Hundreds protest ICE in SLO after fatal Minneapolis shooting
More than 250 people gathered along Highway 1 on Sunday to demand that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents leave San Luis Obispo County — amid continuing protests following the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis.
“For immigrants to be trashed, and to be considered, in Trump’s words, ‘garbage’ — it’s not right, and it’s not what America should be,” Indivisible North SLO County co-leader Cindy Lewis said.
An ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good, 37, as federal agents descended on a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. The SLO protest, organized by the Indivisible SLO Coalition, united under the rallying cry of “ICE Out of SLO” to prevent such violence from happening locally.
The Minneapolis shooting is the ninth time an ICE agent shot someone since September, according to the New York Times. Seven of those victims survived, but an ICE agent fatally shot Mexican immigrant Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez while trying to take him into custody in Chicago in September, the article said.
“ICE operates the same everywhere,” Lewis said. “It could happen here.”
At 10 a.m., the protesters formed a line beside Highway 1 at the corner of Kansas Avenue. They gathered down the road from the San Luis Obispo County Jail, where ICE frequently waits in the lobby to take people into custody upon their release from the facility.
Federal immigration agents have taken at least 94 people into custody from San Luis Obispo County since January last year, Lewis told The Tribune. Indivisible SLO Coalition got that data from 805 UndocuFund, a nonprofit that supports immigrants and monitors ICE activity.
The protest had three demands. The first was for the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors to declare a public emergency due to the threat ICE poses to the community’s safety, she said.
The second demand was to urge the Board of Supervisors to pass an ordinance that prohibits federal immigration agents from taking people into custody on county property without a judicial warrant, including at the jail and in parking lots, Lewis said.
Finally, the protesters called for the upcoming Truth Act Forum to offer a comprehensive look at data on ICE encounters at the jail. At the state-mandated forum, the Sheriff’s Office must share data about how many people it transferred to ICE, along with how and when those transfers occurred.
The county scheduled the Truth Act Forum for the afternoon session of the Board of Supervisors meeting on Jan. 27.
Protester Susan Mackey said the energy at the protest was collaborative and supportive.
“There’s understandable anger about what happened, and the injustice of it, but I still felt that solidarity,” she said.
ICE agents wearing masks and carrying guns frequently wait in the lobby for inmates to be released, Mackey said. Those inmates have either completed their sentences or had their charges dropped — so ICE’s decision to take them into custody without notice is a violation of due process, she said.
“They deserve human rights,” she said. “They deserve due process.”
Lewis agreed.
“They are no longer criminals when they’re released,” she said. “Those are people. Whether or not they are citizens, they are people.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2026 at 5:42 PM.
