EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY CONTAINS TWO CORRECTIONS.

When a coalition of 30 immigrant rights organizations held a town hall meeting at Horace Mann Elementary School last week, Mayor Newsom skipped the session and sent an aide. That's too bad-the testimony was chilling and the mayor might have learned something about the tragic consequences of his policies.

The San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee has been mobilizing since Newsom announced last July that the city would contact federal immigration authorities whenever youth suspected of being undocumented were arrested on felony charges. The key word is "arrested" - young people in this city are taken into custody and charged on thin or false evidence all the time. So an innocent person whose charges are later dropped could still face deportation.

Among those present were City Assessor Phil Ting, representatives of the San Francisco Police Department, the Immigrant Rights Commission, the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, the San Francisco Unified School District, and supervisors David Chiu, David Campos, Eric Mar, and John Avalos.

"The biggest problem was that the mayor didn't attend," said SFIRDC organizer and Asian Law Caucus attorney Angela Chan. "There's been no discussion about a policy that has had such a huge impact on the immigrant community."

And there's no doubt, based on what we heard that day, that the impact is indeed huge - and disturbing.

"ICE came to my home and took five people, including my husband. He's in jail and I don't know when he'll be home," said a Mission District resident. Similar stories echoed across the room. Fear and uncertainty were tangible.

Abigail Trillin, an attorney with Legal Services for Children, reported an increase in undocumented youth being sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for little things like speaking out, jaywalking, playing with a BB gun, or getting into a fight.

Since the launch of the mayor's undocumented youth policy-triggered by a grand jury investigation of the city's Sanctuary Ordinance initiated by Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney Joseph Russionello-the Juvenile Probation Department has referred undocumented youth merely suspected of felonies to ICE at the booking stage, resulting in 70-100 deportations of youth who were never convicted of a crime.

Kevin Ryan, the right-wing crime advisor Newsom appointed a year ago to strengthen his gubernatorial campaign, has also been severely criticized for destroying the city's Sanctuary Ordinance by enforcing communication between the police department and ICE.

ICE raids are another plague sweeping through the immigrant community, hitting the Mission District especially hard. When Matt Alexander, principal of June Jordan School for Equity, testified about the possible loss of one of his star students, fifteen year old Guadalupe Carreno, the audience grew somber.

"She is one of our best students in the school. She gets all A's. Our school's community is in shock," said Alexander. "We can't believe we might lose these amazing people."

On January 27, 2009, ICE agents waited on the doorstep of the Carreno's house until Refugio Carreno, Guadalupe's father and an undocumented resident of 20 years, stepped outside at 5:30 am to go to his construction job. The agents took his keys and raided his family's home, and then deported him to Mexico that same day. Guadalupe, a U.S. citizen and a teacher's aide at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, woke up in time to see her father handcuffed and taken out the door. The next time she heard from him was when he called the next day from a pay phone in Mexico City.

"The only reason ICE did not deport my mom is because my brothers and I have medical problems," said Guadalupe, whose two brothers, 14 years old and 20 months old, are also U.S. citizens. Maria Carmen Castro, who met Refugio in the United States more than two decades ago, is undergoing immigration court proceedings, and could be deported in the next two weeks.

Since her husband's deportation, Maria Carmen Castro has worn an electronic monitoring device (EMD) that tracks her 24 hours a day. She must report to Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (a branch of ICE) three times a week at 3 in the afternoon and be home for her 7 pm curfew, near a machine that flashes red if she strays too far. ICE also makes unannounced visits to her home several times a month.

A stay-at-home mother, Castro now needs to pay rent and cover her children's medical bills, but she can't take a job because of her constrictive new schedule. The monitoring device also makes it hard to care for her baby.

"She feels like a prisoner in her own home," said Guadalupe. If Maria Carmen Castro is deported, her children will go with her into an unknown new life in Mexico, a place they've only visited twice in their lives.

"It's devastating. Are we going to make it to college? Are we going to be somebody?" said Guadalupe, an aspiring child psychologist.

"We have no place to stay in Mexico," Castro told the Guardian. "This will be a total shock to my children who were born and raised here. They are traumatized."

San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network attorney Francisco Ugarte reported an alarming increase in Bay Area ICE raids-six in San Francisco since May 2, 2008. On a national level, the numbers have skyrocketed every year. In 1996, there were 50,000 deportations. In 2003, there were 120,000. In 2008, there were 350,000.

"The raids are a result of fugitive teams organized to implement Operation Endgame," Ugarte told the Guardian. Operation Endgame is ICE's multiyear plan, begun in 2003, to detain and deport all "removable aliens" living in the United States by the year 2012. ICE's National Fugitives Operations Program once had a requirement that 75% of those arrested be criminals, but in 2006, that policy changed, bringing on the deportation of hundreds of thousands of non-criminals.

According to a Feb. 9, 2008 New York Times article by Nina Bernstein, in 2006, "fugitives with criminal records dropped to 9 percent of those arrested, and non-fugitives picked up by chance-without a deportation order-rose to 40 percent." Congressional financing for the fugitive program rose from $9 million in 2003 to $218 million in 2008, and the number of fugitive teams multiplied from eight to 104.

"In two years, the number of arrests required by the fugitive teams rose from 100 to 1,000," Ugarte told the Guardian.

Renee Saucedo, a lawyer and immigrant rights activist with La Raza Centro Legal, denounced the raids. "This is an embarrassment! Our communities are being terrorized," she said at the town hall meeting. "Go to Washington to stop the ICE raids! Go to Obama and say we are in a state of emergency!"

Newsom senior advisor Mike Farrah tried to explain his bosses' absence. "Just because he's not here doesn't mean his door is not open," said Farrah, who was met with an overwhelming chorus of boos.

"It's a lie!" audience members shouted. "When he wanted to be elected, he did come find us! He can find us now!"

"You may yell and scream at me all you want and that's your right, and I will take those things back to him," Farrah said and then sat back down.

"We are here to stand with you," said city assessor Phil Ting. "We cannot stand by and let our community be persecuted."

"We had a presidential administration that forgot we have a country made up of immigrants, who treated us like second-class citizens," said Supervisor David Chiu. "I believe that ICE raids are illegal and unconstitutional. We will be extending a hand to our mayor so we can bring reforms in Washington."

"We want to hear details about what you're going to do!" someone shouted. "Commit to something!"

"I'm happy to work on legislation," responded Chiu.

"We're a very small office of three people, with no money, but that doesn't mean we don't have power," said Adrienne Pon, Executive Director of the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, promising to work with the mayor's office to do a proper count in the 2010 census. The 2000 census undercounted San Francisco's population by an estimated 100,000 people, translating to $290 million federal dollars stolen from services. Pon added that the majority of the undercounted were homeless, or immigrants who don't trust the government.

Jane Kim, vice president of the Board of Education, announced her cell phone number to the audience and said the school district should reduce its reliance on the Juvenile Probation system and end communication with ICE.

Part of the criticism focused on Ryan - and at least one supervisor called for his removal. "In my humble opinion, the mayor needs to replace Ryan," Campos, once an undocumented immigrant, said. "It's not a personal attack, but he does not have the support of the community or many on the Board of Supervisors."

On March 18, 2009 at 5:30 pm in room 400 of City Hall, community members will give personal testimony to the Police Commission about the impact of police checkpoints, racial profiling, and confiscation of IDs.

CORRECTIONS: THe number of deportations we reported was incorrect. Somne 70-100 youth have been referred to ICE, but not all of them have been deported at this time.

Horace Mann is a middle school.