Federal agents detained a Santa Barbara man Friday morning after placing him in a headlock for allegedly vandalizing a federal vehicle in downtown Santa Barbara.
They also pepper-sprayed a local attorney who confronted them about pinning the man to the ground, as well as a second person on a scooter.
A Santa Barbara Police Department representative confirmed that one man was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on suspicion of vandalizing a federal vehicle by slashing the tire on Friday morning.
That man — later identified by his parents as 26-year-old Jack Randmaa, a U.S. citizen and a volunteer ICE observer — has been transported to an ICE facility, police confirmed.
ICE representatives did not immediately respond to Noozhawk’s request for comment.
Immigrant activist group SB Resiste first received witness reports that ICE agents were seen outside of the Santa Barbara County Probation Office at 117 E Carrillo St. before 11 a.m.
“We were whistling, we were on the megaphone, just trying to alert our community, and the federal agents were being violent, flipping us off,” Chelsea Lancaster, a volunteer with SB Resiste, told Noozhawk.
A bystander, Pedro Quito, said he saw Randmaa near a federal vehicle, but never saw him touch it.
“I thought he was taking a photo of the license plate, or something, and when the federal agents noticed him doing that, they grabbed him,” Quito said.
Lancaster said she witnessed Randmaa get pushed to the ground by two agents, one of whom was masked.
Lancaster said the agents “grabbed him and dragged him into the probation parking.”
“They started choking him to where he couldn’t breathe, his face was beet red,” she said. “One of the officers had their arm around him, choking, and we were all screaming for him to get off.”
Quito shared video of the incident with Noozhawk.
In the video, two armed agents wearing vests labeled “police” and “police ICE” can be seen pinning Randmaa to the ground. One attempts to put handcuffs on Randmaa, while the other puts him in a headlock.
“You’re killing him,” one bystander yells, as another repeatedly shouts, “Leave him alone.”
Content warning: the video below contains graphic images and explicit language.
Lancaster said she does not believe Randmaa slashed the tire.
“There is no way, he was near the front of the car, he wasn’t even at the tail where the car got a flat tire,” Lancaster said.
However, a video posted on the Independent’s website on Saturday shows Randmaa approaching the vehicle and doing something to its right rear tire — the one that ended up flat — moments before he was first grabbed by a federal agent.
Agent Pepper-Sprays Attorney Doug Hayes
Lancaster also said an older man approached the scene, talking to agents and trying to stop them from pinning down Randmaa.
He was identified by witnesses as local criminal defense attorney Doug Hayes.
As seen in videos recorded of the incident, as Hayes approaches, he reaches for Randmaa’s backpack on the ground. The agent grabs it back, before Hayes leans over the two agents and Randmaa and appears to grab at one of the agents.
An agent then sprayed Hayes with bear spray or pepper spray and threw him to the ground.
“His face was all orange, and I was next to him, and I inhaled some of that,” Lancaster said.
Lancaster said a group of people tried to help the man rinse his eyes out.
While removing Randmaa from the scene, an agent pepper-sprayed another man in a red hoodie on a scooter after the two bumped into each other.
Santa Barbara County Public Defender Mark Saatjian was one of the witnesses who filmed the interaction between Hayes and the agents.
“It seems to be almost our civic responsibility to create a record of these abuses,” he said.
He said bystanders were asking the agents to identify themselves after the agents drove over to the Santa Barbara Police Department, but were not given identification.
“They refused to identify themselves and I did not observe the Santa Barbara Police Department making an effort to identify who they are,” he told Noozhawk.
“I have concerns about anonymity in this type of context and that is a huge red flag for people in my profession.”
Saatjian said he’s heard from other people that Hayes is doing okay, but he hadn’t personally spoken to him.
ICE Drives Detained Man to Police Headquarters
Then ICE agents put Randmaa in a vehicle and drove to the Santa Barbara Police Department headquarters at 215 E. Figueroa St.
“The ICE agents made a decision to drive the individual they had arrested and their disabled vehicle to the Santa Barbara Police Department at approximately 11 a.m. …” a police department spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“The Santa Barbara Police Department was not notified that ICE was coming to the police department before they arrived.”
Lancaster also said she followed the car with the flat tire, a white Dodge Charger, to the Police Department and witnessed the car go behind the gates to the department building.
Police confirmed that they allowed ICE to park the disabled vehicle in their parking lot until a tow truck could remove it.
A group of community members, including volunteers with SB Resiste, gathered outside of the police headquarters, where some people yelled out towards the building and the officers who came outside.
“Santa Barbara Police officers were present at this time, and provided for public safety by creating a safe place for the community members to exercise their First Amendment Rights, without interfering with the ICE agents, while the agents transferred the arrestee from the disabled vehicle to another ICE vehicle,” the Police Department said in the emailed statement.
A parking enforcement vehicle temporarily blocked traffic access on E. Figueroa Street as a small crowd of people gathered outside on the sidewalk and street.
In SB Resiste’s livestream, Randmaa can be seen being escorted by federal agents out of the Police Department building into what appears to be a silver Ford Expedition. The vehicle then drives away.
Randmaa’s parents were also on the scene outside the police headquarters. They were receiving text updates from their son and tracking his location through Apple’s Find My Friends app, they told Noozhawk.
In a livestream posted by SB Resiste, a Police Department officer can be seen telling community members that police did not witness the vandalism or arrest.
“If anyone has video, I would like to see it,” the officer tells the person recording. “It’s your word or their word (…) It’s not their First Amendment right to vandalize property.”
A police spokesperson also later confirmed that the department was not present “during the events prior to the arrest or during the arrest.”
The department also said that ICE agents “had one of their vehicle tires slashed, while parked on Carrillo” Street, and that destruction of government property is a federal crime.
Earlier on Friday morning, immigrant activist groups posted on social media that multiple ICE vehicles had been reported in the Santa Barbara area, including a white Dodge caravan, a silver Ford Expedition, a white Dodge Charger and a Black Pathfinder.
A white Dodge and silver Ford Expedition were seen parked at the county Probation Department office Friday morning. Both vehicles can later be seen in videos outside of the Police Department.
While ICE agents parked on the street near the Probation Department building, they did not enter the building, according to Santa Barbara County officials.
“The county was not involved, the county did not approve of their presence,” and was not part of it at all, spokeswoman Kelsey Gerckens Buttitta said in response to Friday morning’s confrontation.
“They were not interacting with any of our staff or any of our clients, to the best of our knowledge.”
Santa Barbara High School went into a 30-minute hold out of caution beginning at 11:23 a.m., in response to these incidents, school district spokesman Ed Zuchelli said.
“We were getting close to lunchtime, and we wanted to make sure our students were safe on campus as we were figuring out what was happening off campus,” he said.
The high school sits less than a mile away from the incident.
Additionally, around the same time of the incident, Indivisible Isla Vista was holding its second-ever protest at the Santa Barbara City Hall, also less than a mile away.
Organizers and UC Santa Barbara students Tallula Borman and Kira Valles-Knoll said they saw the white Dodge Charger drive away. They debated cancelling the protest out of an abundance of caution, but eventually decided to hold it.
A small group of protesters chanted outside city hall, some holding signs reading “ICE out of IV” before marching towards State Street.
This is a developing story. Check back with Noozhawk for updates.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated after reviewing additional video angles.