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by\u00a0Jose Fermoso<\/a><\/strong> Nov. 3, 2025 (Oaklandside.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/large-_20210609_9222.jpeg\")
As immigrant raids by federal agents have ramped up this year, Bay Area residents have sought assurances from city governments and local law enforcement agencies that they will not cooperate with these efforts. Mayor Barbara Lee, for example, has reaffirmed that Oakland is a sanctuary city, which bars police from cooperating with ICE and prohibits contracts with companies that work with the agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, Bay Area transit agencies, including BART \u2014 which has its own police force \u2014 set their own policies and define their own relationships with federal authorities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, FEMA\u2019s Transportation Security Grant program<\/a> invited transit agencies to apply for large grants to help protect the public from \u201cacts of terrorism.\u201d But there were strings attached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grant recipients would be required to engage in \u201cinformation sharing and collaboration\u201d with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from program grantees. As The Oaklandside reported last month, AC Transit staff had recommended applying for the funds to cover overtime costs for security provided by the Alameda County Sheriff, but withdrew those plans after pressure from advocates and public officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But at least two major Bay Area transit agencies applied for the funds, The Oaklandside has learned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n BART, or Bay Area Rapid Transit, was one; SFMTA, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority, which runs Muni, was the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to communications officer Alicia Trost, BART applied, as in previous years, for a grant to fund its Critical Asset Patrol team, which she said is \u201cdedicated to patrolling our highest ridership stations to provide presence and serve as a deterrence to criminal and potential terrorist activity and the detection of suspicious activity.\u201d They sought $753,176 for this year, and the application was approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Never miss a story.<\/strong> Sign up for The Oaklandside\u2019s free daily newsletter.<\/strong>Email<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a significant amount of funds for the cash-strapped transit agency. But it potentially risked exposing its riders to enforcement actions by ICE<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alex Barrett-Shorter, a press secretary for the San Francisco City Attorney\u2019s office, responded to queries from The Oaklandside about SFMTA, which is run by the city, by sending us a copy of a lawsuit<\/a> that says the city received nearly $3.1 million in funds through the program in September. That lawsuit, filed on Sep. 30 by San Francisco, Oakland, and more than two dozen cities and counties in the Western United States against DHS and FEMA, argued that conditioning the funds on cooperation with ICE was unconstitutional. States, the lawsuit argued, \u201cmust now choose between acceding to these unlawful and unconstitutional conditions and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in critical federal disaster funding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Oaklandside reached out to some of the country\u2019s largest transit agencies to see whether they had applied for the funds, such as New York\u2019s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. We had yet to hear from them at press time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other Bay Area transit agencies appear to have been ineligible for the grant based on the grant\u2019s notice of funding opportunity<\/a>, and several confirmed to The Oaklandside that they hadn\u2019t applied: the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District; the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District; the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority; and SamTrans, which operates trains in San Mateo County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The city and county suit followed a separate lawsuit filed in May<\/a> against FEMA by 20 states, including California, that sought to block the same grant conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On September 24, a federal court ruled<\/a> in that case that the plaintiffs could not be required to assist with federal immigration enforcement in order to receive security grants. The judge in the case, William E. Smith of the US District Court of Rhode Island, said the conditions attached to the grants were \u201carbitrary and capricious and, thus, violate the APA,\u201d a reference to the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how the federal government makes and enforces its rules. Smith also ruled that the grant requirements violated the USConstitution\u2019s spending clause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three weeks later, in mid-October, Smith issued an order<\/a> to DHS, saying that in the wake of his September ruling, any language in grant award letters to transit agencies that would have required them to collaborate in immigration enforcement \u201cis stayed, vacated, or extinguished.\u201d And he ordered them to amend all of the agency\u2019s award documents within seven days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn effect,\u201d Smith wrote, \u201cdefendants have done precisely what the Memorandum and Order forbids, which is requiring Plaintiff States to agree to assist in federal immigration enforcement or else forgo the award of DHS grants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On October 21, FEMA complied, sending BART and other transit agencies a bulletin<\/a> saying that the grant awards would be amended \u201ceffective immediately.\u201d The Transit Security Grant Program was among the six DHS programs affected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The office of Attorney General Rob Bonta said, in a statement to The Oaklandside, that \u201cthe injunction prohibits the Trump Administration from enforcing the illegal immigration enforcement conditions that were initially included in the DHS standard terms and conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat order also makes clear that the conditions are unenforceable against any city or subdivision in the State of California, which would include Oakland,\u201d Bonta\u2019s office said, adding that those conditions will not be included in any DHS grant awards moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That BART sought a Transit Security Grant while the cooperation requirements were in place has raised some eyebrows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carter Lavin, a leader in opposing AC Transit\u2019s plan to apply for one of the grants, through his work at the Transbay Coalition, a safe streets advocacy group, said that it\u2019s essential that BART communicate to the public about its stance toward immigration enforcement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBART must make a clear and public commitment that they will refuse to collaborate with ICE and CBP no matter how the court rules on the Transit Security Grant Program,\u201d Lavin said, referring to Customs and Border Protection. \u201cWithout significant funding, BART will have to slash services, which will hurt everyone in the Bay, but the agency should look to voters to approve hundreds of millions in funding through the regional measure, instead of selling out its riders and community for a tiny grant from FEMA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Culbertson, an organizer with Traffic Violence Rapid Response, which tracks deaths on Oakland roads, said that all transit riders, including immigrants, must feel safe from federal forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBART policy should ensure that their riders are safe even if it means rejecting federal grants,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to BART spokesperson Christopher Filippi, \u201cBART Police Department policy prohibits our employees from engaging in immigration enforcement in compliance with the California Values Act and BART\u2019s Safe Transit Policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trost, another BART spokesperson, separately told The Oaklandside that the agency follows \u201call applicable federal and state laws related to immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When asked whether BART lawyers consulted with the attorney general\u2019s office before submitting the grant application to FEMA, Filippi said that BART does not comment on legal advice given to the agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last two months, The Oaklandside has asked BART multiple times if the agency was aware of any immigration enforcement activity on BART trains or stations. Each time, representatives of the agency said that they were not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Victor Flores, a BART board member who represents District 7, which includes the immigrant-heavy Oakland neighborhood of San Antonio, told us that since taking office in January, he has been following immigration detainments in the Bay Area, and that staff have informed him they would abide by the California Values Act and the District\u2019s Safe Transit Policy, which, he said, \u201cprohibits BPD collaboration with federal immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have strong concerns about the unjust detentions and actions we\u2019ve seen from the federal administration,\u201d Flores said. \u201cI believe that we need to provide a safe transportation system for everyone, regardless of their country of origin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the case of AC Transit, a day before the board was scheduled to vote on a staff recommendation to submit the FEMA application, the bus drivers union and several advocacy groups contacted board members and staff asking them to kill the idea. Elected officials in Berkeley and some AC Transit board members also spoke out in opposition. The pressure succeeded<\/a>. By the end of the week, AC Transit general manager Salvador Llamas emailed the board a letter saying that the agency would implement its security plans without the FEMA funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Oaklandside reached out to AC Transit to check whether the agency would now consider applying for the FEMA security grant, given the court\u2019s directive and FEMA\u2019s subsequent bulletin \u2014 or if staff still considered it too risky to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert Lyles, the AC Transit communications director, told The Oaklandside that their decision not to apply for funds to cover law enforcement overtime remains unchanged. There is no item on the agenda for the next board meeting, scheduled for Nov. 19, related to the grant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hey, we know that most readers only scan a headline and a couple of paragraphs. Thank you for reading to the end of our story. Since you clearly appreciate the in-depth approach we take in reporting the stories that matter to Oaklanders, please consider chipping in to supercharge our newsroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, I want to support The Oaklandside!<\/a>Send a note to the Oaklandside newsroom.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n See an error that needs correcting? Have a tip, question or suggestion? Drop us a line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0 of 600 max charactersEmail*NamePhoneTagged:<\/strong>AC Transit<\/a>Alameda County District Attorney<\/a>BART<\/a>Customs and Border Protection<\/a>immigrants<\/a>immigration<\/a>Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a>Oakland police<\/a>Public safety<\/a>Traffic safety<\/a>Trump administration<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n jose@oaklandside.org<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jose Fermoso covers road safety, transportation, and public health for The Oaklandside. His previous work covering tech and culture has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, and One Zero. Jose was born and raised in Oakland and is the host and creator of the El Progreso podcast, a new show featuring in-depth narrative stories and interviews about and from the perspective of the Latinx community.More by Jose Fermoso<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Under court order, FEMA stopped requiring security grantees to collaborate with immigration enforcement on Oct. 21. But AC Transit will not apply, after facing community pressure to protect riders. by\u00a0Jose Fermoso Nov. 3, 2025 (Oaklandside.org) As immigrant raids by federal agents have ramped up this year, Bay Area residents have… Continue reading Criticism of BART\u2019s decision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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