Five years ago, police officers stopped Jose Armando Escobar-Lopez while he was driving to his home in Daly City near San Francisco with his partner and her brother. Without giving a reason for the stop, the officers questioned him about his immigration status and facilitated his transfer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.
Escobar-Lopez’s 2019 brush with ICE illustrates the obstacles the second President Donald Trump administration may face in pursuing mass deportations of immigrants. The ICE transfer, which happened during Trump’s first term, was a violation of California’s recently enacted sanctuary law, which prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. Immigration advocates rallied around Escobar-Lopez, who sued the city and won a settlement. He still lives in California today.
