When ICE Comes, the Bay Area Protects Their Own

The call came from the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network (SCC RRN) on Feb. 21, 2025. ICE agents had violently arrested Ulises Peña Lopez, a husband and a father to a 4-year-old daughter, outside of his home in Sunnyvale, California. ICE not only violated Ulises’ constitutional rights during this arrest, but they also put him in the hospital. 

During his arrest, Ulises invoked his Fourth Amendment rights to remain silent, talk to a lawyer, and review a warrant. Instead of respecting his rights, ICE officers beat his car window with batons to force him out and then physically assaulted him until he lost consciousness. Paramedics rushed Ulises to a hospital, where he presented with symptoms of heart attack and stroke. 

Ulises’ family contacted their local rapid response hotline, and SCC RRN dispatchers activated two on-call emergency legal responders from Pangea Legal Services. This collective response worked, connecting Ulises and his family to a strong network of legal and community support. 

Elena Hodges, the on-call lead attorney responder, traveled to the hospital to provide a free legal consult and document ICE’s ongoing violations, with help from remote support and other on-call responders and colleagues. Over the course of the rapid response activation, the legal team averted Ulises’ immediate deportation, mobilized community support, and coordinated referrals to ensure ongoing legal representation. 

The SCC RRN also connected the family with material and accompaniment resources, including rent support and mental health services to address the trauma of witnessing Ulises’ unlawful arrest and the impact of ongoing family separation. Two months after his unlawful arrest, Ulises remains detained. But his family and community have prevented a deportation and continue to organize for Ulises’ release, so that he can reunite with his wife and daughter and fight his immigration case from home. 

Ulises’ case illustrates how rapid response is a vital tool for community safety and resilience, offering a model of defense grounded in care, mutual aid, and a refusal to let our people face harm alone. And, given the political climate, our communities need rapid response now more than ever. 

For immigrant communities across the country, the past few months have been filled with fear. Parents are afraid to take their kids to school. Workers are skipping shifts because they are too scared to drive. Rumors of mass raids flood social media, spreading panic. While these rumors are inaccurate—no mass raids have taken place in the San Francisco Bay Area as of this writing—they do express a shared recognition: We are living through a renewed era of targeted enforcement and rising repression.

And yet, amid this fear, people are showing up for one another. They’re protecting their neighbors, organizing in real time, and building systems of resistance grounded in solidarity. 

A Community Model for Defense

Pangea Legal Services is a nonprofit that provides direct legal representation to immigrants facing deportation along with community organizing. We are building toward a world where no immigrant is detained and where all people have a pathway to citizenship and the resources they need to thrive. 

When the first Trump administration escalated deportations in 2017, the team of organizers, movement lawyers, and immigrant justice advocates at Pangea realized traditional legal services weren’t enough to meet the demand. By the time someone needed a lawyer, it was often already too late. 

We needed something proactive, community based, and ready to respond in real time when ICE made arrests. We also needed public actors, especially county governments, to help fund these efforts. Pangea Legal Services and its partners responded to the community need by building such a network from the ground up.

Across the San Francisco Bay Area, Migra Watch and other rapid response networks emerged to monitor ICE, verify enforcement activity, and provide emergency legal support. Parents, students, and day laborers became first responders in their own communities. They trained in Know Your Rights, set up hotlines, and formed rapid response teams that could mobilize within minutes. 

These networks didn’t disappear after Trump left office. Rapid response continued under the Biden administration, even as ICE enforcement became less visible. Now, as targeted enforcement ramps up again and protections are rolled back nationwide, these same networks are being activated and expanded. 

Rapid response is more than legal support. It’s mutual aid, organizing, and community defense, which is informed by and reflects the Bay Area’s decades-long history of community-based resistance: from the immigrant rights and Black Power movements to disability justice and Indigenous sovereignty to LGBTQ liberation, free speech, and anti-war movements. At its core, rapid response is an embodiment of community power and the recognition that we protect ourselves.

When Pangea began our rapid response work, only a few team members participated; just four of the organization’s 20 members were leading rapid response. But anticipating that the community need would surge after the 2024 elections, our team prepared. 

We engaged in months of collective discussion and made a strategic decision: Rapid response would become an organization-wide commitment for a limited period of time, as we continued to advocate for longer-term solutions at the county and regional levels. 

“If we do our jobs well, the impact of our rapid response networks will be that immigrants lead in our local and state-wide policy decisions on community safety and power, in a sustainable way that outlasts any single federal administration,” says Jessica Yamane, a co-director at Pangea and an immigration attorney. “To achieve this vision, we have to create systems that do not concentrate power with single organizations or individuals, but instead encourage collaboration and sharing responsibility.”

Our whole team, including legal and non-legal staff, now takes part in rapid response. We all rotate on the hotlines for three Bay Area counties. We all train. We all respond when our communities need us. 

It wasn’t an easy shift. Many staff worried they weren’t equipped to do this work. Nearly all feared burnout. But by democratizing the process, offering training, and building collective buy-in, we have ensured that no one person carries the weight alone. This is community defense at its best: shared leadership, shared responsibility, and shared power.

Beyond the Bay: A National Blueprint

The Bay Area’s model of community-led rapid response is spreading. The details look different across regions, but the goal is the same: protect our people. Some models focus on removal defense while others center community organizing, legal accompaniment, and public education. No matter their focus, each of these models exists because government systems have failed to offer meaningful safety, and communities have moved in to meet that need. 

In New York, the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative and similar grassroots coalitions offer a 24-hour community-based response system. Similarly, in Philadelphia, the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia and Free Migration Project provide accompaniment and legal support. In Chicago, groups such as Organized Communities Against Deportations offer emergency hotline response and accompaniment services. In Los Angeles, the ICE Out of L.A. coalition and the Los Angeles Raids Rapid Response Network have mobilized and defended entire neighborhoods for years. And yet, the need still persists. 

Since Trump’s second inauguration, deportations are surging once again. In the Bay Area, ICE is ramping up targeted enforcement (distinct from mass raids) by systematically tracking, detaining, and attempting to deport specific immigrants, from long-time community members with past criminal system contacts to individuals with prior deportation orders. Agents are testing the boundaries of sanctuary ordinances, showing up at parole offices, waiting outside of homes, circling grocery stores, and conducting high-profile raids meant to instill fear.

We know that the federal government’s current attack on immigrant communities is connected to assaults on the rights of other linked and often overlapping communities, including trans and queer people, Muslims, and activists speaking in support of Palestinian liberation. 

Rapid response offers a blueprint for community defense and collective care in the face of government repression. The networks that sustained communities through previous waves of attacks are mobilizing once more, reminding us that our greatest strength lies in collective action. 

How We Resist

For those feeling overwhelmed, know this: We are not powerless. Here are tools we can use to protect ourselves and each other. Remember, rapid response is a form of mutual aid! 

• Save your hotline number. Add your local rapid response hotline to your phone. If you live in California, check out this hotline list. 
• Know your rights. ICE depends on fear and misinformation. Use Know Your Rights (KYR) tools and resources such as ILRC’s Red Cards, KYR Videos, and Pangea’s KYR Resources Page to make sure you and your neighbors know how to respond if ICE shows up.
• Make a family preparedness plan. Designate emergency contacts, guardianship plans, and safe points of contact. Keep important identity documents and immigration records in one secure, accessible place—and let a trusted friend or family member know where they are. Use this free, detailed toolkit to get started.  
• Organize your workplace. Talk with your team about creating a protocol for ICE enforcement. This is especially important for schools, construction sites, restaurants, and public-facing organizations.  
• Show up for your neighbors. Volunteer with rapid response networks like Bay Resistance and those listed here. Offer accompaniment support. Always verify reports before sharing them.
• Demand stronger protections. Local governments have a responsibility to fund and enforce real protections—not just in name, but through sustained investment shaped by impacted constituents. Call on your city and county officials to support rapid response, uphold sanctuary policies, and prevent collaboration with ICE.

This moment calls us to choose courage over fear, action over silence, and one another over isolation. History shows us that when we build together, we don’t just endure; we transform.