San Diego community group on the lookout for ICE

Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Thursday, February 20th.

An immigrant rights group is on the lookout for ICE raids in our area

More on that next. But first... the headlines….

Reuters is reporting that the State Department is planning to permanently end its Afghan resettlement program this April.

Shawn VanDiver is a San Diego Navy veteran who runs Afghan Evac, a nonprofit that helps Afghans navigate the asylum process.

“To every veteran who made a promise to an Afghan ally, this decision is a punch in the gut. We were told no one gets left behind. We were told, if you serve with us, we will stand by. We were told America keeps its promises.” 

VanDiver says up to 200 thousand Afghans could be left behind — including 40 thousand already approved to travel to the U.S.

ABOUT 200 STUDENTS RALLIED IN FRONT OF THE GEISEL LIBRARY AT UC SAN DIEGO YESTERDAY (WEDNESDAY) TO PROTEST THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S POLICY OF MASS DEPORTATION.

THE STUDENTS ALSO DEMANDED THE UNIVERSITY DO MORE TO PROTECT UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS.

LAST MONTH … THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SAID IT WOULD ALLOW IMMIGRATION ARRESTS AT SCHOOLS, CHURCHES AND HOSPITALS … ENDING A POLICY THAT’S BEEN IN EFFECT SINCE 2011.

The San Diego County Democratic Party announced its endorsement for the District 1 seat on the County Board of Supervisors this week.

The party says Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre earned the endorsement in part for her work combating the Tijuana River sewage crisis.

Aguirre beat out San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno and Chula Vista City Councilmember Carolina Chavez for the endorsement.

Chula Vista mayor John McCann is the leading Republican vying for the seat in the heavily Democratic district.

The special election in District 1 is April 8 with mail ballots going out early next month.

From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.

Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

IMAGES OF ICE RAIDS ARE SPREADING FEAR THROUGHOUT IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES – EVEN IN CITIES WHERE RAIDS HAVEN’T HAPPENED. REPORTER GUSTAVO SOLIS FOLLOWED A GROUP OF ACTIVISTS IN SAN DIEGO TRYING TO EASE THOSE FEARS.

“Ok. Todos me escuchan? – beep The patrol starts at 5:45 a.m. Before the sun rises.… – ten four – beep  The mission – look for suspicious vehicles in Linda Vista. “So what we’re looking for, in essence, are those US-made cars. Dodge Durangos, Ford Explorers, Dodge Caravans.” That’s Benjamin Prado. He’s not a cop. Or a private investigator. He’s an immigrant rights activist with Union del Barrio. Looking for any signs that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE,  is trying to arrest people.This is one way advocates in San Diego are responding to President Donald Trump’s plans to launch what he calls the largest deportation operation in American history. “The goal is always to prevent families from being separated. We have too much family separation throughout the years and the impact that that’s had not only on the immediate family but the social fabric of our communities.” Union del Barrio’s work is part of a larger effort to educate the immigrant community. Others include …  know-your-rights workshops, food and clothing drives, temporary housing for asylum seekers and free legal representation for people facing deportation. Ian Seruelo is chair of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium - a network of more than 50 organizations. He says all of these individual efforts work collaboratively. “I think it really fits well to the efforts of all the advocates that are doing work on the ground.” ICE did not respond to questions from KPBS about their views of community patrols. But some Trump administration officials have recently criticized this type of activism. Here is Border Czar Tom Homan on CNN. “They call it Know Your Rights. I call it how to escape arrest. There’s a warrant for your arrest and they tell you how to hide from ICE. Don’t open your door. Don’t answer questions.” In the month since Trump’s inauguration, ICE has publicized raids in Chicago and New Jersey. But  - besides a few targeted arrests - San Diego County hasn’t seen that level of enforcement. Even though mass deportations haven’t materialized in San Diego, people are still living in fear. “People are angry. We’re upset. Any human being would be when you have your family being criminalized and terrorized by this agency.” Prado points to rhetoric coming out of the White House as a sign of the increased criminalization of immigrants without legal status. Officials initially said they are focusing on the hardened criminals – like murders and rapists. But more recently, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said all immigrants who don’t have legal status are subject to deportation. “He is focused on launching the largest mass deportation operation in American history of illegal criminals and if you are an individual, a foreign national who illegally enters the United States of America you are by definition a criminal and therefore you are subject to deportation.” Legally speaking, crossing the border illegally or overstaying a temporary visa is a civil offense. Not a criminal one. From the ridealong to bring us back to the patrol  An added benefit of the community patrols is their ability to separate fact from fiction. Especially in response to false rumors of mass arrests that spread on social media. Adrianna Jasso is another activist on the community patrol. “Part of what has created a lot of fear and anxiety is the role of social media... People will have good intentions – they want to warn their friends and neighbors. But they end up causing a panic instead. …Social media has really amplified images or cases where an arrest took place but then that arrest becomes mass deportation or mass arrests when there’s only one individual. There’s a gap and a disconnect between the official narrative and what is happening on the ground.” “Unidad uno Adelante – beep – estamos esperando todo bien – beep – dies cuarto ya llego en unos dies segundos – beep – ten four.” The rest of Friday’s patrol is quiet. Prado and the other activists don’t see any ICE activity.“ the community can go out with the confidence that there is no ICE operation happening in this area where we patrolled.” That made the early morning work worthwhile. Gustavo Solis, KPBS News.

EACH WEEK, BOSTON COLLEGE PROFESSOR HEATHER COX RICHARDSON EXPLAINS POLITICS THROUGH THE LENS OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW, THE ECONOMY AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS. SHE SPOKE WITH PUBLIC MATTERS REPORTER AMITA SHARMA.

President Trump issued an executive order giving himself direct control over regulatory agencies created to be independent by Congress. Scholars say we're headed for a constitutional crisis if the Trump administration defies court orders. Others say, look, we're already in a coup. You're a historian. What is your take? Oh, I think we're already in a coup with the very simple explanation that the way our Constitution was written, the first article in that Constitution firmly establishes that it is Congress that has the power to make laws. Not the executive branch, not the judiciary, but Congress. And from the outset, the Trump administration has worked both to undermine those laws through the concept of impoundment, but then also to override those laws through firing people, for example, where there were specific laws in place to specify the ways in which those people could be fired, that they simply flouted. So the attempt to destroy the. The congressional authority over lawmaking, and now the threat to ignore the judiciary as well, amounts to an existing constitutional crisis and the attempt to take over our nation with one strong man. I've spoken to local voters, Republicans and Democrats, who are pro choice. They care about the climate, they want better health care, and they want to preserve democracy. How do they reclaim the middle? Well, the middle is there and always has been. The people who insist that we are polarized are the politicians who benefit from that. The vast majority of Americans agree, even on hot button issues like the idea of common sense, gun safety legislation, or abortion rights. The trick is to make sure that people understand that we're here, we have agency, and we need to step up and speak up to reclaim that middle, that democracy. Because there are a whole heck of a lot more of us who feel that way, whether they vote Republican or Independent or Democrat, than people who want to replace that system with the sorts of authoritarianism that the far right is now embracing, not only here in America, but also around the world. As you all know, President Trump won in counties with no local news by as high as 54 percentage points. Here in San Diego, local news coverage has shrunk. We have hyper partisan news websites called pink slime. How can journalism cover what's happening better and reach more people? Oh, I love this question. Because for all that we are, in fact, losing local newspapers, and for all that we are losing so many of our great reporters, what we are seeing is, in this moment looks very much to me like what we saw in the 1850s or again in the 1890s. And that's the rise of new media that's doing really terrific work. We don't pay a lot of attention to that. And it's very important. Think of all the independent media outlets that we now see in places like Substack, but also around small communities around the country. So one of the things we can do is make sure we have local news. And that doesn't necessarily mean on paper. It could mean podcasts. It could mean people posting on substack or on Facebook or on other forms of social media. It could be the idea of videos on Instagram, for example, or YouTube I've heard you say that people ask you where our heroes are. What do you tell them? I always, first of all say that a hero isn't somebody who comes down from on high and suddenly does something miraculous. A hero is somebody continuing to do the thing even if nobody is paying attention and even if it feels like the walls are closing in. So when I think about heroes, I see them everywhere. The heroes are us. We're the people who get up in the morning and go to work, even though we don't want to, and put food on the table in front of the kids and remember on the way out the door that, oh, we forgot to take in the car. But we keep doing the right thing. And if enough people keep doing the right thing thing, putting one foot in front of the other to do the right thing, we will change the world. Professor Richardson, thank you so much for speaking with me today.It's been a pleasure.

ANCHOR TAG: THAT WAS KPBS’S AMITA SHARMA SPEAKING WITH HISTORIAN HEATHER COX RICHARDSON.

FOR THIS WEEK'S WHY IT MATTERS SEGMENT, VOICE OF SAN DIEGO'S SCOTT LEWIS LOOKS AT A LAW THAT PASSED IN NOVEMBER. IT'S HAVING A BIG IMPACT LOCALLY.

About 115 people are in jail right now who wouldn’t have been last year. That’s because of Proposition 36. It passed in November. And it turned certain property and drug crimes from misdemeanors into felonies . It reversed a proposition passed ten years before called Proposition 47. So let's look at how it's impacting San Diego now.Police have arrested nearly 400 people and booked them into San Diego county jails on Proposition 36-related crimes. None of this… not the arrests nor the jailings would have happened last year at this time. Handling those new arrests is going to be a difficult challenge. Sheriff Kelly Martinez told us she expects much more pressure on the jails. we anticipate that number will increase over the next year because people are not going to be as likely to plea to crimes where they might have before. if people plead to some of the misdemeanor offenses, they will then be stackable as a felony. That last thing she said is an important point. Prosecutors can charge people with felonies based on what they are accused of now. But on top of that, they can also take  into account any misdemeanors from the last 10 years. And the jails are currently falling apart and the county is wrestling with a deficit. Last year, sheriff deputies and others floated a new tax on properties to fund the jails but it didn’t go forward. We’ll watch to see if it does this year. I’m Scott Lewis for Voice of San Diego and that’s why it matters.

TEACHERS WORKING IN NORTHERN SAN DIEGO NEIGHBORHOODS CAN SOON GET HELP BUYING THEIR FIRST HOMES. REPORTER KATIE ANASTAS SAYS NEW DOWN PAYMENT GRANTS ARE MEANT TO ENSURE TEACHERS CAN LIVE WHERE THEY WORK.

Each recipient will get $40,000 to put toward a down payment, and they don’t have to pay it back. It’s privately-funded by a housing developer as part of an agreement with the City of San Diego. To qualify, Teachers must be first-time homebuyers, and their households must earn less than 160% of the area median income. For a family of four, that’s about $190,000. State data show that in the 2022-23 school year, the average salary for a beginning teacher in a large district was about $56,500. Sabrina Bazzo is a member of the San Diego Unified School District board. While we’re working closely with our unions to increase salaries and benefits for our educators, the reality is that housing prices are just out of control, and even for those who earn a good wage. Applications for the program open on March 1. Katie Anastas, KPBS News.

THE SAN DIEGO READER, A FREE ALT-WEEKLY, HAS ENDED ITS 52-YEAR PRINT RUN. FOR DECADES, SAN DIEGANS PICKED UP THE READER AT CAFES, LIQUOR STORES AND STREET CORNERS. ITS PAGES MIXED LONG FEATURES WITH CONCERT LISTINGS, COLUMNS, AND REVIEWS. LONGTIME EDITOR-TURNED-OWNER MATTHEW LICKONA [Li-KOH-NA] CALLS IT A LIVING RECORD OF THE CITY.

READER 2A (:13)"a lot of identity is memory. And This here is a memory of San Diego that was available to the whole city that asked and answered every week the question, what's it like in San Diego?"

THE READER WILL CLOSE ITS GOLDEN HILL OFFICE AND LAY OFF PRODUCTION STAFF, BUT WILL CONTINUE PUBLISHING CONTENT ONLINE.

For the San Diego State Men’s Basketball team how this season ends could determine if they make the N-C double A tournament.

The team is coming off two big wins, one against Boise State and Tuesday’s 23-point drubbing of Fresno State.

Making the tournament isn’t not going to be easy. According to the Union-Tribune, the team probably needs to win four of its last five games to guarantee its ticket.

That effort starts Saturday at New Mexico State.

That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great day.