Contra Costa residents rally for Sikh grandma being held in notorious SoCal ICE processing center

EL SOBRANTE Manjit Kaur hopped into the backseat of a family friend s Honda to escape the unrelenting clamor of car horns outside desperate for a quiet place to hear her mother-in-law s voice the first time Harjit Kaur was able to call from an ICE detention center in the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley almost miles away from her longtime Hercules home Kaur s family was narrated that a -minute call from Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center would cost but eight different credit cards failed to process and she was never able to connect Outside meanwhile hundreds of protesters were spending their Friday night on sidewalks and crosswalks where regularly seen signs calling to Melt ICE were joined by new ones supporting Kaur and demanding Bring Grandma Home All solicited supportive honks from motorists traveling along Appian Way a major artery where tens of thousands of vehicles excursion between I- and San Pablo Dam Road each day Multiple know the -year-old Kaur as a seamstress at Sari Palace in Berkeley where she started work shortly after she immigrated to the Bay Area in hopeful to find asylum in this country from India But her family stated she s spent the past week in Mesa Verde a processing center in Bakersfield that s long failed to provide basic medical care or provide records of the people who are detained there according to an April summary issued by the California Department of Justice Kaur s asylum circumstance was denied in but Manjit Kaur revealed she has helped her get to her required check-in meetings with ICE agents ever since a stressful legal limbo despite the fact that her mother-in law doesn t have a criminal record While she declared federal immigration agents previously reassured the grandmother of five she was complying with the law and could remain under supervision with work permits she was detained Monday at the San Francisco immigration office They say they re picking up criminals that s not who this is Manjit Kaur commented Later that day minutes after Harjit Kaur s second unsuccessful attempt to call Manjjit disclosed the last time they spoke it was through another detainee s account We ve been trying to hold back tears so we don t sound emotional because she s crying every time we speak I can tell she s emerging Who s going to be responsible for that Manjit Kaur has spent a lot of time on the phone this past week juggling time with immigration attorneys Sikh leaders youth groups and local activists A large portion of the crowd are regulars with Indivisible West CoCo County which has rallied residents for weekly protests at one of El Sobrante s busiest traffic arteries since January pushing back against policies handed down during Trump s second administration About half of the detainees currently being held in ICE custody an estimated people or nearly double the population of El Sobrante don t have criminal convictions according to the Deportation Details Project a centralized repository of individual-level U S executive immigration enforcement evidence directed by UC Berkeley Law Professor David Hausman Between May and July the rate of ICE arrests of people without criminal records had doubled the highest spike of any other group of detainees It s not that we didn t try on our end Manjit Kaur commented We were never worried before not for her there was no reason to be This was not something we were hiding We weren t criminals The color of our skin is brown but that s it What little news that has emerged out of Mesa Verde Processing Center in new years has been troubling A judge with U S District Court for the Northern District of California called the facility out in December of for its deliberate indifference to the safety of the detainees during the pandemic while the California Department of Justice stated that personnel at the Bakersfield facility failed to record and record a critical use of force affair that occurred when detainees were transferred to out-of-state facilities after a peaceful hunger strike The state DOJ revealed that individuals held at Mesa Verde had been there for an average of days with the longest detention being days Congressman John Garamendi s office has stepped up to backing Kaur s family and help deal with her episode including sending a letter to ICE officers There is no mandatory timeline for immigration agents to respond President Trump initially promised to go after the worst of the worst in his immigration protocol Garamendi stated in a declaration Yet this administration s decision to detain a -year-old woman a respected member of the population with no criminal record who has faithfully released to ICE every six months for more than years is one more example of the misplaced priorities of Trump s immigration enforcement As the El Sobrante protest began to quiet along San Pablo Dam Road Amrit Kaur a Bay Area district youth organizer declared it was easy to get the word out about the event one of Harjit Kaur s grandchildren reached out to her on Wednesday she helped coordinate fliers on social media and the village proved up There s several comfort in the fact that we can lean back on our people and the public reported Amrit She explained the idea of sangat a Sikh ideal which emphasizes the importance of fostering locality and spiritual backing She explained past connections laid the groundwork for a setup of people ready and willing to help whether it s coordinating a meal or helping give Harjit Kaur a voice from a Bakersfield jail We don t know the explanation mentioned Amrit But we re here