Several suspected immigration detainments at the John E. Moss Federal Building in downtown Sacramento last week continue to spark questions, especially after the building was largely shut down.
Two people were reportedly detained on Wednesday and Thursday by plainclothed agents. A protest then started outside, leading officials to restrict access to only those with appointments. The building continued to be largely closed on Friday when four more people were reported detained after attending immigration court.
CapRadio has made multiple attempts to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for confirmation, but received no response.
The incident has now attracted the attention of a local lawmaker, who is raising concerns and demanding answers from the federal government.
Last weekend, Democratic Assemblymember Maggy Krell submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking information related to the near-total closure and reported detainments. These include communications and records from several agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and the Executive Office of Immigration Review, among others.
“As a California State Assemblymember representing Sacramento, I am deeply concerned by this breach of public access, transparency, and due process,” she wrote in the request letter.
Krell spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about her decision to submit these information requests, and the experiences that have shaped her approach to this situation.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview Highlights
When did you begin to learn about what unfolded last week in downtown Sacramento?
I had been following the protests, and of course anything related to constituents here in Sacramento, [and] their family members, is something that we take very seriously. We had gotten constituent calls and inquiries about what's happening generally with the raids of immigrants. So, this is an issue that's been on my radar for a long time.
But then specifically reading about what happened Friday, and a shutdown of the courthouse which is normally open to the public, I found that pretty alarming. That is when I decided to write out a few Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of Homeland Security, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and to a branch of the Department of Justice that I believe may have been part of this type of decision.
Prior to becoming a lawmaker you worked as prosecutor, represented Planned Parenthood, and served in the California Department of Justice. How has that shaped your views and your response when it comes to immigration and immigration enforcement?
The courthouse has always been a building that's open to the public. And part of that is, in the criminal context under the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution, defendants have a right to a public jury trial. So the public cannot be shut out of courtrooms unless there's a very specific security reason.
And then the Seventh Amendment, which governs civil cases… immigration does kind of fall as a quasi-civil type of administration, also has some public access based on the circumstances. And specifically with respect to immigration, they are generally public hearings. There's a United States code of regulations on it that gives very specific reasons why they can be closed off. And I think it's important to ask what those reasons are in this case.
We're talking about families that are being separated. We're talking about kids watching their parents getting taken away. We're talking about workers in our community who show up at their immigration appointment and instead of getting a hearing, they get arrested in a hallway. These are pretty alarming things to have happen. And when you take the extra step of removing the public from even being able to watch… My understanding is that reporters weren't allowed in, and volunteer lawyers weren't even allowed in. So to take those steps, you have a question about whether due process exists, and now you have this added layer of a lack of public transparency… I think it's pretty alarming.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal law, and allows any person to request access to federal agency records. What specifically are you requesting?
What I'm trying to do with this first FOIA is just get a handle on what possible justification might exist for the decision to lock down the courthouse. If there were security risks, if there's something else that we may not know about… to get that information. I'm asking for directives that may have been sent through from agencies, communications between the staff at the courthouse and other federal agencies, just so that we can have a better understanding of what exactly happened and why.
Have you heard anything yet?
I have received confirmation of receipt. I don't expect a quick response on this, knowing the federal government. Typically they have 20 days to respond. I will be following up. Sometimes you send in a letter, and you find out you sent it to the wrong agency. [For] one of my letters I received confirmation that it needed to go into a public portal, so I’ve now registered the information.
I expect to follow some steps here. I look forward to having a conversation with the right person to get this information, but I plan to follow up and do everything I can to get answers for our community and figure out what's going on here.
Given your experience as a prosecutor and a state lawmaker, was filing a Freedom of Information Act request an instinctual move?
Maybe it was an instinctive move. My antenna really went up when I read that the courthouse was closed to lawyers and reporters. To me that is a new level of troubling, when people in power are doing something so serious as arresting a person in a hallway of a courthouse, taking away somebody's access to their lawyer, holding people in cells, avoiding the public.
Those are really alarming things and I think we're all figuring out where we fit into this fight. I'm thinking about… well, let’s get the information and let’s try and at least get due process for these folks.
You spoke during the “No Kings” rally at the state capitol on Saturday and shared your experience as an attorney against the immigration enforcement by the Trump administration. Tell us about that.
I served as a volunteer lawyer the first time Donald Trump was president. When he was first separating families at the border I actually went to Texas, and what I experienced was eerily similar to what I'm seeing now. It was a very isolated detention center, I wasn't allowed to bring anyone in, wasn't allowed to bring a translator in. Had to take off my earrings [and] put them in a locker with my phone to get access to my client.
Originally when I got there I couldn't access the client because she hadn't signed something… but I had no way to get her anything. So I had to jump through a lot of hoops, and it took hours which turned into days just to have a basic attorney-client meeting. And the way that she was so isolated and so alienated… by this point she had been separated from her five-year-old son for a month. It really struck a chord with me.
It was just so unjust, and the deck was just so stacked against her and every other family that experienced what she experienced. And what I'm seeing now is very similar… and in some ways it's worse. We have these folks who have been here, some of them for more than 10 years working in our community, living in our community, going to school, all together. These are our neighbors, and we're seeing them be terrorized by a federal system that is really trying to sweep things under the rug. I think our best defense here is transparency and due process, and shutting down courts denies that. I think that's where my instinct is really that we need to fight back on this.
Some of your constituents might support the president’s actions. What do you say to them?
I think we need to be a lot more strategic about immigration enforcement. I don't think there's anyone who thinks that our current system is working. Clearly, we need bipartisan efforts for immigration reform. I think we need to bring all solutions to the table and this needs to be something that Republicans and Democrats work together on. Everybody being in their corners hasn’t worked on this… so I agree with my constituents to that extent.
But as a person with a career in law enforcement, prosecuting the worst of the worst — human traffickers, drug traffickers, money launderers, transnational gang organizations — I can tell you that law enforcement has done a ton of work to build trust in vulnerable communities and immigrant communities. And these ICE raids are really undercutting those efforts quite quickly. People are scared to go to their jobs. That means that victims of domestic violence will be scared to call 911. That puts people in a really dangerous and vulnerable situation.
If we want to get back to a place of public safety in California and anywhere, we need to establish that trust with law enforcement in the community. And ICE needs to be part of that by not doing these indiscriminate raids where people are scared to go to their jobs, where people are scared to go to their check-in appointments. It's literally a Catch-22. If you do not show up at your removal proceedings, you can be removed. And if you do show up at your removal proceedings, apparently you can be detained and taken away from your family right then and there.
In the event that these federal agencies don't respond to your FOIA request, or if you are dissatisfied with the response, what’s the next step?
I expect there to be some haggling here on this. I’m hoping to have a conversation with the right person. If it takes 30 days instead of 20 days, there might be some information that's security information and it needs to be redacted, those things are reasonable.
If push comes to shove and we haven't received any information, or questions are not answered, or we don't feel like we've gotten what we're entitled to under [U.S. Code] Section 552 which governs the FOIA… the next step would be to file a lawsuit in federal court to enforce the FOIA.
