Organized resistance to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is coming to San Diego, as advocacy groups are beginning to organize a rapid response network that could include hotlines, “solidarity teams” and even safe houses.

Meant to protect unauthorized immigrants, the network would be similar to what activists in other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, are working to implement.

Unauthorized immigrants have dealt with increased fear and anxiety since Trump signed his first executive orders on the subject, revising the policy of former President Barack Obama to focus on those who had committed crimes other than illegal entry. San Diegans forming a support network hope to ease fears.

“November 9th, the world turned upside down,” said Kevin Malone of the advocacy group San Diego Organizing Project, referring to the day after the presidential election. “We don’t want to leave the people that we care about alone in these moments of crisis.”


About 120 people met at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in National City this past weekend to discuss what it would take to create the response and support network. The group is made up of activists, faith leaders, teachers, lawyers and community service providers. It was organized by Malone and Norma Chávez-Peterson of the San Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The meeting began with two prayers, one led by a Catholic priest and one following an indigenous tradition of calling on the four cardinal directions for blessing. The room filled with the scent of burning sage.

Two unauthorized immigrants told the crowd about fear they’d experienced since the executive orders were signed in late January.

An Escondido teacher said she’d recently heard about a mother coming to the school to change her child’s address to another person’s, as a precaution in case she gets deported.


Helping families make emergency plans in case a member gets deported will likely be part of the group’s mission as it moves forward.

Activist Alison Ramsay researched what other cities have done and presented what she found to be best practices for the network.

Ramsay suggested creating a team of volunteer citizens to investigate rumors and alert the community about where enforcement activity is actually happening.

“The rumors go crazy, and people stay home, and they keep their kids home, and a lot of times it’s just chisme — it’s just gossip,” Malone said by telephone before the meeting. “We want a system where people with papers can go and verify whether la migra (or immigration enforcement) is at the train station.”


Ramsay said another effort, which is already under way through many advocacy organizations around San Diego County, would be teaching both unauthorized immigrants and their allies about their rights.

She said another set of citizen volunteers could create a “solidarity team” to show up at homes and businesses during immigration raids, not to interfere with officers but to witness and document events to ensure civil rights are not violated.

If someone is taken for deportation, some members of the solidarity team might follow the immigration officers’ vehicle to figure out where the individual goes for detention so that an immigration attorney can find that person quickly. The team would also support any family members left behind, like making sure children have a place to go or possibly moving remaining unauthorized immigrant family members into hiding in a sanctuary home.

“The most important is being there for the family that is left behind,” Chávez-Peterson said in an interview after the meeting. “This is trauma.”


Ramsay said she was still looking into the potential legal ramifications of hiding unauthorized immigrants in a home.

Everyone has a role to play, Chávez-Peterson said. Creating sanctuary homes would not be an appropriate role for the ACLU, she said, but individuals or members of the faith community might be interested in organizing that piece.

“Our job would be to advise people what the law says and what risks they’re taking,” Chávez-Peterson said.

The ACLU national office told ABC News about two weeks ago that it would create “rapid response teams” in partnership with private attorneys and local activists to give those facing deportation quick access to lawyers.


Another San Diego group, Mi Casa Es Su Casa, launched a website over the weekend called sanctuarysandiego.org where San Diegans can sign up their homes to be “sanctuary homes in resistance.”

Peter Brown, one of the participants in the group, said that these sanctuary homes are not meant to be clandestine but rather safe spaces for anyone who is part of a group that feels targeted under the new administration. Brown said that would include members of the LGBT community, people of color and anyone who “looks foreign.” The homes will be identified with yard signs.

“Most of us are motivated out of a moral outrage at what’s been happening and the extreme racism and anti-women sentiment that seems to be flowing out of Washington,” Brown said. “Folks are really outraged.”

The group began hosting teach-ins in January and will continue with teach-ins and community-building parties through the next couple of months to find more participants.


San Diego is a few weeks behind cities like Los Angeles where homeowners already have remodeling projects to create spaces in their homes for immigrants to hide, according to a report from CNN. Malone said his group was connected to the movement in Los Angeles as well as one in San Francisco.

A lawyer in New York is also creating an “underground railroad” network of homes to hide unauthorized immigrants, according to The Grio. The New York Times reported that about 450 places of worship nationwide have signed on as sanctuaries as well.

This is not the first time that San Diego activists and faith leaders have joined a national sanctuary movement for immigrants. In the mid 1980s, debate swirled around immigrants from Central America, particularly El Salvador and Guatemala, and whether they were truly fleeing persecution or instead seeking better economic opportunity, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune archives.

“Most of us are motivated out of a moral outrage at what’s been happening.” Peter Brown, member of the resistance


Some cities, including Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, declared themselves sanctuaries for immigrants.

Many faith leaders, convinced that the Central Americans would be tortured or killed if returned to their home countries, created a sanctuary network to house the unauthorized immigrants. La Jolla Friends, a Quaker church, was the first local place of worship to declare itself a sanctuary for the Central Americans in October 1984, according to Union-Tribune archives.

Sixteen leaders in the national movement, including native San Diegan Philip Willis-Conger, were indicted in Tuscon, Arizona, with charges of smuggling Central American immigrants into the U.S. Willis-Conger was among six of the sixteen convicted of conspiracy to smuggle Central Americans into the country and was sentenced to five years probation.

The San Diego Interfaith Task Force for Central America held a vigil for Willis-Conger after the indictment, where his mother, Mary Conger, of Spring Valley, addressed the crowd.


“If we are given the chance in life to save someone’s life, I don’t think we can turn that down,” she told them. “He was trying to do what he felt was the right thing to do.”

Willis-Conger, who now lives in Santa Barbara, recalled the time period that he helped with the Sanctuary Movement as exciting because he felt the work was important, but also scary.

“I remember being pretty scared about going to prison,” he said in a phone interview. “They technically could’ve sentenced me to decades in prison.”

He said he sees similarities between attitudes toward immigrants then and now.


“It’s eerily familiar,” he said. “I knew back then that immigrants become scapegoats when we have hard economic times.

“People were fearful and could be angry and nasty,” Willis-Conger added. “It wasn’t pretty, and it’s not pretty now.”

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate