OC attorney says she was detained in ICE raid at Santa Ana park

Orange County attorney Heidi M. Plummer, a U.S. citizen, said she was walking through Centennial Park in Santa Ana on Saturday when she was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers conducting an operation in the area.

Plummer, co-founder of Bock & Plummer, Attorneys at Law in Newport Beach, said she had gone to the park to clear her head after attending a family member's funeral. It was there, she said, that she was caught up in a sweep by ICE agents.

"I have lived here for 50-some years. I've been through gang wars. I've been through all kinds of things and never have felt as unsafe as I felt on Saturday," Plummer said Wednesday. "I often go to the park to walk to clear my mind. I left my house and I'm basically walking along minding my own business when suddenly, a bunch of ICE vans pulled up and conducted a raid at the park, and I was caught up in that."

Plummer, a probate attorney, said she began advising others in the park to exercise their rights.

"I started telling the people around me in Spanish, 'Don't answer questions. Ask for a lawyer.' I am half Ecuadorian but I look whiter than anything and my name is a very American name. I do not look Mexican. I don't look Asian. I don't look like anything other than a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl walking in the park."

Plummer is not the first California attorney to be affected by law enforcement actions linked to immigration enforcement.

Courtney Liss, a 31-year-old trial lawyer from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein in San Francisco, was injured during an earlier protest over ICE detentions. In comments to the New York Times, Liss said she was pushed into a fire hydrant and struck three times with a baton by police during the demonstration. She noted that a prior protest attended by lawyers in suits had not prompted a police response.

According to Plummer, ICE agents reacted negatively to her intervention.

"I was handcuffed and put in a vehicle with several other females. They separated the children from their families. The men were put in separate vehicles, and we were essentially all taken down to the ICE station in Santa Ana," she said. "We were put in a room, and I just kept telling the other women, 'Don't answer questions. You have rights. Ask for an attorney.' The agents asked for my identification, and I gave them my identification. I was in that detention room for about an hour and a half before they came and told me I was free to go and find my own way home."

"It was the most bizarre thing in the world. The fear that was in the room. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. I didn't know if I was going to wind up in some sort of detention where I had to call a lawyer or do this or do that. I certainly wasn't processed in any way. I was certainly detained," she said.

President Donald J. Trump has pledged to implement the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. In the opening months of his second term, his administration has already deported more than 100,000 individuals - which is fewer than the number of deportees in the last months of the Biden administration and far short of a quota the Trump administration reportedly imposed on itself. This reportedly has caused immigration officials to conduct more sweeps in workplaces and public spaces.

The Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Newport Beach attorney Frances Prizzia, a friend of Plummer's, said the incident raised deep concerns.

"Heidi is a longtime resident of Orange County, and a well-connected and very involved member of our bar community. She was detained, rounded up and transported to an ICE processing center," Prizzia said. "This is frightening for anyone and is sadly reminiscent of the activities during Martial Law in the Philippines, or the Gestapo tactics of Nazi Germany and any genocide throughout history. No one is safe. We need to wake up and come to terms with the reality of the country we currently live in."

Plummer said she believes the operation indiscriminately targeted families and bystanders without legal justification or due process.

"I'm out there doing what I can do, making sure that people know their rights. You know, laws have to be carried out," Plummer said. "There's the rule of law, but this is not it. This is degrading, humiliating. I'm not a person who gets in trouble with the law. There were no protests, no disturbance of peace. You had families and people going about their everyday life and just being torn away from it."

California has declared itself a sanctuary state, which means local law enforcement officials are barred from aiding federal immigration authorities. To circumvent that law, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli has launched Operation Guardian Angel, which allows federal authorities to scan criminal databases daily to identify arrested undocumented immigrants in state jails and charge them with re-entry felonies.

Essayli has said that even the worst criminal aliens in state custody are frequently released into the community because of California's sanctuary state policies. "These laws effectively render federal immigration detainers meaningless. The days of giving criminal illegal aliens a free pass are over. While California may be presently disregarding detainers, it cannot ignore federal arrest warrants," Essayli said in a statement.

Plummer said agents never mentioned a warrant on Saturday.

"There was no warning, no rhyme or reason to it. This isn't a place where criminals are hanging out. They literally just rolled up, and didn't say anything about a warrant," she said. "Their goal was to get as many people as they could into their vans and go. Act first, ask questions after the fact, and let the consequences be damned."

Plummer, who serves as vice president of Orange County Women Lawyers and co-chair of the Unity Bar, said her public role did not appear to shield her from the sweep.

"I'm not just someone, I'm a very public person and they didn't care. I was scooped up and put in handcuffs and honestly have no idea why."