The case centers on Angelina Lopez-Jimenez, 41, and her 9-year-old daughter. Lopez-Jimenez first came onto the federal government's radar back in April 2018, when Border Patrol agents encountered her and her daughter. The case worked its way through the system, and a judge ultimately ordered deportation. When ICE agents moved to carry out that court order at SFO, Lopez-Jimenez reportedly attempted to flee and resisted law enforcement officers.

Let that sink in: a judge issued a deportation order, federal agents attempted to enforce it, and the subject resisted arrest. This isn't a story about jackbooted thugs snatching people off the street — it's a story about the legal system functioning as designed.

As one Bay Area resident put it plainly: "She got deported after resisting arrest after a judge ordered the deportation."

None of this means you have to love how ICE operates, or that immigration enforcement never crosses lines. It absolutely can and does. But San Francisco's reflexive condemnation of any federal immigration enforcement — regardless of the underlying facts — isn't a principled stand. It's political theater.

Here's the problem with the city's approach: when you cry foul over every single enforcement action, you lose credibility for the cases that actually deserve scrutiny. If ICE were detaining people without court orders, or targeting individuals with no prior contact with the immigration system, that would be a very different conversation. But a court-ordered deportation carried out at an airport, where the subject then resisted? That's law enforcement doing its job.

San Francisco leaders love to position themselves as defenders of civil liberties. But liberty without law is just chaos. And accountability — which this city claims to value — has to apply to everyone, not just the agencies you don't like.

We can have a serious conversation about immigration reform. We can debate whether our laws are just. But pretending that enforcing existing court orders is an atrocity? That's not serious governance. That's a press release.