Tears were shed and emotions were high as residents packed the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors room Tuesday in a seven-hour meeting to advocate for increased support for immigrant communities in the aftermath of the recent federal raid in Carpinteria.

The Board of Supervisors approved $105,000 in funding for the Immigrant Legal Defense Center for immigrant youth legal and support services and $240,000 for mental health services. 

The supervisors also voted to formally request information from the federal government regarding immigration raids and operations in the county and to find out who has been detained and deported from the county.

Advocacy groups say there have been many instances of local residents being detained by federal agents during the past few months, and those incidents were not as visible as the workplace raids at Glass House Farms cannabis greenhouses last week in Carpinteria and Camarillo.

Some Local Workers Deported

Ten workers were detained at the Carpinteria facility operation, which involved dozens of federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Guard.

Agents deployed flash-bang grenades and smoke grenades at the crowd of civilian protesters who gathered near the cannabis greenhouses during the operation.

Advocates shared Tuesday that they are troubled by the lack of information from the federal government about who has been detained, where they are being held, and why.

Julissa Peña, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Center, said the people arrested related to immigration enforcement are facing poor conditions in detention centers and that the majority of the people arrested in Thursday’s raid have signed or been forced to sign self-deportation papers. 

Peña said individuals were taken to a Los Angeles processing center. ILDC attorneys were given only a couple of hours to try to speak with the 80 community members they were trying to locate. In the end, she said, they spoke to only five people who shared the poor conditions they were facing.

“There were pregnant women who we spoke to who said they hadn’t been fed in days,” Peña said. “There’s a particular woman that we spoke to that mentioned folks were being dragged by four ICE officers to sign their self-deportation, they were slapping people, people were bleeding, people who are diabetic were being denied insulin.”

She shared that they’ve been struggling to get in contact with immigration enforcement officials to be able to provide legal representation to individuals arrested. Rapid response network groups refer names of people and families who have been detained, she added.

Peña also advocated for the county to join the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit over the immigration raids. 

The supervisors did discuss joining the lawsuit and asked the County Counsel’s Office to look into it.

Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Wendy Santamaria said federal agents picked up two families — parents and children — near Adelante Charter School on Tuesday morning on the way to a summer camp. 

Advocates Ask County for More Support

Primitiva Hernandez, executive director of 805UndocuFund, said the raid at Glass House Farms was exactly what she had been warning would happen. 

“Families are being torn apart, teenagers are raising their siblings,” Hernandez said. “How much more pain must we show you so you can act?”

During Tuesday’s meeting, advocates asked for the board to increase farmworker wages, to dedicate $1 million for immigration legal aid and for the county to join the lawsuit against the federal government over immigration raids.

In addition to the legal defense and mental health funding allocations, the Board of Supervisors directed staff to come back with policy options, including:

• Amending the county’s legislation platform to advocate for improved immigration reform, including provisions for due process for those detained and identification of immigrant officials. 
• Explore an ordinance prohibiting local agencies from voluntarily sharing information with ICE unless compelled by a judicial order. 

The county also plans to ask a representative from ICE to appear before the board to answer questions about arrests and operations. 

Bea Molina, a daughter of an immigrant, said the fear of ICE is impacting the entire community and local businesses.

“People are afraid to go to work, people are afraid to go into the businesses, people are afraid to leave,” Molina said. 

She also shared that ICE has been seen stopping people near Franklin Elementary School in Santa Barbara and that there have been multiple sightings on the Eastside of Santa Barbara and in Goleta every week.

“It’s not rumors. This is real of what’s happening to our community, and our community is scared,” Molina said. “It’s not just the undocumented community that is scared. Everyone who has papers is scared, people who have been here two generations are scared.”

On Thursday, federal agents detained 361 reportedly undocumented immigrants during raids at Glass House Farms cannabis facilities in Carpinteria and Camarillo.

First District Supervisor Roy Lee, who represents Carpinteria, joined the crowd protesting the raid.

“These actions are tearing our community and business community apart in Carpinteria,” Lee said. “It’s the first time that I as an immigrant did not feel safe, that I was being targeted.”

Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson said he didn’t want to conflate immigration with illegal immigration and that this was a defining issue during the last presidential election. 

“The failure of the Biden-Harris administration on this front is one of the key reasons Donald Trump now sits in the Oval Office,” Nelson said. “Despite what some might think, it was not the far right that elected him; it was this issue’s appeal to moderates, the middle and Hispanics.”

Nelson said he believes that Glass House Farms raids had more to do with illegal activity than immigration enforcement and that the immigrant residents detained were “collateral damage.”

Federal officials have said they were serving criminal search warrants, but details have not been disclosed.

Nelson also advocated for the county to cooperate with ICE agents in order to build a relationship so the county can get better information about the agency’s local operations and arrests.

Before the meeting, members of many community advocacy groups gathered on the steps of the County Administration building at 105 E. Anapamu St. in support of local immigrants.