The Alameda County Together for All (Act for All) Ad Hoc Committee, chaired by Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas and Vice Chair Supervisor Lena Marquez, convened on March 6, 2026, to receive updates on the implementation of the county's Immigration Enforcement Response Plan and the ICE-Free Zones policy adopted on January 27th. The meeting featured a presentation from Chief Deputy County Administrator Lori Cox, public testimony, and discussion on future steps for immigrant and refugee protections.
Welcome to the Alameda County Together for All ad hoc committee meeting. Let's call the role. Supervisor Marquez. Supervisor Fortinana. Present. We have a quorum. Thank you. I believe we're going to have some interpretation and public speaking instructions first. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Carmen Sulanya, and we will be interpreting with Su Yen in the back. And for in-person participation, the meeting site is open to the public. If you'd like to speak on an item, please fill out a speaker's card and hand it to the clerk for remote participation. Follow the teleconferencing guidelines.acgovacov.org and use the raise your hand function. Okay. Welcome everyone to our March meeting of Act for All and Happy Women's History Month. So Act for All is a forum to coordinate a proactive response to protect support and lift up our communities that are impacted by federal policies and budgets. And we work to ensure that we're all informed, prepared, and coordinated and protecting critical health programs, social services, and our constitutional rights. You can stay informed with our work by visiting our webpage at district5.acgov.org/slash act for all. I will share a few opening remarks and I'll hand it over to our vice chair before we begin with our agenda. So I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that these continue to be very challenging and turbulent times for our communities locally and globally. Our board is actively dealing with the impacts of HR1 on health care and food assistance. And then globally in the past two months, President Trump has deposed and killed the leaders of two countries in Venezuela and Iran. And Trump has started a war with Iran, while the Senate has failed to pass a war powers resolution that were that would require Trump to seek congressional approval for any further action on Iran. And so for those who have been concerned about where this administration is going, I think this is very, very telling. And just as a point of history, the 1973 War Powers Act is legislation passed during the Vietnam War to give Congress a legal check on executive war authority. The 1973 Act also requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces into hostilities and to end the deployment within 60 days unless Congress authorizes or extends it. So there are no checks or balances on this current war, as well as some of the challenges that we are already experiencing in terms of this administration honoring the rule of law. So I do want to share that my heart goes out to all who have died in this war, including their loved ones, and these are both Iranian people as well as U.S. soldiers. In addition to that, DHS partially shut down. And while Christy Nome is no longer the DHS secretary, which is good news, there's a lot more that needs to happen to deal with the chaos and harm that DHS ICE and CBP are perpetrating. So our congressional representatives do need to stay strong. There is a host of other things that C US administration is doing. The US officially pulled out of the World Health Organization. There are a number of other policies that are happening. So this policy aims to restrict gender-based accommodation, remove gender options from surveys, and create sex segregated spaces. So those are just a few of the ways that this administration continues to threaten and harm our communities and actually roll back a lot of progress that we have been making to become a welcoming county. I also wanted to note as it relates to immigration, that our uh neighbors in the South Bay are uh very active in terms of protesting and expressing concern about 46 people who've been detained by ICE outside the Santa Clara County jail. So there's still a lot that we're very concerned about across the entire country, the globe, as well as here in Alameda County. Um shifting gears a little bit. I want to uh bring our attention to the county and to what's on our agenda today in terms of immigration. We do want to continue to remain vigilant here in Alameda County. Um I'm sending our love and support to our neighbors in Santa Clara County as they deal with what is happening there. And I do want to thank the thousands of people across our county who are connecting and organizing to keep each other safe. They are incredibly caring community presence at our schools, foot patrols as well, adopt the spots at our worker job sites as well as at our schools, community assemblies and parks, and all of this is really important in order for neighbors to get to know neighbors and to keep each other safe. And so I said this before, and I'll say it again that while the administration's mass deportation agenda is spreading fear, causing trauma, and separating families. Our communities are demonstrating incredible courage, resilience, and an unshakable commitment to organizing and keeping each other safe. And as many of you know, on January 27th, um our community, our partners, our county colleagues came together, and the board unanimously adopted two policies, which we will talk about today ice-free zones and a county readiness plan.