‘This Is a Terrifying Time’: Goleta Community Expresses Fear, Outrage at Public Forum on Federal Raids

Compared to the standing-room-only Carpinteria and Santa Barbara council ICE meetings over the last week, Goleta’s public forum on Tuesday night was small, but its dozen speakers expressed intense emotions of fear and outrage as they insisted that the city and its elected officials should stand up for their residents.

Marina Chavez, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, reminded the council that one-third of the city’s population was Latino and that people of Asian descent made up another 12 percent. This meant that nearly half the city’s population was among those the Department of Homeland Security leadership was targeting based on their physical appearance, “otherwise known as racial profiling,” said Chavez. As did most of the speakers, she implored the council to forbid local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE.

“This is a terrifying time for many people,” she said. “I know it is hard to be a leader right now, but you were elected to do these things, to be courageous, to stand up for all of us.” As a previous speaker had said, Chavez told them firmly, “Now is your time. How do you want to be remembered?”

In and around Goleta, men dressed in civilian clothing — sometimes wearing bandanas over their faces and vests or badges with immigration enforcement insignia — have grabbed people off the street or from Home Depot, speakers said, and taken them away. People liken the actions to kidnappings, as it isn’t always clear who the men are working for and they act violently to subdue their targets. Alerts go out almost daily from the 805 Immigration Coalition and reports of sightings number in the hundreds. One speaker said she has seen a young man keeping watch over his mother’s workplace so that he knew she was safe.

A number of the public speakers had to pause as they choked back tears and spoke of how terrified they and their neighbors felt to know that the federal military were “abducting people without warrants or wearing any self-identification.” For their safety, they asked the council to make the city a sanctuary, which would send the “powerful message that Goleta protects its own.”

Others spoke of how immigrants volunteered during the pandemic but now had to worry about dropping their kids off at school or going to work or even asking for help. “This is not safety,” Daisy Martinez said. “This is trauma. This is violence.” A parent at Brandon School noted that 65 percent of the student body were people of color. Her children’s school friends were terrified. “What’s the plan?” asked Sarah Pena.

Alethea Tyner Paradis, who teaches history at S.B. City College, said that California citizens hid Black and Brown people from slave catchers when it entered the Union as a free state. If local law enforcement failed to defend the community, her suggestion was to defund the Sheriff’s Office and use the money to support immigrant organizations in the community. “It may not be hyperbole to say we’ve entered a phase of white nationalist authoritarianism,” Tyner Paradis said.

Taking any kind of action regarding this week’s ICE raids was not on the council’s agenda, but City Manager Bob Nisbet said a meeting to discuss ideas was potentially set for Monday, July 21, at 5:30 p.m. Members of the council agreed that the events of the past week created an emergency for the city, and that supporting existing networks, getting involved, and “staying loud,” was warranted.

Councilmember Luz Reyes-Martín told the assembly that her family had had to have the difficult discussion of what to do if any of them were detained. “It’s a conversation no family should have to have, but we’re having it, and I know many of you are, too.” She asked city staff to come up with options to support immigrant organizations, the ACLU lawsuit, and Senate Bill 54 (the California Values Act), which limits local law enforcements’ aid in immigration enforcement, and Senate bills that require federal agents to produce identification.

“Fear flourishes in a vacuum,” Reyes-Martín said. “And there is a vacuum of accurate information. Knowing what the city’s role is, what the sheriff’s role is, who is responsible, who is keeping us safe, where can I go for resources,” she said she expected they would all learn more at Monday’s meeting.