Community Action Board CEO MariaElena De La Garza holds a “red card” of basic immigrant rights at a news conference outside Santa Cruz County Superior Court on Nov. 7. (Jesse Kathan — Santa Cruz Local file)
WATSONVILLE >> Jose is spending the winter selling flowers in Watsonville City Plaza before he resumes his job picking strawberries in the spring.
He’s lived here for 20 years as one of an estimated 16,000 undocumented immigrants in Santa Cruz County. Since Monday’s inauguration of President Donald Trump, 45-year-old Jose said he’s afraid he could be separated from his children and deported back to his birthplace of Oaxaca, Mexico.
“You feel fear and dread from everything they’re talking about,” he said Wednesday, in Spanish. “What if they do it at work, and you’re not safe?” he asked. In the wake of a large-scale immigration raid in Kern County the week of Jan. 13, he said many people he knows share his fear of immigration raids.
This week, some Santa Cruz County law enforcement leaders said they could not block Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, but they pledged not to cooperate with them.
California law SB54 has forbidden local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration enforcement with some exceptions since 2018.
“Federal law enforcement is tasked with certain things, and we can’t as a local agency interfere,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark said Thursday.
For years, police chiefs in Santa Cruz County have said they need residents of all immigration statuses to report crime and help authorities solve crimes.
“We’re here for everyone, and we’re here to help when we are called on,” Clark said. State law aims to make undocumented residents “feel like they can trust that when they call for help from local law enforcement, that they don’t have to worry about other things associated with their status,” Clark said.
The Sheriff’s Office also does not honor immigration holds at the jail, according to a Nov. 7 statement.
The Watsonville City Council voted to reaffirm its support for immigrants’ rights at its Jan. 15 meeting. Watsonville Police’s interaction with immigration enforcement remains limited.
“I want to be clear and let our community know that we will not seek out or detain people solely on their immigration status,” Watsonville Police Chief Jorge Zamora said during the meeting. “The only time that we would assist ICE is if we have an order from a court compelling us to help them,” Zamora said.
Similarly, Santa Cruz Police leaders said this week that they stood behind a Nov. 7 statement that they would not use money or officers to support immigration enforcement. “This includes preventing police from asking about your immigration status, sharing your personal information with immigration authorities, or arresting you only for having a deportation order or for most other immigration violations,” according to the statement.
But such policies don’t prevent federal immigration enforcement from conducting raids or detaining county residents on suspicion of illegal immigration.
Executive order aims to widen scope of raids
Tuesday, Trump issued an executive order that allows immigration enforcement into churches, schools and hospitals, places which have previously been off limits. The Santa Cruz County Office of Education is still determining how to respond to the news.
The office is “very concerned” about the new policy, and is awaiting guidance from the Office of the California Attorney General on how to proceed, said Nick Ibarra, a spokesperson for the county office of education.
Though the department has pledged not to collect or share data on the immigration status of students or parents, school officials “would not actively obstruct or resist federal immigration authorities,” Ibarra said. The office has worked with local nonprofits to create Sus Derechos, a website with resources for immigrant parents.
For the Santa Cruz County Immigration Project, a program of the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, outreach to immigrants is a balance between preparing residents for possible enforcement and not driving undocumented people out of public life.
“We absolutely encourage people to go about their daily lives, to go to work, to send their children to school, to, you know, go to church, to go to the park on Sundays,” said Kate Hinnenkamp, operations manager of the Santa Cruz County Immigration Project.
“We don’t want people to live in fear — that has a danger all its own to people’s mental health, certainly to children,” she said. “We’re organizing for power, not panic.”
Following the raids in Kern County, false reports of ICE sightings in the San Francisco Bay Area have stoked fear on social media.
Local organizers with Your Allied Rapid Response are reviving an effort started during the first administration to investigate and verify sightings in Santa Cruz County. YARR is part of a nationwide network of programs created during the first Trump administration to monitor immigration enforcement.
“The only time we were able to stop [ICE] from taking a person from this county was when the neighbors of this person came out to be witnesses, and more people arrived, so this person was given a citation to show up to court and was left in the house,” said Ernestina Saldaña, an organizer with YARR.
“We cannot change what’s coming, but we can adapt,” Saldaña said. “We have the responsibility to protect our community — to keep Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz.”
Past enforcement in Santa Cruz County
The first Trump administration did not prompt large-scale immigration raids to Santa Cruz County workers, but it included smaller-scale operations aimed at detaining specific people. Most people targeted had a criminal record, Hinnenkamp said. Saldaña said one person who was detained had a years-old conviction of driving while intoxicated.
A large ICE action came in 2017, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security targeted alleged members of the international gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. The operation was a joint effort of federal officials and Santa Cruz Police, police said at the time.
Ten people were arrested on suspicion of gang-motivated crimes in Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Daly City. Eleven others were detained on suspicion of immigration charges and all but one of those 11 people were released shortly after the raid because federal officials determined they were not linked to the gang.
Following pressure from activists, then-Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel said he had been misled, but an ICE representative at the time said the police chief was aware of their intent to detain any non-citizen encountered during the action to check for links to the gang.
ICE did not respond to questions about past or future immigration enforcement in Santa Cruz County for this story.
Resources for immigrants
While future immigration policies and enforcement remain in flux, local nonprofits and local and state officials are focused on ensuring that immigrants know their legal rights during potential immigration enforcement.
Although undocumented immigrants don’t have all the same legal privileges and protections as citizens, “anybody who finds themselves within the borders of the United States, regardless of their immigration status and regardless of what we might hear coming out of the new presidential administration, has the same constitutional rights,” Hinnenkamp said.
For more information on immigrant rights and other resources, see Santa Cruz Local’s resource page for immigrants in Santa Cruz County.
Additional reporting by Fidel M. Soto.
Questions or comments? Email [email protected]. Santa Cruz Local is supported by members, major donors, sponsors and grants for the general support of our newsroom. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Learn more about Santa Cruz Local and how we are funded.
Jesse Kathan is a staff reporter for Santa Cruz Local through the California Local News Fellowship. They hold a master's degree in science communications from UC Santa Cruz.
