Immigrant advocates and civil rights groups had urged the council to postpone a new vote until after the coronavirus crisis had passed so that residents could participate. When the council moved ahead, advocates accused it of intentionally scheduling the vote while California’s lockdown was in effect, to ensure that large numbers of demonstrators could not attend.

Both supporters and opponents of the plan were called on to speak, but hundreds of people were unable to even listen in, because Zoom and telephone lines were jammed.

“In the middle of a pandemic, when all of us are being forced to risk our health to work as essential workers in the fields or, if we’ve lost our work, afraid of how we’ll make rent and pay bills, our city council decided to hold a Zoom call limited to 100 people,” said Alex Gonzalez, a community organizer with Faith in the Valley, a religious coalition that opposed the plan.

Dolores Huerta, a veteran organizer of farm workers, called in to the meeting to request a postponement of the vote. “I’m just asking you to please not make the decision until you can have an in-person city council,” she said.

The decision follows several court rulings that have ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has contracted with GEO to run the McFarland facilities, to reduce the number of immigrants it holds in detention because of the risks they could face from the coronavirus pandemic.