Community Members Demand Santa Barbara City College Protect Students from ICE

More than a dozen immigrant rights advocates, community organizers, and Rapid Response Volunteers showed up to Santa Barbara City College’s Board of Trustees meeting on December 18 to voice their concerns about the school administration’s lack of response to recent incidents of federal immigration enforcement on or near the campus.

The group took turns speaking during the public comment portion of the hearing, blasting the board with criticism for what one 805 UndocuFund volunteer called “a pattern of institutional failure” that impacts hundreds of undocumented and mixed-status students.

The 805 UndocuFund’s Rapid Response Network operates a 24/7 hotline to check on potential federal immigration enforcement activity on the Central Coast. Since November 23, the hotline has reported multiple incidents at the SBCC campus, all of which occurred without any prior notification from SBCC officials.

Just after 7 a.m. on November 23, campus safety staff reported masked agents in six unmarked vehicles stationed near the MacDougall Administration Building. The agents were parked for about 15 minutes before heading into the surrounding areas, where they made multiple arrests, including one SBCC student, according to Rapid Response volunteers.

On December 10, SBCC’s Executive Director of Public Affairs and Communications Jordan Killebrew sent out a campus-wide email blast in the afternoon to notify the community that the Department of Homeland Security had been on campus for a “scheduled meeting with Antioch University” earlier that day.

Then on December 11, a convoy of at least eight vehicles — reportedly with the FBI and ICE — was spotted using SBCC’s West Campus parking lot as a staging ground before conducting an operation in the nearby Westside neighborhood. SBCC officials sent out an alert at about 7 p.m., nearly an hour after the federal agents were first spotted on campus.

Cesar Vasquez, 805 UndocuFund Rapid Response organizer, has been on the ground to witness numerous ICE operations on the Central Coast. He asked the SBCC Board of Trustees to do more to protect students, some of whom, he said, were calling into the hotline huddled in fear on December 11.

“During the raid, our operators had to listen to countless calls of students being afraid of leaving the library because they were afraid of being taken by these agents, because they knew the campus and their leaders would do nothing for them,” he said. “You all did nothing for over an hour.”

Some speakers held signs with messages written by undocumented students and community members who did not feel comfortable coming to campus and speaking in person. Leslie Marin-Juarez, 805 UndocuFund Network Coordinator, said that many students have been “forced into silence,” because speaking out can put them at risk of being targeted. “Silence has become their only form of protection,” she said.

Marin-Juarez asked boardmembers not to be guided by the “unspoken fear” of losing federal funding for standing up against the federal government.

“Please understand this: Your lack of response will cost you more than that,” she said. “When students do not feel safe, they are not going to enroll; when families do not trust your campus, they will not send their children here…. Inaction has a cost.”

While there was no scheduled item on the agenda to allow the board to discuss the issue in depth, SBCC Board President Jonathan Abboud made a brief statement thanking the speakers for coming in and voicing their concerns.

“We’re still very concerned about the situation, and we take it very seriously,” Abboud said. “This is fascism, what’s happening — people being kidnapped off the streets — and we don’t stand for it. We’re committed to continuously improving our processes. We’re not perfect, and we need to do better.”

Abboud said that SBCC administrative staff were already working to give the board a full report on the school’s existing resources and current policies regarding immigration in January. SBCC has also scheduled a meeting with 805 UndocuFund Executive Director Primitiva Hernandez and her team early in the New Year.

Click here to read SBCC’s complete statement regarding federal enforcement on campus.