Santa Barbara City Council Approves $500,000 to Immigrant Support Services

The City of Santa Barbara will allocate $500,000 toward immigrant support services as part of a plan approved by the City Council on July 31 to address the impacts of aggressive federal immigration enforcement in the community. The city also took similar actions to the City of Goleta and County of Santa Barbara, filing a request for information with ICE’s acting director, adopting a resolution condemning the “aggressive and nontransparent federal immigration enforcement tactics,” and updating the city’s legislative platform to allow the city to join the ACLU’s lawsuit alleging that ICE officers are engaging in racial profiling during immigration sweeps.

During Thursday’s special meeting, Councilmember Kristen Sneddon said the whole town is built on the backs of immigrants and that these actions should be just the start of acknowledging the “aggressive detainment without due process that is tearing apart our community.”

“We cannot sit by and not respond, and not respond aggressively,” Councilmember Sneddon said. “We are on stolen land, and we benefit, we profit. We’re profiting right now with our [Fiesta] celebrations while we pretend to honor a culture and not honor the people with protection.”

Sneddon acknowledged the hundreds of community members who had shown up to public meetings to show support for immigrant families and call out the aggressive tactics used by masked federal immigration enforcement in unmarked cars.

“To those who are carrying out raids, my ask is that you show your badge,” Sneddon said. “Show your face. Show your documents. Mark your cars. Behave in the way that law enforcement behaves; our law enforcement behaves that way, and we want to hold everyone to that standard.”

Primitiva Hernandez, executive director of 805 UndocuFund, has been working closely with families who have been affected by deportations, and in recent weeks, she has led the call for local governments to play their part in supporting their immigrant communities.

She said that $500,000 from the City of Santa Barbara would be consistent in proportion to the $100,000 set aside by the City of Goleta on July 21, and that every dollar would go directly to the Emergency Relief Fund, which is distributed straight to the families who are scrambling to pay their bills.

“We don’t need any dollars to be allocated toward our Rapid Response Hotline,” Hernandez said. “We want every dollar that comes from the cities to go back to the families because rent is due tomorrow.”

Hernandez warned that, even with the additional funding from the cities, nonprofits working with the 805 Immigrant Coalition were facing an uphill battle, with ICE set to hire 10,000 new officers thanks to its new $170 billion budget approved by Congress on the Fourth of July.

“This is only the beginning,” Hernandez said. “If you think you’ve seen horror, wait and see what’s coming.”

Hernandez responded to comments made by a few community members who believed that volunteer legal observers and advocates with 805 UndocuFund were interfering or obstructing federal law enforcement. Volunteers and staff are trained specifically to remain peaceful, she said, and to document the incidents and take down information at the scene.

“None of what we’re doing is interfering. We’re not asking for the police department to interfere either,” Hernandez said. “Protection is what we’re asking. Protection is not interfering. We’re not asking for them to show up and stop federal agents. We don’t do that, either — we don’t have the authority to do that. What we want is to ensure transparency and to hold them accountable.”

Councilmember Wendy Santamaria echoed the sentiment during her comments. “805 UndocuFund is doing nothing to obstruct justice,” she said. “They are literally there observing, informing people of their rights, and making sure that our constitutional rights are not being violated.”

With the exception of Mayor Randy Rowse — who voted against the allocation of $500,000 due to budget concerns — the entire council was united in support of the funding. The only remaining question was where the money would be reallocated from.

Several options were considered, including the city’s reserves, or the Measure C and Measure I sales tax funds. But these options would require adjusting the city’s policy levels, forcing more public hearings and further delays.

Councilmember Meagan Harmon was determined to get the funds into the hands of immigrant support services as quickly as possible. The city originally considered declaring a state of emergency, though City Administrator Kelly McAdoo explained that it would bring more complications since there was no precedent for declaring an emergency based on the acts of another subdivision of government.

Councilmember Harmon offered another solution, which would allow the “fastest path to allocation,” by using $500,000 from the city’s flexible housing fund with the guarantee that the money will be replenished as soon as possible.

Harmon said it wasn’t an easy decision, since she and her fellow councilmembers had battled to approve those housing funds, but it was the only way the city could get “money out the door” on August 12.

“I do not want to spend this money. Believe me, I fought hard for it,” Councilmember Harmon said. “But there is urgency to this action today.”

The majority of the council agreed with Harmon’s suggestion to redistribute the money from the housing and homelessness fund, though Councilmember Santamaria — the council’s fiercest defender of housing and tenant’s rights — did not feel comfortable dipping into the $1.5 million the city had set aside specifically for its flexible housing fund.

“Housing funds aren’t meant to be flexible funds for anything other than housing or homelessness,” she said.

Councilmembers Oscar Gutierrez, Eric Friedman, and Mike Jordan each voiced their support for the city’s immigrant community, with Councilmember Jordan calling it a “human crisis” to see people “hunted like prey” by agents in “urban camouflage.”

“The most disheartening part of it for me is not even knowing who’s who, and who just went out to Walmart and bought a vest that day and is out there trying to be a Proud Boy and acting on behalf of the federal government,” Jordan said.

In a 5-1 decision, with Councilmember Santamaria abstaining from the vote, the council agreed to go forward with the plan to allocate $500,000 from the flexible housing fund to immigrant support services, with the agreement that the city’s Finance Committee will meet in October to figure out how to replenish those funds.

The council unanimously agreed to update its legislative platform to join the ACLU lawsuit, and city staff will look into adding a letter in support of the bipartisan Dignity Act of 2025 for immigration reform. Additionally, the city adopted a resolution condemning aggressive immigration enforcement, and reaffirmed plans to continue meeting with nonprofit representatives and partner with county agencies to support immigrant families.