Panetta, local officials and nonprofit leaders working together to protect county residents from immigration enforcement impacts

Local officials and nonprofit leaders say they are working together to protect Santa Cruz County’s most vulnerable residents from immigration raids following federal agents’ violent enforcement actions in Minneapolis. 

Numerous officials, including Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark and County Supervisor Felipe Hernandez, joined Rep. Jimmy Panetta, whose congressional district represents a vast majority of the county, on Thursday afternoon in Live Oak to share how they are working to ensure immigrant residents feel safe amid intensifying enforcement efforts by the Trump administration. 

While politicians in Washington, D.C., work on a stopgap measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks and negotiate over how to rein in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents, Panetta said, the focus locally is to “do everything we can to prevent” federal agents from doing their work here. 

If a federal agent were to hurt a protester here, like what happened in Minneapolis, Clark said local prosecutors would investigate. District Attorney Jeff Rosell promised to use his office’s authority to prosecute any violations of state or federal laws. 

“If someone deserves to be prosecuted, we will work on that to the best of our abilities,” Rosell said. 

Clark said his deputies and other local law enforcement do not enforce immigration laws, so residents should trust local police and sheriff’s deputies to focus their efforts on other criminal laws. “That separation happens because we have to be coordinated with our community, and we have to work with them to fix [local] issues,” he said. 

Additionally, county elected officials are creating a subcommittee to prepare for the potential impacts of immigration enforcement on county residents. The subcommittee, led by Hernandez and fellow supervisor Monica Martinez, will make local policies to help ensure the safety of the community, Hernandez said, together with community partners that work directly with the county’s immigrant communities, such as Watsonville-based Community Action Board and advocacy group Your Allied Rapid Response and the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. 

Hernandez said that following the sighting of ICE agents in Watsonville and the arrest of a resident there earlier this month, people in his district felt scared to leave their homes for work. “We can’t live with this level of fear. We have to do something,” he said.

While Santa Cruz County has not experienced intense immigration enforcement like other parts of the state and country, ICE agents have visited the county at least 30 times since Donald Trump took office last January. 

County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah said federal agents have not tried to make arrests at or near schools in the county. “We will immediately notify our community if that is to change,” he said. 

Sabbah added that schools do not collect information about students’ or families’  immigration status and will not allow immigration officials to enter any campus with a warrant signed by a judge. Schools also have established protocols for responding to any attempted immigration enforcement nearby. 

Panetta also called for the removal of Stephen Miller, a political adviser in the Trump administration, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He said the way immigration agents are handling enforcement is the problem and called for better training for agents. 

“We come together. We work together, we partner together to protect not just our most vulnerable, but to prepare to protect everybody, everybody in our communities,” said Panetta. 

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