**MEDIA ADVISORY**
San Mateo County’s Immigrant Rights Community Calls on Their Board of Supervisors to Preserve Funding for Rapid Response and Removal Defense Ahead of 2024 Election
Redwood City -- For the last 7 years, the San Mateo County Rapid Response Network has provided accessible legal support for immigrants who are arrested by ICE or at risk of eviction. Our dispatchers are available 24/7 to connect residents with attorneys, their families, and essential services, keeping individuals out of remote detention facilities. The first of its kind, this model has been replicated across the nation. Rapid response is working, helping keep undocumented and mixed-status families together and able to meet their housing, mental health, and other basic needs. Now rapid response and removal defense services in San Mateo County are in danger. In the lead-up to November, we need this vital resource more than ever. On Tuesday morning, the community will gather to apply public pressure before this goes to a vote at the end of the month. Our immigrant communities deserve safety, dignity, and transparency from our elected officials.
WHAT: Community press conference and letter delivery to the Board of Supervisors
WHO: legal advocates, local residents and community
WHEN: Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 8-9 am (press conference); 9-9:30am (public comment)
WHERE: Outside of San Mateo County Board Chambers, 400 County Center, Redwood City, CA 94063
ORGANIZATIONAL SIGN-ON LETTER
June 11, 2024
Dear San Mateo County Board of Supervisors:
With immigration enforcement on the rise in the Bay Area since the start of the year and the 2024 election looming, the undersigned organizations working in San Mateo County (SMC) call on the Board of Supervisors to support funding for rapid response and removal defense services. The stakes are high for your final decision later this month in regards to this funding as part of the Measure K budget for the upcoming fiscal year. We thank you for your past support, and now call on you to maintain—not do away with—these essential services at a time of rising fear among our immigrant communities.
SMC’s Rapid Response Network provides 24/7 legal coverage to respond to ICE arrests, enforcement operations, and evictions in our communities. Founded in 2017, it was the first rapid response network in the nation. For the past seven years, dispatchers have staffed the hotline around the clock, allowing for real-time activation of attorneys to support county residents who are arrested by ICE before they are deported or transferred to remote detention facilities with limited access to legal services and their loved ones. SMC’s community defense model has been replicated across many other cities and states with the support and technical assistance of the network’s founders.
The steadfast provision of rapid response support has increased the chances of a path to citizenship for SMC’s most vulnerable community members. It has decreased family separation, strengthened and diversified immigrant rights resources in the county, and helped our community members maintain stable housing and meet their other basic needs, from accessing mental health services to advocating for much-needed workplace protections. Rapid response also averts the significant financial hardship that detention and deportation create for impacted families. Rapid response is working, and we need this vital resource now more than ever.
San Mateo is a county of immigrants, and many of our community members are at particular risk of targeting by ICE for arrest, detention, and deportation on account of not having U.S. citizenship. Since January 2024, ICE has carried out monthly, targeted ICE enforcement actions, arresting dozens of individuals in the Bay Area. The fear of deportation is pervasive throughout undocumented and mixed-status immigrant families. That fear is again on the rise with the current uptick in ICE operations in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, harkening back to the Trump era.
Immigrants are our neighbors, families, friends, and ourselves. We celebrate the past efforts of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors to keep our communities together.
We urgently call on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors to continue this legacy of support and collaboration by preserving rapid response and removal defense funding for FY 2025.
Sincerely,
Pangea Legal Services
Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto
University of San Francisco Immigration & Deportation Defense Clinic
Immigration Institute of the Bay Area
Catholic Charities San Mateo Center for Immigration Legal and Support Services
Pacifica Social Justice
Peninsula Solidarity Cohort
Peninsula Interfaith Coalition on Immigration
Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City Social Action Committee
Sisters of Mercy Solidarity Committee
San Francisco Peninsula People Power
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
La Raza Centro Legal
Faith In Action Bay Area