Alameda County approves $3.6 million to scale up immigrant defense amid ICE surge

This text was initially revealed by KQED.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to approve an emergency appropriation of $3.57 million to dramatically scale up authorized companies, neighborhood outreach and speedy response networks for the county’s immigrant and refugee residents.

Sourced primarily from the Measure W Important Companies Fund, the allocation contains $2.5 million for help to immigrants and refugees and one other $1 million for a versatile contingency reserve. The funds will prolong and develop contracts for 3 frontline neighborhood coalitions.

These funds are along with the province’s preliminary $3.5 million reduction bundle, accredited March 11, which helped set up the speedy response companies that at the moment are in excessive demand.

Led by Supervisors Nikki Fortunato Bas and Elisa Márquez, the motion is in direct response to what county workers experiences describe as “exponentially elevated assaults” and “unprecedented ranges” of federal immigration enforcement.

“That is about real-time response and constructing an infrastructure that may proceed to teach and empower our communities to resist this escalation of threats and assaults,” Márquez mentioned.

Beneath the brand new federal funds, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will obtain an quantity another $75 billion in 4 years, which represents a rise of greater than 300% in enforcement and detention capability.

Bas mentioned residents have been demanding extra assist after a latest Supreme Courtroom ruling that enables federal ICE brokers to make arrests based mostly on perceived ethnicity, elevating issues about elevated racial profiling. The transfer additionally follows an incident final month involving federal immigration officers has a man detained in an Oakland courthouse.

“With ICE arrests on the rise once more and our immigrant communities being focused, the neighborhood has come to us to say it’s pressing that we enhance our capability,” Bas mentioned. “It will enable us to develop the speedy response hotline to weekends and proceed to defend immigrants in our justice system to make sure they obtain a good listening to.”

The six-month funding extension is meant to strengthen the native security internet in a province the place one in three residents is foreign-born and half of all youngsters dwell in mixed-status households, in line with a examine. letter from Bas and Márquez to the board who advocate adoption.

The variety of immigration arrests within the Bay Space has doubled

Enforcement information for what ICE calls San Francisco’s “Space of ​​Accountability,” which stretches from Kern County to Hawaii, Saipan and Guam and contains Alameda County, confirmed the variety of immigration arrests doubled in early 2025.

Based on the regulators’ letter, this spike will disproportionately impression working-class households, particularly residents of Mexico, Guatemala, India, El Salvador and Honduras.

The Alameda County Immigration Authorized Schooling Partnership’s ACILEP speedy response hotline documented a 500% enhance in month-to-month name quantity since its relaunch earlier this 12 months, receiving greater than 1,300 calls between March and October 2025. At Tuesday’s assembly, ACILEP mentioned that on weekdays one particular person is on the telephone at a time, underscoring the group’s restricted capability.

The $3.57 million will assist the province’s three core companions as they scale their companies:

• ACILEP: Nearly all of the funding will assist the enlargement of the group’s Speedy Response Hotline to function on weekends and guarantee 24/7 protection, along with strengthening authorized companies and coordinating its volunteer community in the neighborhood.
• California Collaborative for Immigrant JusticeThe funds will keep elimination protection capability, offset submitting prices for low-income shoppers, and fund authorized schooling and outreach – guaranteeing that immigrants in elimination proceedings have entry to due course of and authorized protections.
• Trabajadores Unidos Workers UnitedThe group will use the funding to supply sources, mutual assist and neighborhood organizing alternatives to low-income immigrant staff and their households.

The board additionally designated $50,000 for the Alameda County Public Defender’s Workplace. This funding will assist offset the skyrocketing prices of immigration functions and lawsuits for low-income shoppers, such because the latest important enhance in asylum utility and inexperienced card prices following the passage of President Donald Trump’s “One Huge Lovely” funds invoice.

In contrast to all three of its neighboring counties – Contra Costa, San Francisco and Santa Clara – Alameda County doesn’t at the moment have a devoted workplace for immigrant and refugee affairs.

“We completely must do extra strategic planning and develop a stronger infrastructure for the long run,” Márquez mentioned.

Alameda County Collectively, an advert hoc committee that prioritizes fairness and inclusivity for residents, beneficial that the county create such an workplace, which might be tasked with coordinating sources, overseeing immigrant service packages and advising the Board of Supervisors on responsive insurance policies.

District workers have been instructed to return to the board with a complete coordination plan on October 21, and once more on October 28. The county is working with philanthropists, together with the San Francisco Basis’s new initiative, the Stand Collectively Bay Space Fund, to assist these initiatives.

“It is rather necessary that individuals really feel like they belong on this province,” says Márquez. “Investing in these companies, recognizing the challenges that come up and discovering a option to mitigate them reaffirms our dedication to being a spatial and inclusive neighborhood for all.”