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Hundreds gathered in Mountain View Saturday evening to protest the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda after a federal immigration agent shot and killed an American citizen in Minneapolis earlier this month.
The Jan. 10 demonstration was part of “ICE Out for Good,” a nationwide mass action campaign coordinated by Indivisible, a progressive grassroots coalition. More than 1,000 events across the country, including in Redwood City and Palo Alto, were planned this weekend in opposition to what organizers have described as a pattern of broad unchecked violence by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Mountain View demonstration drew large crowds to Gateway Park, just days after local protesters convened at the same spot to denounce the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela.
On Saturday, throngs of people stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the intersection of El Camino Real and Castro Street, waving handmade signs with slogans like “Abolish ICE,” “Stop ICE Terror” and “The World is Watching.”
The peaceful protest was sparked by the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who was fatally shot in her vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Jan. 7, just blocks away from where George Floyd was killed in 2020.
“The idea is that the best way to discourage the kind of violence that Trump is visiting on the American people is to stand up to it,” said Lenny Siegel, a longtime community activist, former Mountain View mayor and founder of Mountain View Voices for Peace and Justice, one of the event organizers.
Several protesters described joining the demonstration as a rebuke of the Trump administration and the escalating violence of federal immigration authorities.
“It seems like the government is willing to kill people with impunity and lie about it,” said Mountain View resident Amber Kerr who attended the protest with her children. “It’s like a dystopian novel.”
Others identified with Good, who they said was killed while trying to protect her community. Good had been shot while protesting ICE agents who had been deployed in her neighborhood.
“It could be any of us,” said IdaRose Sylvester, a longtime community activist and co-founder of Together We Will Palo Alto/Mountain View, one of the event organizers.
ICE agents haven’t just deployed violent tactics in Minneapolis, but also in the Bay Area, Sylvester said. Last year, ICE made arrests in Sunnyvale and East Palo Alto that resulted in injuries. In both cases, the arrested person was hospitalized, one in Mountain View and the other at Stanford.
“I’m all for law enforcement but that’s not what ICE is doing,” said Mountain View resident Kathy Brown. “It’s brutality.”
While many protesters remarked on the apparent lawlessness of ICE, others described attending the demonstration as a way to show solidarity with vulnerable community members.
Mountain View residents Arti and Rajiv, who immigrated from India and declined to provide their last names, said it was important to show up and convey a hopeful message, especially to their children.
“We belong here too,” Arti said.
Siegel similarly noted the protest was not only about opposing the Trump administration and ICE. It also was a way to bring people together.
“We are not alone. We are not afraid,” he said.
