‘It Wasn’t Proper’: Girl Arrested by ICE at SFO Is a San Francisco Photographer, Barista

A Ukrainian lady who has lived within the U.S. for 16 years was detained by immigration enforcement brokers at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday after a flight dwelling from Portland. 

Iryna Gorb, 38, was arrested by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers after touchdown in San Francisco, the place she has lived and labored for greater than a decade. 

She is presently in detention at California City Detention Facility in Kern County, in keeping with Andy Eblin, who’s been a good friend of Gorb’s for 13 years.

Videos of Gorb’s arrest circulated on social media Wednesday night after Richmond City Councilmember Doria Robinson, who was touring via the airport on the time, posted footage of the incident on Facebook. She stated two ICE brokers approached Gorb in a retailer in Terminal 3.

“They put hands on her, pulled her down to the ground and we see the agent get on top of her,” Robinson stated.

In the movies, Gorb could be heard yelling: “They’re f—n ICE, I’m from Ukraine, please, somebody.”

She could be seen telling the brokers to let her go, and heard saying, “You’re f—ing choking me.”

Robinson stated the officers didn’t reply to bystanders who requested them to establish themselves. They handcuffed Gorb to an airport wheelchair and rolled her away, she stated. 

“It wasn’t right,” Robinson stated. “It just felt in your heart and your soul that that was not right. That was not the way we should be doing things.”

According to Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program on the San Francisco Bar Association, immigration advocates started seeing ICE detentions at airports exterior of Customs and Border Protection final yr anecdotally, however within the final month, they’ve grow to be a “consistent tactic.”

“What we’re seeing now is ICE showing up at airports because they have information about travelers, they have ID information,” she stated. “The Department of Homeland Security includes TSA, so it just appears that TSA is now cooperating with ICE at a level that we haven’t seen before.”

SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel stated through e-mail that ICE and DHS function exterior the jurisdiction of U.S. airports, and that SFO is “not involved in any decisions about their operations, nor are we notified when they occur.”

Atkinson stated for people who find themselves not U.S. residents, “now is not a safe time to be traveling through airports unless you’ve spoken to an attorney and you assess what risk there is.”

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara contributed to this report.