Quick Take
The Watsonville Police Department has on eight occasions this year received courtesy notifications from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers that they are operating within city limits, according to records provided by the department.
On eight separate occasions since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has sent courtesy notifications to the Watsonville Police Department about immigration enforcement being conducted within city limits, according to records provided by Watsonville police.
The earliest notification the department received from ICE officials was in early March and the most recent notification was on June 19. (Click here to jump to the incident reports.)
Incident report filings from May 27 indicated immigration officers conducted enforcement near Via Ventana Court and Porta Vista Court, a residential area a few blocks away from a shopping center. On the same day, grassroots organization Your Allied Rapid Response confirmed the arrest of a Watsonville resident outside their home, but it’s unclear whether the documents provided by the police department reflect the arrest.
This was the only call to Watsonville police that Lookout was able to connect to a publicly reported arrest, and information on a person involved from the incident was redacted from the documents released by Watsonville police. Most courtesy calls to the department were related to surveillance, and none indicated that ICE had conducted any large-scale raids.
Lookout filed public records requests with all five law enforcement agencies in Santa Cruz County — the county sheriff’s office and the police departments of Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Scotts Valley and Capitola — for details of any courtesy calls they had received from ICE between Jan. 20 and June 25. ICE spokesperson Richard Beam previously told Lookout that notifying local law enforcement when immigration agents will be operating within their respective jurisdictions is standard practice for the agency.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office and Capitola and Scotts Valley police departments said they did not have any records indicating their departments had received any calls from immigration officials about enforcement operations. The Santa Cruz Police Department has not responded to Lookout’s public records request.
Courtesy notifications are not foreign to the Watsonville Police Department, Chief Jorge Zamora said in an interview. He added that ICE isn’t the only federal law enforcement agency that makes these types of calls when operating within city limits.
When the department receives a call from ICE saying its agents are planning to work in Watsonville, that information is then shared internally within the department, Zamora said. “We just send it to all of our patrol officers, and usually the patrol supervisor will notify me, and then I will notify the city manager,” he said.
The notifications are made for safety purposes, said Zamora. If the department ends up receiving calls from concerned citizens about armed people with police gear, officers will at least know that those are real law enforcement agents, not people posing as them, he said.
If there is an emergency or an arrest becomes violent, Zamora said, the department will know where to go and will be able to respond more quickly. “If there’s a physical altercation between federal agents and somebody from the community, the faster we get there, the less likely it is for either party to get hurt,” he said. “So, if we can interrupt that, that’s the goal, and that’s how people are kept safe.”
Watsonville police are not provided with any additional information about the work federal officers are doing in the community, said Zamora. “They’ll usually just tell us that they’ve cleared their location, or that they’ve left the city,” he said.
Zamora added that federal agencies, such as ICE, don’t always give the police department courtesy calls before operating within city limits. It’s better to receive a notification from federal law enforcement agencies because it puts the department in the best position if an issue arises, he said.
In most of the documents released to Lookout, Watsonville police explicitly state that ICE will be conducting enforcement within city limits. The reports also roughly indicate the neighborhoods where immigration officials are operating. A report from May 27 reads, “From now until 10:30 ICE will be doing enforcement in unmarked vehicles, will be in plain clothes and will be armed.”
The reports also include the make and color of the vehicles being used by ICE agents. Some reports indicate that ICE agents are conducting surveillance for a certain period of time, and Watsonville police will receive a call once agents are done for the day.
The eight reports also indicate that immigration officials tend to conduct enforcement primarily in the mornings, and usually finish operations by noon at the latest. There is no trend in locations being targeted or “patrolled” by ICE, and officers are working in various areas throughout Watsonville, according to WPD records.
Addresses of exact locations targeted by immigration officials were redacted from records provided by the Watsonville police. The department also redacted phone numbers in the reports.
Earlier this year, Beam told Lookout that when ICE conducts arrests, it’s not random. There’s a lot of research that goes into investigating the person officers are targeting, which includes verifying if the person has legal status, he said. From there, officials determine whether the individual is “eligible to be removed” from the United States before getting a final approval from an immigration judge.
“We know who we’re looking for before we even exit a vehicle to try to arrest somebody,” said Beam.
While other police departments in California have released statements confirming ICE activity after an arrest has been made, neither Watsonville police nor Santa Cruz police has done so.
Initially, Zamora said it didn’t seem like a bad idea for the department to release a statement following an arrest and clarify that there was no involvement from local officers. But he’s come to believe that putting out those statements will only create more fear in the community: “What purpose is it going to serve by telling folks ICE was here and now they’re gone?”
Last month, Watsonville businesses and flea markets saw a decline in customers as immigration raids escalated in Southern California. Business owners told Lookout that they believe the sharp decline in sales is because people are scared of going out in public.
Zamora said he has to be cautious, too, because he doesn’t want his officers to be associated with cooperating with immigration officials. “The moment we start calling ICE and asking questions, and putting information out,” he said, “that can easily get twisted into that we’re working with ICE.”
The main concern for Zamora, who will be retiring from law enforcement at the end of August, is that he doesn’t want the department’s role in the Watsonville community to be misrepresented. He emphasized that Watsonville police do not enforce immigration laws nor do they cooperate with ICE on enforcement operations.
“We are not an immigration entity. We are not arresting people for civil warrants, we don’t go out and do that,” Zamora said. “If I wanted to do that, I would have applied to be an ICE agent. But to work for immigration, that’s not our goal and it never has been.”
ICE courtesy calls to Watsonville Police Department
Date: March 1
Start time: 7:25 p.m. | End time: 7:26 p.m.
Location: 100 Elm St. / 100 Riverside Dr.
Summary of police comments: None
Date: May 7
Start time: 5:21 a.m. | End time: 9:51 a.m.
Location: 800 California St. and 1 Mohovy St.
Summary of police comments: At 5:20 a.m. agents notified police of five plain-clothed ICE officers wearing tactical vests and badges driving gray/silver Dodge Caravan, black Nissan Murano and blue Ford F150.
Date: May 19
Start time: 5:22 a.m. | End time: 7:03 a.m.
Location: 800 California St. and 1 Mohovy St
Summary of police comments: At 5:22 a.m. agents notified police that ICE was conducting surveillance and would call back when finished. Officers were in four vehicles: a silver Dodge Caravan, black Nissan Murano, a black Nissan Altima and a blue Hyundai Tucson. At 7:02 a.m., the agents called back to say “all done.”
Date: May 21
Start time: 5:17 a.m. | End time: 9:16 a.m.
Location: Locust and Walker streets
Summary of police comments: ICE called to say five agents would be conducting enforcement in a gray/silver Dodge Caravan, black Nissan Murano, black Nissan Maxima and blue-gray Hyundai Tucson. They told police they would be at the address until 9 a.m. and would call once finished. At 9:15 a.m., they called to say they were done.
Date: May 27
Start time: 5:25 a.m. | End time: 10:51 a.m.
Location: Locust and Walker streets
Summary of police comments: Shortly before 5:30 a.m. ICE agents called to say they would be doing enforcement in unmarked vehicles until 10:30 a.m. Officers were wearing plain clothes and were armed. They were driving a black Hyundai Sonata, a white Hyundai Sonata, a dark gray Hyundai Sonata and two dark gray Jeep Grand Cherokees. At 10:51 a.m. they called to say they were done for the day.
Date: May 27
Start time: 6:42 a.m. | End time: 11:43 a.m.
Location: 1 Via Ventana Ct. and 1 Porta Vista Ct.
Summary of police comments: At 6:39 a.m. ICE agents called to say seven officers were en route to a location in the Seaview Ranch area of Watsonville with a 10-15-minute ETA and didn’t need police assistance. At 11:11 a.m., they called back to say they were done.
Date: June 19
Start time: 5:24 a.m. | End time: 1:06 p.m.
Location: 300 East Lake Ave. and 200 Center St.
Summary of police comments: At 5:24 a.m., ICE called Watsonville police to report officers driving a Ford 4×4, white Chevrolet Tahoe, blue Ford Fusion and black Chevrolet Silverado. “Have left,” Watsonville police reported at 1:06 p.m.
Date: June 19
Start time: 5:44 a.m. | End time: 9:04 a.m.
Location: Marchant and Union streets
Summary of police comments: ICE agents called at 5:44 a.m. to report that they were conducting enforcement until 10 a.m. in three dark SUVs. At 9:04 a.m., they called back to say they were finished.
ICE courtesy call records released by Watsonville police
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