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Hundreds of people in El Cajon, California, took to the streets Saturday to take part in the Marcha Para Immigrantes Communidad Rally. 

Residents of El Cajon and others from all across San Diego braved the afternoon sun and blazing temperatures approaching the 90s in support of the region’s immigrant community and to demand that ICE be removed from the city. The march was organized by a coalition of local immigrant rights, Latino advocacy, and community organizations such Fuerza Hispana de El Cajon, Latinos En Acción, Unión del Barrio, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, among others. Advocates organized Saturday’s march to protest raids and family separations in the region and across Southern California, which have ramped up under the Trump administration, which they say perpetuates a legacy of inhumane laws that criminalize and villainize immigrant communities. 

Throughout the day, organizers and speakers demanded that ICE stay out of El Cajon and that El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells and the City Council resign after passing a controversial immigration enforcement resolution earlier this year declaring itself El Cajon “not a sanctuary city,” and greenlighting the El Cajon police department to work with federal immigration authorities earlier this year.  Protesters said that the resolution is in direct violation of SB-54, a California state law that prohibits cities from turning anyone over to federal immigration authorities unless they have been convicted in court of certain felony crimes. 

Community-wide outage followed after El Cajon was also the site of a militarized workplace raid in March, where fifteen people were arrested at San Diego Powder & Protective Coatings. The raid has subsequently mobilized community members to demand answers from city officials regarding their cooperation with federal immigration officials.

Demonstrators rallied on the corner of South 1st Street and East Main Street near Manolo Farmers Market before marching west to El Cajon City Hall. More than 300 protesters carrying signs decrying Donald Trump’s attempts to reshape the Constitution, and waving an assortment of flags from countries such as Mexico, Palestine, and Iraq, made their way down Main Street. Evidence of the city’s diverse community could be seen with a myriad of storefronts and businesses displaying signs in Spanish, Arabic, Pashto, and English. 

Despite the region’s reputation of being overwhelmingly white, with generally conservative, Republican politics, El Cajon is notable for its immigrant population. Roughly a third of its 103,291 residents were born outside the United States, and 36.6% of the city’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino. The city is also home to vibrant Middle Eastern and North African communities. Particularly Iraqi Americans and Iraqi immigrants of Arab, Chaldean, and Assyrian descent. At least 15,000 of its residents identify as Chaldean,​​ making El Cajon home to one of the largest Chaldean communities outside of Iraq, second in the United States only to Detroit, Michigan.

For Crystal Abrahim, a lifelong resident of El Cajon, Saturday’s march hit particularly close to home given her family’s own journey to the United States.

“I am a product of immigrants, my parents came here to the U.S.”, Abrahim said. “I’m Chaldean, we’re a Christian minority from Iraq, and I was raised Catholic. It’s in my core to love my neighbors, and this is so close to me, because these are my brothers and sisters. Our community is being terrorized, they’re being speared. And we need to come together, stand up, and let them know that we’re going to protect them as much as we can.”

Saturday’s march eventually concluded with Baile folklórico performances and an assortment of speakers and community leaders who gathered at Centennial Plaza adjacent to the El Cajon courthouse to address the hundreds-strong crowd of protestors. Throughout the afternoon, speakers affirmed that they hear, see, and feel the trauma of community members who are being targeted by ICE and the Trump administration. Speakers also took care to touch upon an assortment of grievances and highlight the interconnected nature of issues such as mass deportations, police militarization, and the Trump administration’s threat of ending birthright citizenship.

Mairene Branham of the nonprofit Latinos En Acción told the crowd that out of the nearly 500 cities in California, only two (Huntington Beach and El Cajon) have officially declared themselves as not sanctuary cities. “Not only that, our city council went even further to violate California law to say that our El Cajon police department can actually collaborate with ICE on operations”, Branham said. “It starts here…in El Cajon, or our East County of San Diego. Because if we don’t start, what is this? It’s a cancer. What do cancers do? They spread? So we have to start working in this city.

Local attorney John Gomez, who grew up in El Cajon, agreed.  “This city has been described as a mini United Nations,” he said. “But today Main Street is empty as good, hard-working people are scared to come outside.”

Gomez spoke critically of Mayor Bill Wells and the city’s cooperation with ICE. “El Cajon is a city of immigrants, with residents from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Mexico, and beyond, Gomez said. Gomez also did not shy away from airing his frustration with the hyper-militarized response ICE has had in El Cajon and other cities throughout the state. “Heavily armed masked intruders ride in blacked-out vehicles and threaten to snatch up and arrest anyone who looks too dark or too foreign or not white enough. And the mayor of this city applauds it all and pledges that the El Cajon police will help them. We are here to call an end to this madness.”

Gomez concluded, saying, “Americans and San Diegans overwhelmingly reject your racial cleansing policies. Mayor Wells, stop playing Border Czar and start being a leader for all of your citizens. ICE get out of El Cajon. Get out of San Diego. Leave our restaurants, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and neighbors alone. We don’t want you here.”

Other speakers, such as Reverend RJ Lucchesi, an ordained minister and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, took a more internationalist approach when addressing the crowd. Drawing the connections between U.S. militarism and its arming of foreign powers like Israel, and how inevitably the same oppressive tactics come back to U.S. shores in the form of mass surveillance and the over-policing of marginalized communities.

“The same militarized forces that are used to kidnap our immigrant siblings out of their homes, their workplaces, and their places of worship are the same forces that are committing genocide in Gaza”, Lucchesi lamented. “Our government would rather spend trillions of our tax dollars on coups in Latin America and other imperialist wars of aggression around the world. Destabilizing countries and forcing families to flee their own countries of origin in hopes of finding stability here in the heart of empire. This is the root cause of this forced migration, and they have the malice to turn around and spend billions more to hire bounty hunters and equip ICE with weapons of war while simultaneously militarizing our local, state, and federal police forces to brutalize us when we stand up to defend la comunidad.”

Ryan Fan, an advocacy and Campaign manager of the Majdal Center, a community center based in El Cajon that’s dedicated to uplifting the Arab community in San Diego, also decried the use of military tactics and weaponry returning home to the states to be used by ICE and local police departments. 

“Every year, the American government sends billions of our immigrant families’ hard-earned tax dollars to the Israeli military, and it is no coincidence that the same tactics they practice over there are used on our families here”, Fan Said. 

“When I talk to other community leaders and friends from different ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds, I keep hearing the same thing over and over: our communities are afraid”, Fan said. “They’re afraid to go to school, to go to work, to attend religious services, even just to step outside to go get groceries. And everyone’s afraid of these detentions, travel bans, attacks on Latin, Asian, Arab, Muslim, Black, and Brown bodies. Bodies labeled as foreign or criminal or anti-American, even though we all know this country was built on stolen land by enslaved people and immigrants. We’re seeing history repeat itself, and the immigrant and the foreigner continue to be targeted.”

As Saturday’s rally drew to a close, Violet, a member of Yo Soy El Cajon, a group of community leaders and advocates in East County, closed the afternoon’s demonstration in an air of defiance with a show optimism, vowing to protect immigrant communities not just in El Cajon, but throughout San Diego.

“Today forward in our homes, schools, workplaces, and our streets, we see you. We hear you, we feel your pain, and we will continue to fight for you,” she said. “Together, we are strong; together, El Cajon stands with immigrants!”

(A condensed version of this report originally ran on Times of San Diego)