Submitted by Katie Connell
Re: 7-C 11/4/2025
From: Jeanne Nader
To: Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft; Michele Pryor; Tracy Jensen; Tony Daysog; Greg Boller; City Clerk; Manager Manager; City Attorney
Subject: Public Comment – November 4 City Council – ICE presence in Alameda Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 2:35:09 PM
Dear Mayor, City Council Members, City Manager and City Attorney, I am proud to be a part of Alameda Progressives who vigorously lobbied for a Sanctuary City Resolution in 2017. I appreciate the City leaders reaffirming a commitment to upholding the resolution.
That said, the Resolution has no teeth if it is only acknowledged and not fully utilized by elected officials and city staff. A sanctuary resolution is only as good as its enforcement. Fear of extrajudicial immigration enforcement undermines public trust and safety. Alameda's commitment to inclusion and sanctuary values depends on the City being proactive, communicating with residents and full transparency about its role.
Ten days ago (while ICE was still on Coast Guard island) several of us residents canvassed the businesses on Webster St. to share information on Know Your Rights for their staff and customers. Nearly every business owner and/or staff told us that they hadn't received any information like this, not even from the city. As you know, many of the businesses are staffed and/or owned by longtime BIPOC residents. Many expressed concern about their staff's safety.
What is the City doing to reassure Alameda local businesses about their rights and those of their staff? What is the city doing to relay to staff across departments about Know Your Rights? To my knowledge, there is only public information in the libraries.
General sentiment on the island is that we need to protect our neighbors. We should be proactively informing businesses and residents about their legal rights and lifting up businesses that are working to protect their employees.
You are the elected officials and have the responsibility of good governance - meaning looking out for and providing the conditions for Alamedans' safety, especially now.
I ask that you agendize a report back from city staff for a future Council meeting on how the City is actually implementing the Sanctuary City resolution, including providing information on KYR in multiple languages to residents AND businesses.
Sincerely,
Jeanne Nader
Alameda resident
From: Savanna Cheer
To: Tony Daysog; Tracy Jensen; Michele Pryor; Greg Boller; Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft Cc: City Clerk; Manager Manager
Subject: Alameda Sanctuary City concerns - ICE in the Bay Area Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 1:35:14 PM
Hello:
Thank you Tracy and Michelle for replying to my previous inquiries on this topic a couple months ago, your replies were thorough and seemed sufficient at the time. Things have unfortunately escalated and changed. I join a chorus of community members in requesting specific, clear, and decisive steps on how the City of Alameda will respond to ICE presence and increased threat of federal activity in our community. We are asking for more granular assurances on how Alameda's sanctuary city policy will protect our vulnerable neighbors and fight federal overreach.
In your previous replies, Tracy and Michelle, you indicated you had a regular back and forth with both the City Manager and City departments on ways city policies align with our community's values and support our sanctuary city status. It was great to hear that! It seems like it would be worth a City Council agenda item ASAP to share your findings and deliver an update to the community around this topic.
In the meantime, I want to offer two more concrete steps you can all take that would go a long way in reassuring the community that the City is willing to protect vulnerable Alamedans should the feds come to town (again or in bigger numbers).
1. Determine clearly whether APD's use of Flock fixed and mobile ALPRs is 100% compliant with Policy 462 from APD. Specifically, is every inquiry listed in the transparency portal actually legitimate usage and how can the public be assured that is true past taking an APD employee's word for it? Furthermore, what assurance do we have that Flock cannot see any of the data from Alameda's ALPRs? It's been reiterated that ALPR data is never shared with ICE or CBP etc. What is less clear to me is whether Flock as a company has access to Alameda's data. This is a key difference. Should Flock in fact have access, it is clear from recent national reporting, you cannot reasonably or definitively claim to be a sanctuary city and maintain a relationship with Flock. Beyond the actual technical question of whether the ALPR data is violating your sanctuary city policies - how about public trust and safety? It would go a long way towards making folks feel safer to know that the City of Alameda doesn't support companies like Flock who are actively harming USians during this time. Frankly, do you even have any recent analysis of the City's ALPR program to know how effective it is?
2. Second, the City should be utilizing the City Attorney's office in the most wide-reaching and effective way as it pertains to protecting Alamedans' constitutional rights. Why not have the well-resourced department hold regular Know Your Rights training for individuals, departments, and businesses? How about they do continuous outreach around legal resources available to residents who are negatively affected by federal actions? Couldn't the City Attorney's office support community-sourced legal defense groups as they work through the immense case volume created by federal agencies' violent immigration enforcement practices? In New York and Chicago, elected officials have stressed the importance of regular bystanders capturing ICE/CBP/DHS agents while they're snatching people off the street, because this helps with evidence so that those who are abused have legal recourse in the future. The City Attorney's office could effectively deliver these types of messages. Having a City department take a firm stance and support vulnerable Alamedans goes a long way in tangibly living out the values that being a sanctuary city embody.
I, along with many other residents, am eager to see a full report back to the community about how you're all responding to this moment. You are tasked with policy making and ensuring that said policies positively affect residents of this City. Please take steps to do so in this very frightening and serious moment in our nation's history.
Thank you,
Savanna Cheer