Residents impacted by ICE raids in the heart of Orange County – where Latinos make up an overwhelming majority of the county’s only sanctuary city – are slated to get some aid from the City of Santa Ana.
It’s a relief fund that almost didn’t happen as city council members spent over an hour debating where to pull the money from – considering places like 36 funded police vacancies, city events, council members discretionary funds, city reserves or the council’s travel budget.
City reserves are even in play, with Councilman David Penaloza publicity asking about using some of the city’s $74 million reserves to fund a $1 million aid program.
City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said the council would need to hold a series of votes before the rainy day fund could be touched.
In the end, city council members voted unanimously at their Tuesday meeting to start a $100,000 temporary financial aid fund with money pulled from 10% of the city’s events budget to help immigrant families impacted by the visible uptick of ICE raids in Santa Ana.
“A 10% cut, while not going to be funding this at the full amount that some of my colleagues would want, would allow us to start a program,” said Thai Viet Phan, who made the successful motion at Tuesday’s meeting to use 10% of the city events budget.
The council also directed staff to come back within three months with a progress report about the fund and to discuss other possible funding.
The proposal came at the 11th hour after a couple of different suggestions for funding the program failed with Mayor Valerie Amezcua calling the debate over where the funding should come from “political theater.”
Initially, Amezcua recommended cancelling all city events for the fiscal year and
using the entirety of their funding – roughly $1 million – to help residents impacted by ICE raids pay rent & utilities, buy food and get legal assistance.
“We are currently in a crisis,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting about the ICE raids.
“I do not want to have any large events where they can come and harm or take our families and just do what they’ve been doing,” she continued, adding her proposal was about the needs of the residents.
But several council members including Johnathan Hernandez pushed back on canceling all city events arguing they should offer both financial support and cultural celebrations at this time.
He did support canceling the Fourth of July event due to current concerns in the community about the ICE raids.
Instead, Hernandez suggested they use the money budgeted to fill the 36 funded police vacancies to support families and reexamine the vacancies in six months.
“You can come back at the mid-year budget, and then we can assess how we can then address those vacancies,” he said. “I’m not going to be supportive of defunding cultural events in the brownest city in Orange County, and making the public choose between celebrating our culture or giving mutual aid. We should be doing both.”
Amezcua, whose reelection campaign last year received nearly $100,000 from the police union, pushed back on the idea, accusing Hernandez of trying to defund the police.
The mayor said she’s against reallocating money from the police department, adding that she has given up a taxpayer-funded trip to Mexico at this time and suggesting they use the council’s travel budget towards the immigration fund.
“We have a council member up here going to the Harvard Kennedy School for $18,000,” said Amezcua, who mentioned the Harvard trip three times at the meeting without naming who was attending.
“To say that we’re going to take it from our police department is reckless.”
City Manager Alvaro Nuñez later revealed Councilwoman Jessie Lopez is going to Harvard after Penaloza questioned who the mayor was referring to throughout the meeting.
Nuñez also said council members have taken trips to Harvard in the past. Amezcua’s bio on the city website notes she got a certificate from Harvard in Family Engagement in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education but does not specify if it was paid for by the city or when she attended.
Amezcua, who previously served on the Santa Ana Unified School Board, said in a Wednesday text message she got the certificate before she was on the city council.
In a Wednesday call, Lopez clarified the money for her training at Harvard came from last year’s budget and said the opportunity was non-refundable and if cancelled the city would still incur the nearly $20,000 cost.
She also supported using the council’s travel budget for the aid fund Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, Hernandez said his suggestion was not about defunding the police but having the department – which is slated to receive about $161 million in general fund discretionary dollars – support the community.
“It’s time that they use your money to help your family, and it’s time that the politicians who are funded by them do the same. Put that police department money to work in this neighborhood. If you see this as defunding the police you’re not truly focused on your neighbors, and you’re not truly focused on a solution,” he said.
“What you’re doing up here is politics.”
The police union spent over $50,000 against Hernandez’s reelection campaign last year.
Amezcua then called to withdraw her request for the aid program completely, getting support from Councilman Phil Bacerra, another council member supported by the police union.
“I’m not going to take the bait of some folks up here to start playing the divisive politics when it comes to talking about whether we’re going to defund the police or not, because the item that was before us was to help our community,” he said, adding that this was an effort to sabotage the proposal because it was suggested by the mayor.
Bacerra, who received over $82,000 in support from the police union in his 2022 city council campaign, argued officials don’t know if ICE will show up to these city events or not.
“I have been supported by police, and I’m proud of that, and I support the police,” Bacerra said.
Lopez tried easing rising tensions.
“We don’t need to meet each other with this hostility right now. We need to find a solution to give to our constituents,” she said.
Penaloza suggested looking at using council members discretionary spending to fund the aid program if his colleague weren’t in favor of pulling money from city events.
Meanwhile, immigrant advocacy groups like the Orange County Rapid Response Network have already established an independent aid network through a series of partnerships with other community organizations.
[Read: ICE Raids Spur Aid Network in Orange County].
In Anaheim, city officials rolled out a page on the city’s website detailing immigrant rights, a list of organizations that can help and has city grants for Anaheim families impacted by the immigration sweeps.
[Read: Anaheim Rolls Out Aid Program for Residents Impacted by ICE Raids]
Unmasking ICE & Other Proposals
The aid is a part of different proposals Santa Ana officials considered at the meeting related to the immigration crackdown after residents showed up in force to city hall last month demanding better leadership and support from city council members amid the sweeps, with many demanding the mayor resign.
[Read: Santa Ana to Support Immigrants; Responds to ICE Raids After Demands for Mayor to Resign]
Residents and activists have been actively pushing Santa Ana City Council members to do more for the city that’s seen numerous protests against the deportation raids over the past few weeks.
[Read: Orange County Hits the Streets, Rails Against ICE Sweeps]
Lopez also pushed city officials to research a potential city ordinance that would mandate all law enforcement officers in the city to clearly display identification and a badge, with exceptions for undercover officers.
Council members also voted unanimously to request information from ICE about who’s getting caught up in raids and where people are being sent.
They also adopted a resolution calling on Orange County’s Congressional delegation to push for the removal of ICE and the National Guard from Santa Ana.
Orange County’s Disappeared
President Donald Trump and his top administrators have repeatedly said the ICE raids are focused on deporting violent criminals – something scores of residents and community organizers dispute, pointing to the recent wave of people arrested while at work.
Department of Homeland Security officials told Voice of OC that the immigration raids are carefully planned and targeted.
“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted. We do our due diligence. We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement officers are trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability,” reads an email from the department.
Yet a Voice of OC review of ICE detention center data in California shows an overwhelming majority of the 3,199 people detained aren’t classified as a threat by federal immigration officials.
Roughly 84% of those people – 2,698 detainees – are classified as “No Ice Threat Level.”
Some Republican elected officials have also noticed the trend.
A contingent of six Republican state legislators say the dragnet approach of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents is hurting the local economy.
In a June 27 letter from State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares to Trump, the Republican lawmakers urged him to focus the deportation efforts on criminals.
The letter was also signed by Assemblywomen Laurie Davies and Diane Dixon – part of Orange County’s state Republican delegation.
“Unfortunately, the recent ICE workplace raids on farms, at construction sites, and in restaurants and hotels, have led to unintended consequences that are harming the communities we represent and the businesses that employ our constituents,” reads the letter.
“We respectfully ask you to focus deportations on criminals, and to support legal immigration and visa policies that will build a strong economy, secure our borders, and protect our communities.”
[Read: Two OC Republican State Legislators Join Effort to Refocus ICE on Criminals]
A Violent Arrest Sparks a Vigil
On Friday, a vigil was held for 48-year-old landscaper Narciso Barranco, who was violently arrested by federal officials on June 21 when he was trimming the lawn of the IHop on Edinger Avenue and Ritchey Avenue in Santa Ana.
Federal officials allege he tried assaulting a federal agent with his weedwacker, but his son, Alejandro Barranco disputes that claim.
“Nowhere in the video is the weedwacker near the agents,” US Marine Corps veteran Alejandro Barranco told Voice of OC last week.
Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento told a crowd of roughly 100 people at Friday night’s vigil that it’s unjust that people like Narciso Barranco, who doesn’t have a criminal record, are getting caught up in the deportation sweeps.
He was also critical of people getting arrested at their immigration court check-ins.
“As a lawyer, the first thing I tell my clients – never miss a hearing, never miss an appointment,” Sarmiento said on Friday. “Today, I can’t tell them that in all honesty that they’ll leave their hearing intact and that they’ll be able to go back home to their families.”
Alejandro Barranco said many of the people being caught up in the deportation sweeps – like his dad – aren’t criminals.
“They’re hard working people with families,” he told the crowd at Friday’s vigil for his father.
Aliya Yousufi, senior policy and advocacy manager at the Council on Islamic-American Relations, railed against the current deportation tactics.
“We have seen story after story of immigrant families torn apart, parents attacked, workers criminalized trying to provide for their loved ones,” Yousufi told the crowd on Friday.
She also compared Trump to some of Egypt’s most brutal pharaohs.
“We have a modern day pharaoh, claiming to be a reformer and spreading corruption in our community.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
Spencer Custodio is the civic editor. You can reach him at scustodio@voiceofoc.org. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio.