ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties

Trans kids: You are seen, you are heard, and we won't stop fighting alongside you for your right to dignity and equality.

Know Your Rights | Enforcement at the Airport | ACLU At the border, you are likely to encounter Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, and you may encounter Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents. HSI is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Know your rights in these scenarios.

If you’re flying this holiday season, know your rights before heading to the airport. 

Can Border Agents Search Your Electronic Devices? It’s Complicated. | ACLU We’ve been getting a lot of questions about when border agents can legally conduct searches of travelers’ electronic devices at international airports and other ports of entry. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t simple.

The government doesn’t get a free pass to violate our liberties just because they want to.

Learn about how to protect your rights and personal information at the border.

The ACLU’s Holiday Conversation Guide Dreading the holiday dinner table? Our experts provide advice to help you navigate the trickiest conversations.

If you’ve ever found yourself at a holiday meal without the right words to discuss causes you believe in, we’ve got your back.

Gear up to navigate conversations about trans rights, immigrants’ rights, and more.

We're in federal court today challenging President Trump's illegal use of the Alien Enemies Act to send Venezuelans to a brutal El Salvador prison with no due process.

Everyone deserves their day in court. This administration's actions are cruel and unlawful.

Last night, ACLU-SDIC Managing Policy Director Nalini Gupta is delivering testimony before the Vista City Council outlining the ACLU-SDIC's support for the Vista Community Safety and Due Process Resolution.

Read the full testimony here: www.aclu-sdic.org/en/news/aclu...

Melissa M. Lopez, ACLU-SDIC media relations manager, and Daniela Vega, ACLU-SDIC Imperial Valley organizer, joined other coalition members throughout the visit to discuss work in the region.

To learn more about Valle Unido, visit www.valleunido.org.

Group of seven people smiling and looking at camera

Last week, our Valle Unido partner, Jobs to Move America, brought a group of supporters to the Imperial Valley to visit the region and learn more about the work our coalition is doing around lithium extraction.

Heat waves consist of five or more consecutive days of dangerous heat.

Our elected officials must intervene to stop abuses and cruelty being inflicted in ICE facilities.

In 1975, she co-founded Gay American Indians, the first association for gay Native Americans in the U.S. We honor Barbara’s contributions and her vision for a more just future.

Barbara Cameron was a Hunkpapa Lakota artist and pillar of the San Francisco community who advocated fearlessly for lesbian and Two-Spirit people like her, people with HIV/AIDS, and women impacted by violence.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is the governing body for San Diego County. They control a more than $8 billion annual budget.

YOU have a say in how this money is spent.

Learn more at bit.ly/MYBOS-SD

BREAKING: We’re suing the Trump administration over inhumane conditions at California’s largest immigration detention center.

People detained there have long fought abuse and the denial of basic needs like food and medical care.

ICE is depriving people detained at the California City detention facility of their humanity and legal rights. We’ll see them in court.

Trump’s Military Occupations of U.S. Cities Cost $473 Million and Rising Trump’s campaign to quell dissent by deploying the American military to U.S. cities comes at an immense price.

We know military troops on our streets don't keep our communities safe, yet taxpayers are footing the bill for President Trump's reckless and unnecessary National Guard deployments.

Congress must act.

Military, Veterans, and Families in Defense of the Constitution Take action with ACLU People Power!

Military members swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not to police American cities and chill dissent.

If you or a loved one has served in the military, join us in telling the Trump administration that troops don't belong on our streets.

White text: "'When I joined the military, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. As the Commander in Chief, President Trump also took an oath to protect members of the armed forces from being used as political pawns - by himself or any other politician.' Jess Apgar. ACLU staff and former Captain, U.S. Army." Pink ACLU logo. Photo of Jess Apgar, a white woman with red hair in a U.S. Army uniform. Dark blue background.

Reminder for this Veterans Day: Service members didn’t sign up to police their communities.

ACLU Advocacy The ACLU of Southern California and National ACLU Stepped into the Imperial Valley to challenge anti-organizer propaganda and fight back against unjust convictions under criminal syndicalism laws. Though petitions for appeals were denied, it was not over.

Lettuce Strike In 1934, lettuce field workers launched a 10-day strike. It ended only because of extreme fear. Leaders were arrested, picketing was banned and the right to assemble was denied. The ACLU stepped in again.

AL. Wirin While ACLU attorneys A.L. Wirin and Helen Marston Beardsley had dinner at the Planters Hotel in Brawley, vigilantes abducted Wirin - brutally beating and leaving him for dead in the desert. On behalf of the ACLU, Marston Beardsley requested support from President Roosevelt which prompted a federal investigation. The investigation confirmed the ACLU's charges of abuse by growers, law enforcement and vigilantes. This finding led to important protections for farmworkers in our nation's early fights for unionization.

Join the movement! Help us connect, organize and activate! Let's work together to make Imperial Valley a more just and equitable place for all and for years to come. Sign up as an ACLU-SDIC volunteer at bit.ly/ICpeoplepower

Their courage shaped a region and helped create the ACLU-SDIC.

Join us: bit.ly/ICpeoplepower

Civil Rights in Imperial County slide 1

Agricultural Industry in Imperial Valley With the growth of the agricultural industry in the early 1900s, labor demand skyrocketed. The foundation for the industry was laid by a diverse group of migrants. By the 1920s, growers were largely bringing in workers from Mexico to harvest crops.

Imperial Valley Labor Movements As the industry grew, Mexican field workers became increasingly dissatisfied with poor working conditions and low wages. In response, the workers began organizing. Their efforts were quickly met with resistance.

Harvest Arrests In the late 1920s, organizing efforts were targeted by heavy policing and harsh laws "protecting" the harvest. Bail for arrests reached $1,000 and the sheriff's department shut down Mexican and Black owner poll halls, labeling them as agitator spaces.

A century ago, Imperial Valley’s farmworkers organized for fair pay and humane conditions – even in the face of intimidation, arrests and vigilante justice.

Q & A: Orr v. Trump | American Civil Liberties Union Following a January 2025 Executive Order from President Donald Trump, the State Department began barring people from obtaining passports with a sex designation on them that is not the same as their sex assigned at birth. In response, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit challenging the State Department's policy on behalf of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people.

The Supreme Court this week allowed the State Department to enforce President Trump's anti-trans passport policy while our lawsuit challenging his executive order moves through the courts.

We'll keep this page updated as our legal experts learn more.

ICE: Stop Terrorizing Children ICE is traumatizing children as young as 14 – trying to strip them of their rights while they're without attorneys or family to help them. Take action against these horrific abuses now.

As part of President Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s mass deportation campaign, ICE is detaining children, in some cases taking them away from their families, and pressuring kids to leave the U.S.

Tell Congress to protect children from ICE.
aclu.org/ice-children-

This fight isn't over. Our case challenging President Trump's executive order will still move forward.

In the meantime anyone who applies for a new, corrected, or replacement passport, or for a passport renewal, is at risk of having their passport issued bearing the sex they were assigned at birth.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration's request to enforce its discriminatory passport policy while our lawsuit makes its way through the courts.

This decision undermines the freedom of transgender, non-binary, and intersex people to have our IDs reflect who we are.

President Trump's unprecedented effort to stop people from seeking asylum in the U.S. is illegal and puts lives in danger.

We were in court this week challenging his proclamation that denies protections for asylum seekers Congress has clearly granted.

Why Police Traffic Stops Are Dangerous and Ineffective | ACLU Millions of drivers are pulled over every year for minor violations like broken taillights or tinted windows. Data shows these stops rarely make roads safer, and instead lead to racial disparities, violence, and loss of trust in police.

Police have hundreds of reasons to stop drivers — reasons that are too often abused to target people of color and undermine Fourth Amendment freedoms.

Traffic stops unrelated to road safety, for violations like tinted windows or an expired registration, are unnecessary and only breed police abuse.

Navy graphic reading "Congress must protect children from ICE." Underneath the text there are images of a person with their back turned holding a child.

As part of President Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s mass deportation campaign, ICE is detaining children, in some cases taking them away from their families, and pressuring kids to leave the U.S.

Tell Congress to protect children from ICE.
aclu.org/ice-children-

Revealed: ICE violates its own policy by holding people in secretive rooms for days or weeks Guardian analysis finds ICE increasingly keeps people in holding rooms with little oversight, as some facilities see a 600% rise in detention length

ICE is denying people their due process rights and endangering their lives in the process.

“People were not supposed to spend more than 12 hours in there,” said a former ICE official who worked on oversight and detention issues. “I actually think it’s wildly, wildly fucked up.”

Prop 36 is straining our community and state budgets in a time of unprecedented financial uncertainty without improving community safety or public health.

Behavioral health departments and nonprofits, who were already overwhelmed before Prop 36, don’t have enough resources to help people who need it.

Instead of receiving the care-based mental health treatment and services proven to work, Californians experiencing substance use or mental health disorders are criminalized and charged with felonies, escalating our state's houselessness crisis.