According to South Coast activists monitoring ICE enforcement actions on the South Coast, seven ICE vehicles hit Santa Barbara’s Westside and Eastside before 7 a.m. on Sunday, detaining and arresting anywhere from nine to 11 individuals on unspecified charges related to their immigration status.
According to a spokesperson for S.B. Resiste, one of several groups bird-dogging ICE agents on patrol, three early-morning mariachi musicians were apprehended by San Pascual and Mulberry streets. Accounts differ whether they were in the act of serenading fathers — as part of a Mexican immigrant Father’s Day tradition known as “serenata to our father,” according to Katia Trujillo — or merely on the way to doing so. Reportedly the three were taken into custody while another one escaped.
A few blocks away, by San Pascual and Sola streets, a woman who belonged to one of the organizations monitoring ICE actions was reportedly bear-sprayed by an ICE agent who took advantage of an open rear window in her car. One of the spokespeople specified that bear spray had been deployed, not pepper spray.
“She’s doing pretty good,” the spokesperson said of the woman sprayed. “She’s tough.”
According to these reports, ICE agents also apprehended a U.S. citizen in the Father’s Day action, but released him at a hospital in Oxnard, where he was treated for unspecified injuries after it reportedly became apparent that he was a U.S. citizen.
According to the reports, ICE vehicles hit speeds of 80 miles an hour barreling down San Andres Street on their way to the Mission Street off-ramp to Highway 101 in the early morning hours. The ICE agents allegedly then performed donuts with their vehicles under the freeway overpass for about 15 minutes. According to the monitors who were following after them, the agents entered the freeway at speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour.
“We did not get any notification ICE was in town. We didn’t have any calls for service from 1 a.m. on that were remotely close to what was being alleged on the Westside,” stated Santa Barbara Police Chief Kelly Gordon. “Of course that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, just that we didn’t get notified by ICE or the community.”
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