San Jose Japantown stages ICE facility protest

Grassroots organizers and South Bay political leaders drew together for a rally in San Jose’s Japantown Wednesday in a show of unified opposition against a planned ICE facility taking shape in South County.

The rally held in front of the historic Issei Memorial Building took place as state and local leaders wage a legal battle to halt work on the still-under-construction immigration center that planning documents suggest will include extensive detention facilities.

Over nearly an hour of sometimes tear-filled remarks, a series of speakers — made up of community activists and a who’s who of South Bay political leaders — drew parallels between the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and historic wrongs perpetrated against Japanese Americans, such as the mass internment policy enacted during World War II.

“Today, unfortunately, it’s too late to just say never again,” Susan Hayase, co-founder of Japantown social justice group San Jose Nikkei Resisters, said during the rally. “The thing we feared is happening again now.”

While striking a note of alarm, Hayase also suggested that people organizing against the federal government’s mass deportation efforts could draw inspiration from the decades-long struggle waged by Japanese Americans to secure civil rights.

“Even in the concentration camps, our people resisted and protested with labor strikes, draft resistance, hunger strikes and refusal to participate in government loyalty oaths,” Hayase said. “In that same spirit, we can and should protest, object and resist today’s brutal, unlawful ICE policies.”

In holding Wednesday’s rally, organizers such as Hayase are adding their voices to the chorus of opposition against the planned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility at 7240 Holsclaw Road just outside Gilroy. Since news of the project first surfaced in May, immigrants rights groups have held several protests and marches throughout Santa Clara County and beyond.

“We see that our communities will suffer together as they always have,” Rebeca Armendariz, a former Gilroy councilmember who has emerged as a lead organizer in the opposition movement against the planned facility, said at the rally. “But that’s why together we will gather, we will strategize, we will organize and continue to fight together — so that we will win back our country.”

The Japantown rally came two days after a coalition of city and county governments — ranging from the North Bay down to the Central Coast — submitted an amicus brief that signaled official support for a lawsuit seeking to block the planned ICE facility.

The lawsuit — brought in June by Santa Clara County and California Attorney General Rob Bonta — alleges the federal government has advanced the project in secrecy, violating federal environmental laws as well as local rules restricting the Holsclaw Road property to agricultural uses.

Earlier this month, federal authorities agreed to pause work at the site until court proceedings begin in early September.

Representatives for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have previously denied any plans to build detention facilities on the property and claim the agency seeks only to construct a new office. But that contradicts blueprints outlining plans to construct an ICE facility with detention areas large enough to hold 150 people, according to an assessment by county officials.

To date, the Bay Area has not seen the same dramatic immigration enforcement operations that have rocked major cities such as Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles since President Donald Trump began his second term. But Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, whose district includes Japantown as well as Gilroy, warned that could change if the Holsclaw Road facility ever becomes operational.

“What it’s going to mean is that those masked, armed, dangerous agents can fan out across Northern California and bring their reign of terror to our communities,” Lofgren said. “We cannot allow that to happen.”

Contact Keith Menconi at [email protected] or @KeithMenconi on X.