Details are scarce, but state Senator Scott Wiener claimed today that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were investigating SF office building employees Friday as part of President Trump’s mass deportation sweeps.

We’re a little bit on guard about claims that people saw US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents around San Francisco carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans, considering that a false rumor about ICE agents on Muni spread like wildfire last week. But we do know that there were definite ICE operations in San Jose yesterday, so we’ll reserve judgement and wait for more information on this KRON4 report on state Senator Scott Wiener’s claim that ICE agents were in downtown SF.


“Friday night, ICE went to downtown SF office buildings,” Wiener tweeted Monday morning. “The janitors who work in these buildings clean our city’s offices. They go to work each day, pay taxes & raise their kids. They’re [the] salt of the earth.”

He added, “Trump says he’s only targeting criminals. That’s a bald-faced lie.”

We have seen no other reports confirming what Wiener is claiming. It could be a reference to this arrest of a Colombian national in SF who’d apparently has a prior sexual assault conviction, but NBC Bay Area reports that arrest happened “on Tuesday.” So those timelines don’t match.

Or it could be this arrest of a Guatemalan man last Thursday, but that arrest was in Sacramento. It was merely carried out by the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ San Francisco office, an office whose proceedings are sometimes erroneously reported as happening “in San Francisco,” even when these operations take place in other cities.

Still, Wiener insists more information is forthcoming.

“I’m in contact with the union and I’m aware that ICE was at various downtown San Francisco office buildings on Friday evening,” Weiner said at a Monday press conference on Monday, per KRON4. “Our janitors are — our city wouldn’t function without our janitors. They keep our offices clean; they help our economy run.”

And we do anticipate learning more about this previously unreported ICE incident. When Weiner says he’s “in contact with the union,” he refers to SEIU Local 87. That union is planning a Tuesday press conference on this matter, so that might clear some things up.

Related: ICE Agents Confirmed to Be Carrying Out Operations Sunday In San Jose, Rumored to Be Back on Monday [SFist]

Image: @Scott_Wiener via Twitter