‘This Is an Emergency’: Emotions Run High at Santa Barbara Town Hall

‘This Is an Emergency’:
Emotions Run High at
Santa Barbara Town Hall

Community Members Speak Out Against
Immigration Enforcement at Tense City Meeting

By Ryan P. Cruz | July 16, 2025

Read more from
Smoke and Mirrors: Fallout from Federal Raids at Glass House Farms.

Primitiva Hernandez, 805 UndocuFund executive director, was exhausted by the time she sat down for the City of Santa Barbara’s Emergency Town Hall meeting at the Franklin Neighborhood Center Tuesday evening. She had been working nonstop since last Thursday’s raids of two cannabis facilities on the Central Coast.

Hernandez, like many others in the room, had spent much of the day over at the County Board of Supervisors meeting, where there was an equally large crowd of community members speaking out about the recent increase in immigration enforcement in Santa Barbara County.

“It’s been a long day,” Hernandez said.

She wasn’t the only one in the room that had reached their limit. The hundreds that packed the community center and overfill areas outside the building had all come to plead with city leaders to do something — anything — to help address the aggressive enforcement against Latino residents.

Hernandez opened the meeting by reminding everyone that, just one month prior to the July 10 raids, she had stood in front of the courthouse in Santa Barbara and asked for the city and county government to step in to help keep the undocumented community safe. It was only a matter of time, she had warned, before we saw “militarized” presence in the street.

“So take this as a warning that we don’t need to wait another 30 days,” Hernandez said at Tuesday’s town hall. “We don’t need to have more deaths. We don’t need to have more pain. We don’t need to have more broken families before we take decisive action.”

The July 10 raids of Glass House Farms resulted in more than 360 workers being detained, 10 of whom were taken from the Carpinteria location. Hernandez said it has been difficult to fight misinformation coming out in the days following the raids. 

What she knows from working with the families firsthand, and from some of the 805 Immigrant Coalition volunteers at the border in Tijuana, is that people have been taken to detention centers where they don’t have access to legal representation. “They have the right to one, if they’re able to find one, and if they’re able to afford one,” she said. “But the system makes it nearly impossible for them to access those services that we have worked very hard to provide.”

Some have already reportedly been forced to sign papers and were deported, while those who are kept in detention centers tell advocates they are being kept in horrible conditions, without food or medical treatment. “We have pregnant women that are not receiving prenatal care there,” she said.

The meeting was meant as a way for the community to speak out regarding recent immigration enforcement, with Hernandez and city representatives on hand to field questions from the audience. Dozens of community members spoke, many venting frustrations about local government and law enforcement standing idle while the undocumented community is living in fear.

Andi Garcia, who grew up in Santa Barbara’s Eastside neighborhood, spends almost every day waking up early to patrol the neighborhood for ICE activity. She asked why Santa Barbara residents are forced to protect their own community. “I grew up here, just a little Brown kid from a rich city. Born and raised right here in this community,” she said. “A lot of us are patrolling… Why are we patrolling our own neighborhoods?”

Some community members said they felt hopeless and unsafe in their own neighborhoods. Others felt angry, and asked that city leaders treat the immigration crisis with the same level of urgency as a fire, flood, or mudslide. 

Indivisible S.B. organizer Larry Behrendt and La Casa de la Raza Director Jaqueline Inda were among several people to call for the city to declare a state of emergency

“This is truly an emergency,” Behrendt said. “If this is not an emergency, I’ve never seen one.”

City Councilmember Wendy Santamaria, who called for the emergency meeting along with fellow councilmembers Kristen Sneddon and Oscar Gutierrez, stood up firmly in support of taking action immediately. Just that morning, ICE reportedly picked up two families dropping off their children at a summer camp and arrested another man just blocks away.

“We need to deal with what is actively happening,” Santamaria said.

Councilmember Meagan Harmon spoke from the heart during her allotted two minutes. “As a mother, I feel the heartbreak in this room; I feel the terror in this room,” she said. 

Harmon voiced her support for taking “tangible steps” and, just as she was suggesting the city declare an emergency, her time was cut off, and she was not allowed to finish her comments.

The meeting became tense as people in the crowd began to shout pointed questions to Mayor Randy Rowse, Police Chief Kelly Gordon, and City Administrator Kelly McAdoo, who attempted to relay the logistical challenges. “We can’t investigate the federal government,” Chief Gordon said. “We don’t have that power.”

“We don’t want to know what you can’t do!” one person yelled. “We want to know what you will do!”

Councilmember Sneddon used her time to share her support for the city’s immigrant community, which she said is “under attack.” 

“We hear you,” she said, before moving to direct staff and the city administrator to come back with actionable steps for council approval. The options the city could explore, as suggested by Hernandez, include: declaring an emergency proclamation; having SBPD work with the Rapid Response Hotline on notices of confirmed ICE activity; having police hand out informational “Know Your Rights” cards; allowing 805 UndocuFund to use city buildings for training; and exploring more funding toward nonprofit groups working with immigrant communities.

The council unanimously agreed, and the city administrator will work with city staff and the 805 Immigrant Coalition to schedule the meeting as soon as possible.

Read more from
Smoke and Mirrors: Fallout from Federal Raids at Glass House Farms.