Tuesday October 28, 2025: Open letter to Lynda Hopkins in opposition to her ICE policies:

Open letter to Lynda Hopkins in opposition to her ICE policies:

Dear Supervisor Hopkins,

I read your recent newsletter regarding the proposed sanctuary ordinance with great care. I thank you for the clarity of your position and the clear respect you hold for the hunger strikers and the immigrant community. Your commitment to tangible action is noted.

However, I must express why, from a perspective of moral righteousness, your position is profoundly wrong. You have argued effectively as a pragmatic manager of risk, but you have failed to meet the moment as a moral leader.

You state that declaring a sanctuary county is an “empty promise” because we cannot physically stop ICE. This confuses a practical outcome with a moral one. 

The promise is not that we can create an impenetrable forcefield; the promise is that we will stand, unequivocally, on the side of the vulnerable. Righteousness is not defined by our capacity to control an oppressor, but by our willingness to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed. By your logic, no one should have sheltered Jews in Nazi Germany because they could not stop the Gestapo. The righteousness was in the act of sheltering itself.

Your second point, that the ordinance could create a “false sense of security” and draw retribution, is the logic of the bully’s enabler. It suggests we should not loudly oppose an injustice for fear that the unjust power will punish us for speaking up. This is the antithesis of courage. 

Righteousness requires the courage to accept retribution. The hunger strikers understand this; they are sacrificing their very bodies. To reject their call because it might “put a target on our backs” is to prioritize the comfort of the powerful over the safety of the vulnerable. It is a betrayal of the very principle of standing up for what is right when it is hard.

You correctly note that the Board of Supervisors lacks authority over the Sheriff. But a sanctuary ordinance is not merely a directive; it is a public, moral mandate. It shifts the political landscape and creates a new standard of accountability. If the Sheriff then acts in opposition to the declared will of the people, that is a political problem for him to answer for. Your position surrenders moral authority to a jurisdictional technicality. Righteousness demands we use every tool at our disposal to make our values law, even if its immediate enforceability is limited.

Most troubling is your defense of the Sheriff’s policy, which cooperates with ICE in the case of “serious and violent felonies.” You ask, “Are we fighting to protect the vast majority of our immigrant community, or are we fighting to protect the ten folks arrested by ICE who repeatedly committed crimes?” This is a false and dangerous choice that abandons the principle of universal rights.

Righteousness is not conditional. We do not believe in due process only for the innocent. We do not believe in protection from cruel and unusual punishment only for the likable. The moment we accept that it is permissible for anyone in our community to be swept into a system you yourself describe as terrifying and unjust—where people are “whisked away by masked officers to an out-of-state detention facility… or worse”—we have lost the moral core of our argument. We become complicit in designing a tiered system of justice, and that is a stain on our collective soul.

You urge us to prepare for the “floods and fires” of ICE raids through know-your-rights training and supporting non-profits. These are vital, but they are the actions of a community preparing for a siege. A sanctuary declaration is the action of a community refusing to accept the siege as legitimate. It is the difference between teaching someone how to survive in a burning building and declaring that the arsonist has no place here.

The hunger strikers are not engaging in “grandstanding.” They are embodying the highest form of moral witness. They are demonstrating that some principles are worth suffering for. Your pragmatism, while well-intentioned, reads as a refusal to take that same moral risk.

In the end, this is not about a policy that “looks good on paper.” It is about who we are. Will we be a community that calculates the risks of defending the vulnerable, or one that declares, as a matter of fundamental principle, that we are a safe haven for all? I urge you to reconsider. Do not let a manager’s calculation of risk override a leader’s duty to righteousness.

Respectfully,

Peter Walker

A Sonoma County Neighbor

Remember: