Walking up to Kyle Brown’s porch, an angry, crayon caricature with a red “x” over it stared blankly back at us. Kyle would later explain that this drawing, illustrated by his 6-year-old daughter, was a ‘No ICE’ sign, made to deter Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from their neighborhood.
The drawing was created in response to the arrest of the Brown’s neighbor, mother and East Palo Alto (EPA) resident Aleyda Rodriguez. On the morning of Aug. 25, ICE took her from her car and detained her. The stress induced by the incident caused Rodriguez, who suffers from a blood condition, to lose consciousness during the encounter. The commotion caught the attention of nearby neighbors, including Kyle, who recorded the incident on his phone through his living room window.
Kyle, husband to AVID and science teacher Kari Brown and father of two, has lived in EPA for over half a decade. In recent years, he and his wife have become increasingly concerned about ICE targeting the community. “I never thought it would be on my porch,” he said. “I knew it was a possibility, but I never thought it would just be, like, 50 feet from my house.”
The day of Rodriguez’s arrest, Kyle had just dropped his daughter off at school and was getting ready for the day when he first heard a commotion outside. “I was hearing a woman screaming, just like bloody murder, basically,” he said.
Kyle grabbed his phone and followed the noise to his living room, pulling back the curtains to see what was happening. “There was a masked officer with ‘Police’ written on his flack vest. And then I started filming,” he said.
“It took like four men to subdue this woman. And she’s a 47 year-old mother of three. She was screaming, and she eventually lost consciousness because she was terrified, and I didn’t really know what to do,” Kyle added.
Kyle called the police to alert them to the arrest and with hopes that they could intervene, like police have done in other California cities. All they did was confirm that ICE was operating in the area.
After being detained, Rodriguez was driven around by ICE for nearly four hours until they checked her into Stanford Hospital. Days later, on Aug. 29, ICE discharged her against the advice of medical professionals and without notifying her family. She was then taken to a detention center.
“She was very frail. She was drenched in sweat. She actually had sepsis just four days before that, with two infections. She was unresponsive. That was not a healthy picture,” Rodriguez’s primary care physician Yusra Hussain told The Almanac.
A whole week passed before ICE allowed her lawyers to see her.
The Browns first moved to EPA during the pandemic and have appreciated how supportive and helpful their neighbors are.
“They’ll help you out in a jam,” Kyle said. “My wife pulled out of our driveway with a flat tire, and she parked her car and within like, 30 seconds, two people from two different houses were like, ‘Are you okay? Do you need help?’”
“They were so friendly. They’ve always been so nice to the kids running around,” Kari added.
Unbeknownst to them at the time, the man who helped Kari was Rodriguez’s brother-in-law who was with her on the morning of her arrest.
Months later, Rodriguez’s screams are still burned into Kyle and Kari’s minds. “She was absolutely terrified. So everything, whatever mental burden that I experienced was a grain of sand compared to the abject terror that this woman felt. I can’t even hold a candle to it,” Kyle said. “If that was happening to me, if masked men came at me, I would probably fight for my life.”
“I think about the fact that in order to get them, [ICE] had to have been staking out for days in advance, which meant they were sitting outside my home, watching the routine of my neighbors on that basis, and that makes me feel very unsafe,” Kari said.
“I kept thinking over and over again, ‘Who would ever feel safer because of this?’ This doesn’t make anyone feel safer,” she added.
Still, the Browns and their neighbors have not let the arrest deter them from taking action.
Kyle is a part of multiple neighborhood Facebook groups that post updates about ICE movement in addition to pictures and locations of possible ICE vehicles. Both he and Kari attended ICE preparation training offered by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Unión del Barrio.
“It feels like the best way to fight back is kind of with absurdity, like the frogs in Portland,” Kyle said. “We went to ‘No Kings’ and I folded pocket constitutions, like fighting back with arts and crafts. It feels a little futile, but doing something feels better than doing nothing.”
With ICE currently headquartered nearby in Alameda, Kyle noted that the most effective way to prepare is unity. “I think the thing is to stand together. It’s brought members of the community together, we’re part of the group now,” he said. “It’s harder to get stepped on if there’s more of you and you’re all together standing against the same thing.”
Looking back on the morning of the arrest, Kyle admitted he wished he would have done more. “I kind of regret not going outside,” he said. “There were a bunch of people in Portland who were screaming ‘shame’ at the ICE officers and I wish I had had the wherewithal to be able to say that kind of stuff, but I just didn’t at the time.”
To those orchestrating the ICE raids, Kyle’s message is simple. “This is extra-judicial. This is unconstitutional. And for breaking those political norms, I would hold you accountable. But I don’t have any power. I’m just one person.”
As our interview came to a close, his 3-year-old son—dressed in a Super Mario costume—bursted into the backyard, eager to see his dad. The two guided us back to their driveway, where ICE had been just weeks ago.
While his son scurried around the front porch, our eyes followed Kyle’s, who motioned to the empty sea-green house across the street: Rodriguez’s home. In the yard stood a sculpture of the Virgin Mary and a life-sized cross made of PVC pipes. Enclosed by fence and wires, the house was marked by a wooden sign with “Free” written on it.
His son joined us again, tugging at Kyle’s hand and bouncing up and down. “ICE was here, ICE was here,” we heard him repeat as we walked out of the driveway.
