Video footage from San Francisco International Airport is sparking serious questions about whose side the SFPD is really on. Over the weekend, federal immigration authorities arrested a mother and daughter from Guatemala, and community organizations are now accusing the San Francisco Police Department of breaking local and state sanctuary laws by essentially acting as bodyguards for ICE agents.

The incident went down on Sunday night when Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and her daughter Wendy Godinez-Lopez were detained at SFO. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, both had a final removal order from an immigration judge dating back to 2019. But what has people heated isn’t just the arrest itself, it’s what went down around it.

Bystanders captured video showing SFPD officers forming a protective circle around ICE agents as they detained the mother. Angela Chan, an assistant chief attorney at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, didn’t hold back at a rally Wednesday outside SFPD headquarters. “A wall of SFPD officers shielding ICE as if it was their job to protect federal agents instead of the people of San Francisco”, she said. “You don’t need a law degree to understand the SFPD violated state and local sanctuary laws that night”.

FREE SF, a coalition of organizations fighting for immigrant rights and community safety, formally filed a complaint accusing SFPD of violating both city and state sanctuary laws, which explicitly prohibit local law enforcement from assisting ICE in arrests or detentions. They’re also filing public records requests to dig into any communications between SFPD and ICE related to the incident.

SFPD is defending itself, claiming officers were just there to maintain public safety and insisting they don’t assist in enforcing federal immigration laws. “Consistent with our City Charter, state law, and SFPD department policy, we do not assist in the enforcement of civil federal immigration laws”, the department said in a statement.

But activists like Laura Valdez, executive director of Mission Action, are worried about the real-world fallout. “I worry that our immigrant community will not feel safe calling the San Francisco Police Department”, Valdez said. When immigrants are afraid to call the cops because they think SFPD might hand them over to ICE, that’s a massive problem for community safety. It means victims of crimes might stay silent, and that’s exactly what sanctuary city laws are supposed to prevent.

This incident is putting pressure on SFPD to actually walk the walk on sanctuary protections instead of just talking about them.