Paula Albornoz Hernandez, a 23-year-old Colombian asylum seeker and UC Berkeley business student, was detained by ICE at SFO on Friday. (Courtesy of Nikolas De Bremaeker)
On Wednesday, Nov. 4, about 150 UC Berkeley students gathered for a protest on Sproul Plaza demanding the release of Paula Albornoz Hernandez, a fellow student who was detained by ICE last Friday while waiting to board a flight with her boyfriend at the San Francisco Airport.
The protest was organized by the East Bay Internationalist Club, a self-described revolutionary-Marxist organization of students at Berkeley City College and UC Berkeley.
At the protest, club members and students voiced their anger at the heightened ICE presence as a result of “Operation Safe California,” an unannounced 45-day immigration enforcement operation that began in early October, according to the Washington Examiner.
Club members described ICE agents as terrorists, their detention centers concentration camps, and their operations kidnappings. They cited excessive force, disregard for the law, conditions of the detention centers, and fear they’ve placed in the immigrant community.
“With a brutal and violent attack of a man in Emeryville by ICE just a week ago, and now the detainment of Paula last Friday,” said Sasha, a club member who asked to go by their first name, “Part of the reason we are having this protest today is to show that we will not stand by silently while immigrants are brutalized and deported by ICE.”
One audience member shouted “murderers!”
Club members also called on students to mobilize with the “multinational, multi-ethnic” working-class to defend immigrants in California.
Hernandez’s boyfriend Anthony, who asked to keep their last name private, joined club members and students in voicing the injustice he believes has been committed against Hernandez and immigrants alike.
“I just wanted her to have a vacation,” he said at the protest. “It’s unfair, it’s unconstitutional, it’s not right that they are able to do this — to walk up to people and be able to take them like that.”
Hernandez’s attorney, Niko De Bremaeker, further emphasized the terrible conditions of California City, the facility northeast of Los Angeles where Hernandez is currently being held, calling it and all ICE arrests a “major human rights violation.”
This facility was found to be neglecting the medical needs of detainees by court-appointed investigators earlier this year, according to multiple news outlets.
A temporary restraining order and a habeas corpus petition have been filed to challenge the legality of Hernandez’s detainment, according to Bremaeker.
Hernandez’s parents were also in attendance, as well as multiple news outlets including Telemundo, a major Spanish-speaking television network in the U.S.
In a campus-wide email sent Nov. 2, Chancellor Rich Lyons assured students that the university was communicating with Hernandez’s family and had “mobilized legal support” to ensure Hernandez has “access to advice and representation.”
Hernandez’s parents and attorney confirmed that the university is in communication with them and Anthony, and they feel supported by them.