On July 27th and 26th, nearly 30 member of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium (SDIRC), of which Alliance San Diego is a partner, joined 160 community members and immigrant rights advocates from across the state at the 5th Annual ICE Out of California Convening in Fresno, CA.

During the convening, a number of our San Diego contingency were featured in panels and workshops, where they shared the experiences of our border region and the work we are doing fight back against the militarization and the criminalization of our communities. SDIRC members also had the opportunity to network with other organizations from across the state, and discussed the implementation of the California Values Act, including what we can do to continue to push back against the collaboration between law enforcement and ICE.  

As is tradition, the host organizations (Fresno and Central Valley) organized an action during the convening, and SDIRC partners stood in solidarity as they called out the sheriffs in their region for collaborating with ICE. Through this action, we learned about the difficult political climate of their region first hand. While we in San Diego have long seen that state-level policy work is a crucial tool to help protect our communities, the need for the work that we do with statewide partners is, in some ways, even greater in the Central Valley.

We left Fresno re-energized and with a deeper commitment to stopping collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration, not just in our region, but across the entire state. It was great to be able to strategize with partners across the state, and see how our work fits into the much bigger statewide picture.

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