The first 10 days of the second Trump administration were dizzying, overwhelming people with fear, confusion, panic, and anxiety. ICE raids began shortly before and after Inauguration Day, including in Santa Barbara, where agents arrested several people in working-class, immigrant, Mexican, and Central American neighborhoods on the Westside and Eastside of Santa Barbara and Old Town Goleta.
The Chicana/o, Mexicana/o, Central American reality of being working class and subject to institutional racism, exploitation, and disposability has been put on full display by this administration — along the lines of Trump’s brain, Steve Bannon (and the other Steve, Miller) — particularly in their calls for mass deportation along the lines of Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback (1952-54) and mass removals in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Trump’s actions are not unique, as the previous two Democratic presidents (Biden and Obama) both engaged in record high deportations and an even earlier Democratic president (Clinton) enacted Operation Gatekeeper and criminalized immigrants in the 1990s.
That said, this specific conjuncture feels different.
In the midst of tremendous fear, word emerged in the Santa Barbara Independent and social media that a protest on Friday, January 31, would call on people to bring “Mexican and Latino” flags, on Milpas Avenue, the business corridor of Santa Barbara’s Eastside community. The “Eastside” highlights the city’s settler colonial history and the historic segregation of the Mexican/Chicano/Central American community, setting it spatially apart from the tourist-oriented State Street as well as more affluent segments of Santa Barbara.
Stanford History Professor Alfredo Camarillo brilliantly analyzed these issues in his classic book, Chicanos in a Changing Society, published in 1979. Milpas is where the community goes shopping for weddings, quinceñeras, carne asadas, holidays, graduations, and much more. It is close to Santa Barbara Junior High School and Santa Barbara High School. The Eastside is gentrifying, too, as wineries and expensive townhomes are being built literally across the street from older community centers like La Casa de la Raza which emerged during the Chicano Movement in 1971.
Santa Barbara’s Chicana/o community, including UCSB Chicana/o students, have always been involved in immigrant rights activism, starting perhaps with the Centro de Immigración y Asistencia Pro Comunidad (CINAC) which was a sub-committee of El Congreso. El Congreso emerged from two earlier organizations, MEChA (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan) and La Raza Libre. CINAC activists included Etelvina Menchaca, who was involved in community activism for decades, and Marcos Vargas, who later founded the Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) in Ventura in 2001 and later served as executive director for the Fund for Santa Barbara.
Immigrant rights activism continued into the 1990s, as a coalition of Chicana/o, youth, civil rights, and nonprofit organizations emerged to defeat Proposition 187, a notoriously racist ballot initiative that would have cut off medical and educational services for undocumented immigrants. In the 2000s, People United for Economic Justice (PUEBLO) emerged from the Santa Barbara Coalition for a Living Wage and organized large rallies against HR 4437, the Sensenbrenner bill that would have criminalized undocumented immigrants. Immigrant rights activism continued on the UCSB campus, too, with the formation of Improving Dreams, Equality, Access, and Success (IDEAS) which was established in 2006 and has been at the front of substantial immigration reform and intersectional justice for many years.
Thus, when more than 300 community members showed up for an immigration protest on Milpas in Santa Barbara on January 31, 2025, this wasn’t something new. Eastside residents had been protesting for decades for their rights, but this action felt different, it was festive, fun, and joyful. People were angry and upset and rightly so, but they were also dancing to hip-hop and banda, they were hitting a Trump pinata with full force, they were street racing their trucks and low riders, they were outside, in the open, saying we are not afraid! School-age children along with middle-aged parents and some grandparents were all present, defying the Trump administration.
Just this past weekend, more than 100 immigrant rights rallies and protests occurred state-wide against ICE, including in Oxnard and Lompoc. The demonstrations in Los Angeles included many Mexicans, Chicanas/os, Central Americans, and Latina/o community members, as well as allies who are opposed to the administration’s draconian, racist, and pro-corporate agenda.
It is too early tell if these rallies presage a sustained social movement that includes other communities of color and develops a broader message with concrete demands. For the moment, it is remarkable but not altogether surprising to see la comunidad rise up to say no, to say basta to very old policies that seek to exclude, expel, and remove Mexicans, Central Americans, and Chicanas/os from the United States — and spark such fear and susto that they do not resist and fight back.
The community has always fought back and over time, we hope, this resistance will blossom into a united front for dignity, respect, and justice.
Ralph Armbruster Sandoval is a professor and Fabian Pavón is a PhD student in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Alfredo Carlos is an assistant professor in the Labor Studies Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
