District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder walked out of the elevator on the sixth floor at 630 Sansome St. on Thursday morning and through the security checkpoint to become the first city supervisor to visit the ICE detention facility since the Trump administration began its immigration crackdown this year. The inside of the ICE headquarters, where immigrants are taken for processing after being arrested outside of the courtrooms below, was nearly empty with the only visible ICE official sitting behind the front desk.
No fewer than a dozen elected officials people chosen by the voters to seats in government to represent their interests came to 26 Federal Plaza on Thursday seeking answers about ICE's treatment of immigrant detainees being held there. They were not only denied entry to the 10th-floor holding area, where many detainees are supposedly being held despite ICE's continued denials, but the lawmakers also staged a protest over the federal agency's continued obfuscation about the fate of the immigrants in its custody.