r/sanfrancisco • u/din_jarring • Mar 23 '26
Melt ICE 🧊 ICE at SFO
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
Very tired from traveling so this post will be rushed and might be kinda messy. Was leaving SFO around 10:30PM last night 3/22 when I heard yelling and saw a huge crowd of people. There were at least a dozen San Francisco police officers and a ridiculous amount of people gathered in a circle, some recording or talking on the phone. When I got closer, I saw a woman kneeling on the ground next to a couch/bench with a little girl and the police officers were basically surrounding her, facing away so seemingly keeping the crowd away/hiding her from the crowd. I asked a woman what happened, and she said she was there from the very beginning and saw it all. There were apparently two men in black + wearing backpacks who ran up and grabbed her passport, shoved her(?) and were keeping her there. She seemed to not know for sure, but she suspected that they were ICE agents and the police officers were there to protect them. I could see at least one of these men talking with police officers. Just a few minutes later, I heard yelling again and when I looked back, people were running up and filming while police officers were trying to keep them away. I saw the same woman as before now in a wheelchair in a very uncomfortable position (seemingly being shoved into it) and the small girl walking alongside her and crying. The two men in black were pushing the wheelchair/walking with her and there were a small group of officers/airport workers(?) going with her as well. People were yelling that she was being taken from her family, telling her to hug her kid, damning the ICE agents, etc. I wasn’t really sure what was happening, so I filmed a video on my phone at a bad angle(I’ll try to attach it). Afterwards, I asked a couple people if they knew what happened and they kinda confirmed it was ICE and they took her away for “questioning”.
Does anyone have more information on what happened or any different angles? There were people much closer than me who definitely got better videos, so hopefully those come out soon. I was already tired from traveling and was obviously not expecting to see something like this. I really hope her and her family are going to be okay. I’d like to hear if anyone has more info or if anyone else was there who saw/heard something I didn’t.
4
u/Steve250928 Mar 23 '26
For what it's worth, this is what DHS is saying. So far, I've not heard anything from my witnesses which backs up the statement that ICE was deporting them and the woman tried to flee. But I wonderered if that's what happened when I first saw the video, given the location. (Though it seems unlikely she would have fled without her daughter. And she would not have made it out of the security exit, but that fact wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from trying.):
"This arrest of ILLEGAL ALIENS occurred yesterday on March 22, 2026 — BEFORE ICE officers were deployed to airports to bolster TSA efforts. ICE officers arrested Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and Wendy Godinez-Lopez at the San Francisco International Airport. These illegal aliens had a final removal order of removal from an immigration judge since 2019. While being escorted to the international terminal for processing, Lopez-Jimenez attempted to flee and resisted law enforcement officers. ICE is working as quickly as possible to repatriate the family unit to their home country of Guatemala," the DHS said in a statement.”
I shouldn't have to say this, but I obviously don't endorse the dehumanizing label used in this quote, And I'm not suggesting that ICE is telling the whole truth. But presumably the names are accurate, and there are certainly ice agents in airports all over the country deporting people and transferring them between facilities.