If someone is living in America in fear of being deported, they shouldn’t be here. That’s one Coronado resident’s opinion on the Trump administration’s severe actions on immigration.
But, in some parts of the United States Constitution, it says “persons” – not “citizens” – and those living in fear still do have rights in America. That’s another resident’s opinion on immigration raids occurring nationwide.
While there have been no reported raids in Coronado thus far, San Diego County is not immune to the enforcement actions – or the polarizing controversy.
Buona Forchetta and LA raids
On May 30, federal immigration agents raided Buona Forchetta, an Italian restaurant in South Park, taking four workers into custody based on criminal search warrants alleging that the restaurant employed 19 undocumented workers.
The operation incited an immediate neighborhood protest and a response by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who used flash-bang devices to ward off the demonstrators.
That incident, and others like it countrywide, occurred as deportations, travel bans and visa crackdowns have spread across America.
On June 6, ICE raided multiple locations in downtown Los Angeles, causing a week-long protest and prompting President Donald Trump to send in the National Guard and U.S. Marines despite objections from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials in the state.
Trump invoked a law that authorizes a president to call up the National Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
This week, a federal judge ruled there was no rebellion and Trump’s action was illegal, but the case is moving to higher courts.
(Il)legal use of military?
Bri Waite, a Coronado resident and former criminal lawyer and district attorney in Northern California, said the deployment of Guard soldiers was illegal.
“Unless Trump has declared an insurrection or rebellion, he cannot use military soldiers to help with law enforcement activities – and that includes ICE arrests or raids,” Waite explained.
News video and social media posts suggested the LA protest was largely peaceful. However, vehicles were burned and there were documented instances of rubber bullets being fired by police during the demonstrations.
“It’s murkier if he can deploy them to protect federal property,” Waite said, “but I don’t think they need to be (in LA) anyway.”
Dynasty Palaganas, a Coronado resident who serves in the Navy, said the president had every right to deploy the National Guard. Palaganas emphasized that he was expressing his own views and not those of the Department of Defense.
Protecting federal employees and maintaining order is the basic responsibility of leadership.
Coronado resident Dynasty Palaganas
“Protecting federal employees and maintaining order is the basic responsibility of leadership,” Palaganas said.
Palaganas said Newsom didn’t want the military in LA, but that if the governor wasn’t “protecting the federal agencies in your own city, the president is going to go ahead and do it.”
“If it has to come to that, then obviously it’s gotten worse than it should have,” Palaganas said.
The presidential memo from the White House also stated that the defense secretary could deploy other members of the U.S. armed forces.
“His order, too, is so vague. He can use this in other states,” Waite said. “So I don’t think California’s the last state where he’s going to be targeting.”
“No Kings” Rally
Coronado resident Dani Allen, 51, compared the president’s use of military force to the start of World War II. She is the global head of talent for a tech company in Silicon Valley.
I think this feels – very much so – like Nazi Germany. I think this isn’t the start of fascism here, but this is fascism.
Coronado resident Dani Allen
“I think this feels – very much so – like Nazi Germany,” she said. “I think this isn’t the start of fascism here, but this is fascism.”
Allen, who was interviewed on June 13, added that the world is watching and, at some point, people have to stop talking and start doing something.
She attended San Diego’s “No Kings Rally” on June 14, protesting the president’s multimillion dollar birthday parade and what seems, to some, to be a budding dictatorship.
“My hope is that it rises to the level of maybe even garnering support to oust or overthrow what’s actually happening. That’s what I would like to see: to overthrow this government,” Allen said.
She said she doesn’t mean an insurrection or a riot, just removing Trump from office.
“At the end of the day, it is really about not allowing authoritarian rule; not allowing our Constitution to be violated by someone who is in the highest seat in our country, and calling for an impeachment,” Allen said.
Due process rights
The ICE raids also bring up questions about due process and the ways the government has been going about dealing with deployments.
The Constitution says ‘persons,’ not ‘citizens.’ Anyone here, even if they’re here without documentation, is owed due process … The way it’s being done is so traumatic.
Coronado resident Bri Waite
“The Constitution says ‘persons,’ not ‘citizens,’” Waite said. “Anyone here, even if they’re here without documentation, is owed due process … The way it’s being done is so traumatic.”
Waite said she isn’t against deporting people who have criminal records, but she doesn’t think ICE is targeting felons.
Palaganas thinks that if someone is here illegally, ICE has every reason to perform these raids, detain and deport them.
“I feel for the people being affected. But being American means believing in the rule of law,” Palaganas said. “When someone lives here undocumented, they don’t have the rights and protections every worker in this country deserves.”
Palaganas emigrated from the Philippines when he was 8 years old. He became a citizen at 19 after he enlisted in the Navy and finished boot camp. He said the country needs to look into fixing immigration law so that people come to America the legal way.
If you’re here living in fear, you shouldn’t be here.
Coronado resident Dynasty Palaganas
“If you’re here living in fear, you shouldn’t be here,” he said.
Palaganas acknowledged that undocumented workers in the U.S. can sometimes face abuse by employers, who take advantage of their precarious status. “It’s very easy to manipulate them and have them work longer hours, pay them cheap labor, stuff like that,” he noted.
Doing their job
Palaganas said he supported the ICE officers in South Park and in LA. He said agents were given an operation and they carried out their duties.
“The way they’re responding, that’s them doing their job. That is what they are assigned to do,” Palaganas said.
But Coronado resident and real estate agent Matt Axelson said he thinks ICE could have carried out the operation in a dramatically better way.
“My wife, for instance, is somebody who is unbelievably empathetic … and her approach is that there’s a humane perspective over a government, legal perspective,” Axelson explained.
He said he has a friend whose family had to wait 17 years in order to enter the country legally, and he thinks there is a line somewhere in the middle of enforcing immigration laws and making the raids less drastic.
Axelson said there is also a problem with miscommunication between the immigration officers and the public.
He originally thought the raids were for undocumented immigrants with criminal records. But after the ICE raid in South Park, Axelson doesn’t know if he can stand firm in that belief anymore.
“Do we know, genuinely, how it’s being rolled out and who they’re arresting?” Axelson asked.
Undocumented is not a crime
The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, states that the act of being present in the U.S. in violation of immigration laws is not, standing alone, a crime. It is actually a misdemeanor and the vast majority of undocumented immigrants do not face felony charges when detained.
According to the ACLU, “many undocumented immigrants do not enter the United States illegally. They enter legally but overstay, work without authorization, drop out of school or violate the conditions of their visas in some other way.”
Federal immigration laws are also enforced through civil proceedings, not criminal ones.
Axelson said immigration in the United States is like a pendulum. President Obama had really high deportations rates, he said, while during President Biden’s term he felt the borders were too open. “And now I think it’s swinging back,” Axelson added, “but it’s swinging back so aggressively without a clear voiced plan.”
Allen said she was outraged by the ICE raid in South Park, and afraid that, without due process, similar raids could be conducted against anyone.
Stripping away people’s rights and just coming in unannounced and causing this much disruption and anxiety without due process is, I mean, it’s abhorrent behavior.
Coronado resident Dani Allen
“Stripping away people’s rights and just coming in unannounced and causing this much disruption and anxiety without due process is, I mean, it’s abhorrent behavior,” she added.
“It’s frightening, it’s disgusting. And quite frankly I think, as America, we should be embarrassed and ashamed.”
