DeKalb defers ICE resolution as residents condemn violence by agents
Several metro Atlanta residents passionately urged DeKalb County commissioners to approve a resolution demanding that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and others under the Department of Homeland Security, “cease all tactical enforcement operations” in residential areas of the county.
One of the residents, Jonathan Mann of northeast Atlanta, told commissioners during public comment at Tuesday’s meeting that federal agents “literally kill people who are in their way” during this “dark moment in our nation’s history,” a reference to the two fatal shootings by federal agents this month in Minneapolis.
“I’m asking you to move quickly, as quickly as if you’re putting out a fire or saving a drowning child, as if there were an intruder in your home, because there is an intruder,” Mann said. “And the fact that it wears a uniform and is directed by federal authorities under the color of law doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse, much worse.”
Nonetheless, the Board of Commissioners deferred action until at least next week. Some commissioners said they share the outrage of the resolution’s sponsor, Ted Terry, about the violence by federal agents in Minnesota. But the board opted to wait until interim County Attorney Terry G. Phillips, who expressed unspecified concerns about the legislation, could provide legal advice.
The motion to defer the item to a future meeting passed with four votes in favor. Commissioner LaDena Bolton voted against it, while both Terry and Commissioner Michelle Long Spears abstained.
“The deferral is not a denial,” Terry said after the meeting. “I believe we’ll be able to pass this resolution with a couple of add-ons.”
The resolution refers to “Operation Metro Surge,” the name for the Trump administration’s campaign in Minnesota. The resolution says such tactical teams are unwanted, unnecessary and pose a threat to public peace in DeKalb. It also condemns the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
“The 10th Amendment and the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine protect DeKalb County’s right to manage its own public safety environment and prevent our residential neighborhoods from being turned into tactical zones,” the resolution says.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Terry noted that officials in Charlton County in South Georgia approved a plan to increase capacity at the Folkston ICE Processing Center, which would make it the largest immigrant jail in the nation.
“They’re turning our state into the capitol of a detention and deportation machine,” said Terry, the Super District 6 commissioner, who also acknowledged the limitations of his resolution.
“At the end of the day, we cannot force ICE to do anything,” he said. “All we can do is speak out and state our position representing our people in DeKalb County.”
Bolton, the Super District 7 commissioner, said she stands with those who condemn militarized immigration operations that led to the deaths of Pretti and Good, and that “every community is rightfully grieving and demanding accountability.”
She added that although the resolution serves as a strong statement of advocacy, it cannot be enforced by the board.
“Demanding that ICE leave because we want ICE to leave is not going to make ICE leave,” Bolton said. “We have to be more strategic than that, rather than issuing demands to a federal agency that is under no obligation to respond.”
She said a better tack is to focus on what the county’s elected leaders have the authority to do. She suggested amending Terry’s resolution to note that the county supported state legislators in their sponsorship of Senate Bill 389, which seeks to require ICE officers to wear visible identification and remain unmasked during operations.
Residents who spoke in favor of the legislation said county leaders should step up and advocate for what’s right.
DeKalb resident Maxwell Stauffer said he was born in Minnesota and moved to metro Atlanta a year and a half ago.
“Right now, I’m watching from afar the unwanted occupation of my home state, the silent terror here in Atlanta and across the nation,” said Stauffer, who choked back tears.
“The escalation of violence of ICE and the erasure of rights will not stay in Minnesota,” he added. “It will spread, it will infect, and it already has. It will come to your front door if you don’t do something to stop it now.”
Iman Gadalla urged commissioners to “withdraw ICE from DeKalb and end the reign of terror that ICE has been wielding against immigrant and Black communities in this county.”
Gadalla said Rodney Taylor, a double amputee and Gwinnett County barber arrested by ICE, has been held in a detention center for one year and is “being refused needed medical care for his prosthetics, which he needs to be able to move and live.”
Gadalla also noted that journalist Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran national, was arrested by Doraville police on misdemeanor charges while covering an anti-Trump protest in June in DeKalb.
The charges were dismissed, but ICE already had picked up Guevara from the DeKalb County Jail. He spent more than 100 days in the agency’s custody — much of it in solitary confinement in a South Georgia ICE detention center — before being deported in October.
Gadalla said Taylor and Guevara, like Pretti and Good in Minneapolis, are not violent criminals.
“The terror and fear of ICE is felt deeply in every immigrant community as I know it is deeply felt in my own family,” added the Atlanta resident, whose parents are immigrants from Egypt. “I wake up in fear for my family every day, and I know countless other families who do the same.”
Anna Ziering, an assistant university professor who lives in Brookhaven, said ICE is in “attack mode” in violation of local ordinances, state law, constitutional law and the Bill of Rights.
“ICE is not permitted to kill, ICE is not permitted to kidnap, ICE is not permitted to terrorize,” Ziering said. “But ICE, like the Gestapo, like the slave catchers, like the brown shirts of fascist regimes everywhere, is doing all three.”
About the Author
Reed Williams is an enterprise reporter on the Local team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
