On June 4, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained at least 15 individuals, including a 3-year-old and other children, at court check-in appointments in San Francisco. This attack on our community members came just a week after the arrest of four asylum seekers after their hearings at S.F. Immigration Court. These actions are part of a nationwide escalation in immigration enforcement where ICE agents coordinate with court officers to identify and harass migrants and interfere with their cases to fast track their deportations. The Democratic Socialists of America – San Francisco (DSA SF) condemns this continued debilitation and criminalization of displaced migrants under the undemocratic U.S. border regime.

ICE’s presence inside courtrooms, their coordination with prosecutors, and their terrorizing of already vulnerable migrants represent a dangerous rise in state repression. Fear mongering at the courthouse keeps migrants in a perpetual state of panic and “under control.” Deportations are then enforced to deal the final blow to expel the racialized migrant class. Both debilitation and exclusionist tactics serve to solidify the racist idea of a homogeneous nation-state that keeps the working class divided and the capitalist class in power. This is why these expedited removals are not just an attack on our migrant neighbors, but an attack on all of the working class.

As democratic socialists, we are building an independent political movement that fights for the working class majority. We believe that we must end the U.S. war machine and economic warfare. We must fight for freedom of movement, allowing people to freely cross borders without restrictive immigration controls. We must demilitarize the border, end all immigrant detention and deportations, grant immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status, and provide access to jobs, labor, rights, and social services to all immigrants. We must abolish all repressive capitalist institutions like ICE and establish a working class democracy.

The courts are not safe. It is only through mobilizing for community defense initiatives, such as Know Your Rights resource-sharing, accompaniment to immigration appointments, and community rapid response, and building democratic organs of popular power like people’s assemblies that we can protect our working-class community. Join DSA SF to defend our migrant neighbors and build the independent political movement needed to win the battle against fascism.

In solidarity,

DSA SF