{"id":26666,"date":"2025-06-30T08:36:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T08:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/26666\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T08:36:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T08:36:14","slug":"el-cajon-residents-take-to-streets-to-support-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/26666\/","title":{"rendered":"El Cajon residents take to streets to support immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Immigration march in El Cajon. (Photo courtesy Roberto Camacho)<\/p>\n

El Cajon residents and others from all across San Diego braved afternoon sun and temperatures approaching the 90s Saturday in support of the region\u2019s immigrant community \u2014 and to demand that ICE be removed from the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hundreds of people took to the streets in El Cajon to take part in the Marcha Para Immigrantes Communidad Rally<\/a> on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Immigration march in El Cajon. (Photo courtesy Joe Orellana)<\/p>\n

Organizers, who included groups such as Fuerza Hispana de El Cajon<\/a>, Latinos En Acci\u00f3n<\/a>, and Uni\u00f3n del Barrio<\/a>, coordinated the march in order to protest raids and family separations in the region and across Southern California that have ramped up under the Trump administration, which they say perpetuates a legacy of inhumane laws that criminalize and villainize immigrant communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speakers said that El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells and the El Cajon City Council should resign after passing a controversial immigration enforcement resolution<\/a> earlier this year declaring El Cajon \u201cnot a sanctuary city,\u201d and greenlighting police to work with federal immigration authorities.<\/p>\n

Protesters said that the resolution is in direct violation of SB 54<\/a>, a California state law that prohibits cities from turning anyone over to federal immigration authorities unless they have been convicted in court of certain felony crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Cajon was also the site of a militarized workplace raid in March<\/a>, during which fifteen people were arrested at San Diego Powder & Protective Coatings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Immigration march in El Cajon. (Photo courtesy Joe Orellana)<\/p>\n

More than 300 protesters carrying signs decrying\u00a0President Donald Trump\u2019s attempts to reshape the constitution, and waving an assortment of flags from countries such as Mexico, Palestine, and Iraq, made their way down Main Street. <\/p>\n

Evidence of the city\u2019s diverse community could be seen with a myriad of storefronts and businesses displaying signs in Spanish, Arabic, Pashto, and English.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Cajon is notable for its immigrant population. Roughly a third<\/a> of its 103,291<\/a> residents were born outside the United States, and 36.6%<\/a> of the city\u2019s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.<\/p>\n

The city is also home to vibrant Middle Eastern and North African communities, particularly Iraqi Americans and Iraqi immigrants of Arab, Chaldean, and Assyrian descent. At least 15,000 <\/a>of its residents identify as Chaldean,\u200b\u200b making El Cajon home to one of the largest Chaldean communities outside Iraq, second in the United States only to Detroit, Michigan.<\/p>\n

For Crystal Abrahim, a lifelong resident of El Cajon, Saturday\u2019s march hit particularly close to home given her family\u2019s own journey to the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a product of immigrants, my parents came here to the U.S.\u201d, Abrahim said. \u201cI\u2019m Chaldean, we\u2019re a Christian minority from Iraq, and I was raised Catholic. It\u2019s in my core to love my neighbors, and this is so close to me, because these are my brothers and sisters. Our community is being terrorized, they\u2019re being speared. And we need to come together, stand up, and let them know that we\u2019re going to protect them as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mairene Branham of the nonprofit Latinos En Acci\u00f3n<\/a> told the crowd that out of the nearly 500 cities in California, only two \u2014 Huntington Beach and El Cajon \u2014 have officially declared themselves as not sanctuary cities. \u201cNot only that, our city council went even further to violate California law to say that our El Cajon police department can actually collaborate with ICE on operations,\u201d Branham said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Immigration march in El Cajon. (Photo courtesy Joe Orellana)<\/p>\n

Local attorney John Gomez<\/a>, who grew up in El Cajon, agreed. \u201cThis city has been described as a mini United Nations,\u201d he said. \u201cBut today Main Street is empty as good, hard-working people are scared to come outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan Fan is an advocacy and campaign manager of the Majdal Center<\/a>, an El Cajon-based advocacy group and community center for Arab-Americans. He decried the use of military tactics and weaponry being used by ICE and local police departments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I talk to other community leaders and friends from different ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds, I keep hearing the same thing over and over: our communities are afraid,\u201d Fan said. \u201cThey\u2019re afraid to go to school, to go to work, to attend religious services, even just to step outside to go get groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Saturday\u2019s rally drew to a close, Violet, a member of Yo Soy El Cajon<\/a>, a group of community leaders and advocates in East County, closed the afternoon\u2019s demonstration with a show optimism, vowing to protect immigrant communities not just in El Cajon, but throughout San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hear you, we feel your pain, and we will continue to fight for you,\u201d she said. \u201cTogether, we are strong; together El Cajon stands with immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Immigration march in El Cajon. (Photo courtesy Roberto Camacho) El Cajon residents and others from all across San…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,21030,23302,10581,6501,23303,3250,23304,3549,7264,23305,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-26666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-el-cajon","12":"tag-fuerza-hispana-de-el-cajon","13":"tag-ice-raids","14":"tag-immigrants","15":"tag-latinos-in-accion","16":"tag-march","17":"tag-marcha-para-inmigrantes-comunidad","18":"tag-san-diego","19":"tag-sandiego","20":"tag-union-del-barrio","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114771406637093826","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}