, but now the Trump administration is throwing massive tantrums and claiming they’ll sue CNN for reporting that the app exists.

CNN has a report today on a new app called ICEBlock, an app developed by just one guy, that allows users to post the location of when and where they see Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in their area. The app has apparently already grown to a community of 20,000 users, and it's particularly popular in Los Angeles where the majority of ICE raids are currently happening.

“When I saw what was happening in this country, I wanted to do something to fight back,” the app’s one-man design team Joshua Aaron told CNN, saying that the ICE raids harken back to what happened in Nazi Germany. “We’re literally watching history repeat itself.”

So how is the Trump administration reacting to this app, and the fact that CNN reported on its existence?

“We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities operations,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem fumed at a Tuesday morning press conference, singling out CNN for their report. “We're going to actually go after them and prosecute them.”

In light of that threat, allow us to report more about the ICEBlock app for iOS, which promotes itself as “Waze but for ICE sightings.” It is only available for iPhones, as the designer Aaron felt that Android’s data collection would make the app too risky for users.

Users can post a pin location of where they see ICE agents, plus details about how the agents may be dressed or what kind of vehicle they’re in. Other users within a five-mile radius will then receive a push notification letting them know where the ICE agents are.

The app goes to great lengths to collect no user data whatsoever, and is completely anonymous, so nothing can ever be tracked back to the users. So ICEBlock is pretty safe for its users, but it has ICE officials incandescent with rage.

“My officers and agents are already facing a 500% increase in assaults,” ICE acting director Todd Lyons said in a statement picked up by KRON4. "Going on live television to announce an app that lets anyone zero in on their locations is like inviting violence against them with a national megaphone.”

We are not the only ones to note that there is zero evidence of this so-called “500% increase in assaults” of ICE agents, and how if so many people are assaulting ICE agents, curiously no one is being prosecuted for this.

In other words, ICE is so angry about this app that they are giving it a ton of free publicity, and making it far more of a news story than it otherwise would have been. And KRON4 notes that as of this morning, ICEBlock had skyrocketed to being the No. 1 social networking app in the Apple App Store.

Related: Scott Weiner's Latest Bill Would Ban ICE Agents From Wearing Face Coverings in California [SFist]

Image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 18: Federal agents wait in the hallways outside of immigration court to detain immigrants for deportation, June 18, 2025, at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City. The Trump administration has demanded a daily quota of 3,000 immigrants across the country arrested each day for deportation. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Miguel Angel Lopez has lived in the Bay Area for 27 years, and is father to three US citizens. But the “law and order” Trump administration has ignored legal orders to let him stay here, and he was just deported to Mexico.

When ICE agents showed up at an SF federal courthouse on May 27 and just started grabbing and detaining people who were showing up for their immigration cases (rather than, you know, pursuing actual criminals), one of the more heartbreaking stories was the detainment of Miguel Angel Lopez, a 27-year resident of Livermore and father the three US citizens who was simply attending a routine check-in appointment. Lopez was hauled off to a detention facility in Southern California.    

A week and a half later on June 6, US District Court Judge Trina Thompson put a temporary restraining order on Lopez’s deportation, saying the federal government’s case against him was one of the Trump administration's flimsier cases that prosecuted a law-abiding resident with no criminal history. “The facts of this case highlight one of those moments,” Thompson wrote in her ruling, according to the Bay Area News Group. “The inequities seep from the pages, staining every word.”

But the typical lawless Trump administration simply ignored that order, and Lopez’s wife says he was deported to Mexico last Saturday, according to the Chronicle. His spouse Rosa Lopez says he was told to “grab his stuff” where he’d been in a Kern County facility for ten days, before being transferred to Bakersfield, and then deported to a migrant shelter in Tijuana. Rosa Lopez has since flown to Mexico to meet him there.

“On top of having to worry about paying rent for him here (in Mexico) and having to pay my stuff out there (in Northern California), it stresses me out,” Rosa Lopez told the Chronicle in a phone interview from Mexico. The deported Miguel Angel Lopez is the primary income earner in that household.

Lopez arrived in the US when he was 18, and got married to a US citizen in 2001. He’s been trying to get a green card since 2007, but that request has been tied up in the courts. Yet the whole time, Lopez has been working, paying taxes (he’s even paid off his mortgage), and has absolutely no criminal history.

President Trump has claimed the immigrants he’s been deporting are “bloodthirsty” criminals, but the administration's methods of snatching people to deport strongly indicate otherwise. ICE has been targeting people showing up for their immigration court hearings and check-ins, working manual labor shifts on farms or in sweatshops, or looking for day work in Home Depot parking lots. In other words, these deporations themselves are often more unlawful than the people being deported.

Related: Bay Area Father of Three, Who Lived Here 25 Years, Detained By ICE at Routine Appointment In SF [SFist]

Image courtesy Lopez Family

The Los Angeles ICE raids are spreading northward in California, with new workplace raids targeting immigrant farmworkers now taking place along the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley, and employees are terrified to go to work.

As another day of Trump's mass deportation attempts dawned on Thursday, Trump took to his beloved Truth Social to post a word-salad self-own that basically admits these ICE raids are fucking up the economy. “Our Great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking good, long time workers away from them, with these jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump posted. So yeah, the raids are having a negative effect on the economy, by Trump's own admission.

According to a Wednesday report on KPIX, the administration claims that all of this ICE raid-ing has brought 330 immigrants into custody since Friday, and that “a third of those detained had criminal convictions.” So basically, all of this disruption just to catch about 100 criminals, and two-thirds of the people caught up in this dragnet were not criminals.

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Yet the sweeps continue. The video above is from a reported 6 am Tuesday ICE raid at a produce farm in the Southern California community of Oxnard, leaving that community gripped in fear and outrage.

"These actions are completely unjustified and harmful. They create chaos and distress in our community without contributing much to public safety," Oxnard Mayor Luis McArthur told Glendale’s KABC. “The individuals affected by these operations, they're not criminals. They are hardworking families who make meaningful contributions to our local economy and to our greater community.”

And the raids are apparently making their way north. The Fresno Bee reported Thursday morning that ICE agents have been spotted along the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley, notably in rural areas of Tulare, Fresno and Ventura counties.

A new KPIX segment says the fears of ICE showing up and dragging farmworkers away have spread to Monterey and San Mateo counties, and the people who work on farms there. “They don’t know how to decide on going to work or staying home,” United Farm Workers Foundation spokesperson Mari Cruz told KPIX. “It’s scary. I either go to work and get money to feed my family, but I risk getting caught and then not seeing my family again. So it’s pretty scary.”

The fact that ICE needs to raid workplaces, and haul away workers who are on duty, pretty obviously shows the lie in the claim that these people are violent criminals. They're at work! How can they be busy doing crimes?

But ICE apparently needs to lower their standards on who they arrest, just to meet the quotas that Trump is apparently demanding. And it's an incredibly expensive undertaking that's catching very few criminals, and adds another unpredictable risk for the larger agriculture industry.

Related: Analysts Warn That Trump Could Send National Guard Here to San Francisco, Too [SFist]

Image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 10: California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers arrest 67 people suspected of going onto the 101 freeway as protests continue in Los Angeles following days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids, on June 10, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Protests escalated after President Donald Trump authorized military forces to protect federal property against the wishes of city and state officials who say that the Los Angeles police have the expertise and decades of experience to handle large protest crowds. National Guard troops have so far played no role in quelling violence in the streets, according to Mayor Bass, but are stationed to guard federal buildings. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Immigration attorneys are outraged by a highly unusual set of arrests that occurred inside a federal courthouse in San Francisco Tuesday.

Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) handcuffed and arrested at least two individuals Tuesday morning outside of a courtroom at a San Francisco federal building. An NBC Bay Area reporter witnessed one of the arrests, in which four plainclothed agents who did not say what agency they were with jumped up and detained a Spanish-speaking man who was leaving a courtroom on the fourth floor of the building. The reason for his arrest was unclear.

Both arrested individuals were taken away in a Department of Homeland Security vehicle.

NBC Bay Area obtained a statement from the department, which said, "Secretary [Kristi] Noem is reversing Biden's catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets. This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law. If [the arrested individuals] have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings, but if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to swift deportation."

Immigration attorneys at the courthouse were reportedly outraged about the ICE action, which they says is not normal and highly unusual.

NBC Bay Area's Michael Bott reports that he saw plainclothed ICE agents at the same federal courthouse last week, and that this was making attorneys nervous.

"The attorneys tell us, traditionally, immigration court has been sort of 'hands off' for ICE agents, because most people here have pending, ongoing immigration cases, and are thought to be safe from deportation until a judge issues a final removal order," Bott reports.

KPIX reported last week that immigration rights groups were sounding alarms about ICE agents' suddent presence at immigration courts throughout Northern California. ICE agents reportedly conducted operations last week at federal courthouses in San Francisco, Concord, and Sacramento.

• California law firm, Munger, Tolles & Olson, the former firm of J.D. Vance’s wife, Usha, has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of more than 500 law firms who have been targeted by the Trump administration for representing opposing candidates and causes. The lawsuit was filed in support of Perkins Coie, a firm which Trump had its security clearances revoked, government contracts canceled, and access to federal buildings denied, including courthouses. [Chronicle]
• Shots were fired from two separate guns on Friday afternoon during an armed robbery involving two getaway cars in Brentwood at around 1:15 p.m. Investigators are determining whether a woman who checked into a nearby hospital with a gunshot wound minutes after the incident was involved in the robbery, but there were no other injuries reported. [East Bay Times]
• Newly released dashcam footage from Thursday morning’s big rig spill on I-680  shows the truck slamming into the center median and overturning. Dirt was sent flying into the southbound lanes, where it hit a pickup truck, causing the driver to lose control and crash. [NBC Bay Area]

• This month’s clothing and bike repair clinics put on by Bike Mobile and SF SCRAP at various libraries throughout town are taking place this Sunday, as well as April 12 and 26. [@sf.environment]

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National:

• Thailand resident Kwon Youngjun talks about his heroic leap from one end of a crumbling skybridge to the other, which was caught on camera, during last week’s 7.7M earthquake. Youngjun then raced down 52 flights of stairs in search of his wife and child who saw Youngjun’s death-defying moment on the news prior to reuniting. [@Reuters]

Kwon Youngjun leapt across a splitting bridge connecting two skyscrapers in Bangkok during an earthquake, to get to his wife and daughter. He recounts the moment, which was caught on camera by a Thai reporter https://t.co/hbkEFD2W7j pic.twitter.com/ttyTEWk0XL

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 2, 2025

• Another entitled American tried to visit the North Sentinel Island last Saturday, where the inhabitants killed evangelical missionary John Allen Chau in 2018. So-called “danger tourist” Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov traveled to the remote island on a makeshift craft last Saturday, leaving behind a Coke can and a coconut as an offering before quickly turning back around. [Yahoo News]
• The Department of Agriculture issued an “emergency order“ on Friday requesting that nearly 113 million acres of national forests be made available for logging, with a particular focus on California. [Chronicle]

Video of the Day:

• A small-town citizen embodies the ultimate satirical "reverse-Karen" in defense of Haitian immigrants.

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Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

The Tenderloin Museum is celebrating its ten-year anniversary with some big moves — tripling its size, adding a vibrant neon gallery, and relaunching its immersive play, Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in April — all to celebrate the neighborhood’s legacy as a hub for nightlife, immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities, and a variety of social movements.

The expansion will take over an adjacent space in the museum's existing residence in the Cadillac Hotel building at Eddy and Leavenworth, once home to Newman’s Gym, where boxing legends like Muhammad Ali, Jack Dempsey, and Sugar Ray Robinson trained. The new space will house an expanded permanent collection featuring exhibits on the California Labor School, Newman’s Gym, and the Tenderloin Times newspaper, while also creating room for youth and educational programs.

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A key focus of the new space will be preserving the oral histories of the Tenderloin’s diverse residents, beginning with an upcoming exhibit celebrating the influence of Indian-American hotel owners in the Tenderloin over the past 50 years.

Another major highlight is the return of Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, an immersive play that brings to life the 1966 trans uprising at 101 Taylor Street, which recently received two historic landmark designations.

With anti-trans legislation on the rise nationwide, museum director Katie Conry sees the play as more vital than ever. “The Tenderloin has always been a place of resistance,” she says.

For architect June Lee, a trans woman leading the renovation, the project is deeply personal. She first worked on the building 30 years ago as a teenage intern during a seismic retrofit—now, she’s shaping its future.

While the neon gallery is expected to be a major draw, the museum’s deeper mission remains clear: honoring the stories of a neighborhood that has long been a refuge for those who refused to be erased.

Image: Google Maps

Previously: Tenderloin Museum Opens In Former Sizzler Steakhouse Space

Update: A few clarifying details about the exhibits were added to this post after publishing

The nightmare of undocumented immigrants being rounded up en masse into camps could be closer to reality than we think, as a rumor is now out there that ICE has been sniffing around FCI Dublin, the shuttered women's prison in the East Bay.

The troubled prison, which was dubbed a "rape club" after a slew of assault cases involving prison staff and inmates in recent years, abruptly shut down last April, leading to a chaotic re-housing process for the facilities inmates, who needed to be bussed to various facilities around the country. And in December, federal officials said that the prison would remain closed for good, in part due to "crumbling infrastructure and limited budgetary resources."

But, allegedly, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been making inquiries about putting the facility back into use.

As the LA Times reports, this revelation comes several paragraphs into a letter from the prison employees' union to the federal prison system, seeking data on recent prison closures.

"FCI Dublin had at least one assessment completed on July 22, 2024, which we believe was considered a 'structural assessment,'" the letter from the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals No. 33 says, per the LA Times. "The union has learned that this assessment has been provided to ICE for what appears to be the potential of ICE taking over the facility."

As KTVU further reports, John Kostelnik, the Western region vice president of the union, says that ICE officials recently toured the facility, and he seems to fear that Bureau of Prisons itself will become enmeshed with the process of mass incarceration of immigrants.

"Facilities like Dublin … are closed and being looked at for purposes outside the [Bureau of Prisons], like ICE taking over or even an ICE contractor taking over," Kostelnik tells KTVU. "There is so much uncertainty, and the lack of transparency is causing complete chaos. The displaced staff have little to no hope and have been fully demoralized through it all."

"My fear is that the bureau is just going to become a branch of ICE — but that’s not what we do,” Kostelnik added in comments to the LA Times. "Our primary focus should be and always has been keeping the community safe from convicted murderers and rapists and our staff do a tremendous job of that, even while dealing with the staffing crisis. But now we’re having an additional mission thrown at us, that could cripple our ability to do what we’re supposed to do."

The Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email to the LA Times that it is "assisting the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement by housing detainees."

And ICE put out a statement saying, "While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements."

Attorneys for former inmates at the Dublin facility say that it is filled with asbestos and black mold, and rife with leaks, sewage overflows, and water contamination. A Bureau of Prisons official has said that the facility will need tens of millions of dollars in repairs.

Beyond the issues with the facility itself, Kostelnik says that the BOP went through this once before, during the first Trump administration, when they were asked to find space for 1,600 immigrant detainees. The process led to many logistical issues, as well as other issues, like communication, with many of the detainees unable to speak any English, and no one on staff could speak their languages.

Kostelnik sent a January email to Padilla’s office, saying "I fear this is coming soon," and he also fears that the Trump administration will turn to private contractors to manage these facilities, due to the inadequacies of the BOP.

Previously: Notorious Dublin Women's Prison Is Being Shuttered For Good, Feds Say

A dozen undocumented immigrants arrived in San Jose on a bus from Texas this past weekend, and San Jose is making no apologies for rolling out the welcome mat with food, clothing, and medical care.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are continuing their political stunt of shipping busloads of migrants to blue states, but the blue states like California have largely been taking them (though there is a growing crisis with mostly Venezuelan migrants in New York City).

There has been political pushback here over these governors' treatment of the migrants. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is investigating the possibly shady circumstances of the transport, in which the immigrants have allegedly been deceived or not told where they’re going, and he's called the practice “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

This past weekend, San Jose got its first busload from Texas, according to KTVU. That station describes the bus as bringing “more than two-dozen migrants seeking asylum in the United States,” and notes that they originated in El Paso.

"Migrants were previously detained in El Paso, Texas and were put on a bus with a choice of Colorado or California. And those that chose California were dropped in Downtown San Jose," Santa Clara County Office of Immigrant Relations manager Aundraya Martinez, told KTVU.

The East San Jose arrivals include seven adults and five children, and several Santa Clara County nonprofits are accommodating them with food, clothing, medical services, and temporary shelter.

It’s the first such busload to arrive in San Jose, but the city anticipated this by forming a Welcoming Migrants Plan. KGO identifies two of the nonprofits providing services as the Amigos de Guadalupe Center and Ayudando Latinos A Soñar (ALAS).

"Santa Clara County is proud to be a sanctuary county. And we are committed to supporting all members of our community, regardless of status," Martinez added to KTVU.

Regardless, ALAS executive director Belinda Hernandez Arriaga says they’re committed to providing the new arrivals with help and services.

"You know when you see it on the news, you just see a group, but when you're with them individually you see that mom, you see that dad, that child, that aunt, that grandparent just like you — just like me," Arriaga told KGO.

Related: In Cold, Cruel Christmas Eve Stunt, Buses of Migrants End Up at Kamala Harris’s DC Home [SFist]

Image: Immigrants who have illegally crossed into the US and caught by authorities, have had shoe laces removed before they are released as they await deportation at the McAllen, Texas bus station on June 23rd, 2014 (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images)

In the second such politically motivated stunt in three days, a second group of migrants arrived via private jet in Sacramento on Monday — and while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hasn't publicly taken credit, he's likely about to, and the move appears to have his fingerprints all over it.

A group of sixteen migrants from Venezuela and Colombia arrived in the state capital on Friday morning, and were dropped off outside church. The group, carrying only backpacks, appeared to have been lured under false pretenses out of El Paso, Texas to board a bus to New Mexico and then a small plane to Sacramento, which was operated by the same company that DeSantis used to ship a group of migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard last September.

In both this and the previous case, DeSantis was taking a page out of the playbook of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, making a political statement about immigration policy by shipping unknowing migrants to liberal enclaves for political points.

Now, as the Chronicle reports and as Attorney General Rob Bonta's office has confirmed, a second jet-load of migrants was brought to Sacramento Monday morning using the same jet out of Deming, New Mexico.

Governor Gavin Newsom said to DeSantis Monday morning, via tweet, "You small, pathetic man. This isn't Martha's Vineyard." And he posted a piece of California's penal code defining kidnapping.

Bonta and Newsom said over the weekend that they would be investigating Friday's incident as a possible act of kidnapping — and by all accounts, the migrants did not know where they were being taken.

As the New York Times noted Sunday, DeSantis has a fundraiser scheduled for next week in Sacramento, and he's had a habit of using the Martha's Vineyard stunt as an applause line at similar fundraisers.

Neither DeSantis's office nor his campaign have yet to comment on the latest stunt, assuming he is the one behind. Governor Greg Abbott's spokesperson, however, has confirmed to the Chronicle that Abbott has not sent any migrants to California.

It's a gross and bizarre stunt no matter how you slice it, but just in the Martha's Vineyard incident, DeSantis appears to be using taxpayer dollars to relocate migrants who never even set foot in Florida.

"We have documents indicating the state of Florida’s involvement,” Bonta said, per the Chronicle. “From what we have, we’re relatively confident this is the state of Florida. They have not issued a denial."

The documents, per the Times, came from the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The migrants on the first plane apparently described being approached by someone in El Paso who told them, in broken Spanish, that they had to sign some document as a condition of boarding a plane to Sacramento — but "not all had understood where they were going and not all had signed."

Bonta called the action "morally bankrupt," and potentially "state-sponsored kidnapping."

As with the first group of arriving migrants, the city of Sacramento, local nonprofits, and the state are working to shelter them and address their needs. Newsom said in a weekend statement that California would "ensure the people who have arrived are treated with respect and dignity, and get to their intended destination as they pursue their immigration cases."

In early May, DeSantis signed a new bill into law authorizing $12 million in Florida taxpayer funds for an immigrant relocation program — but it remains unclear why Floridians would endorse using these funds to round up people in El Paso with no stated desire to go to Florida.

Newsom likely stoked some ire in DeSantis on several occasions in the last year when he — sounding like he, too, was a candidate for president — has publicly criticized the Florida governor over a number of issues.

After DeSantis took a shot at Newsom's hair gel last fall, Newsom openly challenged DeSantis to a debate — even though they are not running in any race together. And in April, Newsom called DeSantis "scared to death" and "scared of the people," after DeSantis signed a new, permitless concealed-carry gun law just a week after a mass shooting in Nashville.

Previously: Sixteen Immigrants From South America Flown From Texas to Sacramento Carrying Nothing But Backpacks, and Newsom Is Pissed

Photo: WK/Unsplash