OAKLAND — Federal immigration agents who descended onto the Coast Guard Island in Alameda this week have been called off for the entire Bay Area, and not just San Francisco, officials said Friday.
The planned enforcement operations had been “canceled,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, relaying a message from Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez, who had confirmed the update late Thursday with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE, along with Customs and Border Protection, had been descended down on the Bay Area following orders from President Donald Trump. They arrived to Coast Guard Island, in the estuary between Alameda and Oakland — an apparent staging area for expected enforcement raids.
Amid the skirmishes that ensued, federal agents fired a chemical agent toward a protester at near-point-blank range, and later security personnel opened fire on a U-Haul truck that had backed up toward the island’s bridge barrier, injuring the driver and an apparent bystander.
Even after the “cancelation” news Friday, it remained unclear whether agents had already left the area. But the revelation was greeted with a mix of relief and distrust by demonstrators, following a chaotic 24-hour period of uncertainty and civil unrest.
“That’s great news — that’s a win,” Matthew Dillard, a protester at the scene, said Friday upon hearing of the feds’ withdrawal from the Bay Area. “That proves the people actually have some power.”
Another demonstrator, Kendra Urton, held no illusions that the president might not still change his mind soon about targeting Oakland and the rest of the Bay Area.
“I have no clue,” she said, “what’s going on in that man’s mind.”
The start-and-stop deployment punctuated the country’s dramatic political moment, with Trump taking unprecedented steps this year to order federal troops to major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump had called off a planned “surge” in San Francisco, hours after CBP agents arrived in a fleet of vehicles to Alameda and began clashing with protesters at the Coast Guard Island.
But it had remained unclear whether the president’s decision to pull back from the city — the apparent outcome of conversations held by Trump with his wealthy tech friends, as well as with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie — also applied to the East Bay.
As uncertainty loomed, clashes between demonstrators and authorities at the Coast Guard base grew steadily more intense, culminating in the U-Haul shooting just before 10 p.m. Thursday that is now under investigation by the FBI.
The man driving, whose identity has not been released, was taken to the hospital and treated for injuries. Protesters at the scene said they had seen the man hanging around near the demonstrations earlier in the day, and had urged him in the moment not to back up toward the barrier.
“We were like, ‘You have to stop, just come back,’ ” said Jennifer Martinez, who recorded video of the shooting Thursday night.
A GoFundMe campaign, meanwhile, was published Friday by Kalani Cecaci, who said her brother, Jared, was in stable condition after being injured in the gunfire.
Overall, though, the majority of the protests appeared to be peaceful. But even with the dust settled, demonstrators on Friday were determined to continue resisting the administration.
“We don’t want secret police in our community,” Ben Cislowski, a protester from Alameda, said in an interview.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at smukherjee@bayareanewsgroup.com.
