Santa Cruz County residents share their fears of a national showdown on immigration

The deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles has rattled residents of Santa Cruz County, where many view the military presence as a troubling escalation of the nation’s immigration debate. President Donald Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s opposition has energized local activists and heightened concerns about federal overreach.

In response, organizers in Santa Cruz and Watsonville plan to join hundreds of cities nationwide for “No Kings” protests on Saturday, answering a call to action from activist organization 50501.

To gauge local reaction, Lookout photojournalist Kevin Painchaud hit the streets this week to speak with residents about the L.A. protests, Trump’s military deployment and their fears about similar enforcement actions reaching their community.

The responses paint a portrait of a community wrestling with questions about civil rights and the militarization of immigration enforcement, while searching for meaningful ways to respond.

Thomas Sage Pedersen

Local coach, consultant and business owner

What are your thought on the state of politics in California right now, especially with Trump sending in the National Guard, and now the Marines, to Los Angeles?

I think it was a matter of time based on Trump’s rhetoric and his beliefs and his values, and his positionality as the president in a way that is executive branch-heavy. California has always been kind of like this sore side in his agenda. The question of California exiting the United States is going to be coming up pretty much a lot after this, definitely with the threatening of arresting a governor, which sounds just ridiculous, and sending in the National Guard and ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] into California— it’s a bit scary, if you think about, like authoritarian governments, having force. 

I was thinking about the National Guard the other day, and I always assumed that the National Guard was here to protect us nationally. But then I was reflecting on China and how they have one of the biggest militaries in the world. But part of the reason why that’s not as scary to us is because a lot of their use of military force is on their own people. So now when I see the National Guard now I’m thinking: This is just a militarized arm of the government against the people.

I’m seeing that happen in L.A., which is actually part of why it’s very inspiring, seeing the organizing power in L.A., and seeing how many people are standing up to the United States military, who are coming in and taking people with assault rifles, with guns and pulling families apart just to fulfill some kind of power grab or political agenda. I really don’t think that’s an OK thing to do, and I think it’s scary. It’s a scary phase in our country, and we’re going to have to find ways of fighting against that. 

Do you find or are nervous or scared that this could be directed at you in Santa Cruz? 

Absolutely. Santa Cruz County has been historically segregated. Watsonville has a high Hispanic population in comparison to the rest of the county. And I fear that ICE will come in and we won’t have the ability, or maybe, hopefully we will have the ability to organize against that. 

My hope is that the city and the police force in both those cities, Watsonville and Santa Cruz, and the sheriffs step up in helping their local people, rather than being on the side or stepping back and letting ICE or the National Guard do what they need to do. 

That’s an optimistic perspective because I don’t know if the police will have any will to step in. I hope that we can put differences aside as a community and organize together to help protect these vulnerable people. These are not people who are separate from our community; these are people in our community. I hope we can help organize to be a protector against this national agenda that is based in, I would argue, racist ideology and in authoritarianism and fascism specifically.

Are you involved in a political movement? And would you participate in a protest against this sort of overreach from the authorities?

I would participate. I protest. I’ve been on and off. I’ve had a little bit of a hesitation with protests. But if there was ICE and other folks coming into this community, I would join that movement, and I would at least help the organizers with whatever way I could serve in an authentic and aligned way. 

I would serve whatever that looks like because I think this fight will inevitably spill into our little bubble of Santa Cruz County, and we need to be ready and need to be aware of what’s happening and be able to have lines of communication. But yes, I would participate in whatever way is aligned with me. 

With all the political anxiety and the tension that it creates, how do you find reprieve from that? Is there something that you’re able to do to allow yourself to escape what’s going on? 

Escape, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I definitely have practices when emotions or different things are overwhelming: Like, I’ll sit back and I’ll observe those things and I’ll try not to attach any kind of anything to them. Meditation has been really helpful for me, breath work, to calm my nervous system, so I’m not just in a reactive state all the time, like a fight-or-flight perception all the time. 

I’ve been reading definitely about more personal development work and self-development work because at the end of the day, when we have to organize, we’re going to have to face parts of ourselves. When we’re angry, as everyone knows, we react in different ways. When we’re sad, we react differently. When we’re feeling attacked, we react in different ways. 

For me, one of the best ways that you can be a good organizer and a good activist is to do self-care, which means actually taking care of yourself. That means exercising when you need to, eating healthy, drinking enough water, doing these self-care activities. And yes, then I’ll watch a show on Netflix to ease the tension. I think humor is a powerful tool for change and for alleviating some of that stress. Sometimes you have to laugh at things and just laugh, you know? 

Eva Brunner 

Bookkeeper for small independent nonprofits 

What are your thought on the state of politics in California right now, especially with Trump sending in the National Guard, and now the Marines, to Los Angeles?

I feel like [Trump] is doing this to intimidate us. It’s clear, wrong. L.A. does not need the military there, the National Guard. I didn’t even know about the Marines. He’s intimidating California. He’s intimidating Newsom, and he’s creating a situation where he wants to have an excuse to call in the military.

Do you have anxiety that something like that might occur here in Santa Cruz or in Watsonville? 

I don’t know how to think about Santa Cruz but surely it can happen anywhere. L.A. has a huge community of people who will stand up to ICE. I think Santa Cruz will, too, but we don’t have the same population in terms of numbers. But I can’t imagine people sitting back like nothing is happening.

Do you get involved in protests? 

I have been involved in every protest in Santa Cruz since George Bush was elected, since the war in Iraq. I speak up. I call senators and write letters, write postcards, try to get people out to vote. What are we going to do? Let him destroy our country? I don’t think that’s an option.

How do you turn off the anxiety or angst? 

There is a woman named Jess Craven on Substack. She writes every Sunday, the good news, and I read that every Sunday and that’s super helpful. I read media that not only tells us the horrible things but also the positive changes we make. And also I do something that completely checks me out, like read a good book or have a glass of wine. 

Lydia Napoleone

19-year-old student from Orange County

What are your thought on the state of politics in California right now, especially with Trump sending in the National Guard, and now the Marines, to Los Angeles?

It’s really disheartening because I feel like we’ve just been seeing Trump make more and more obvious power displays that no one really cares about. Well, no one in the positions [of power] necessary cares about it enough to act on it. It’s easy to feel really powerless. 

Do you have anxiety that something like that might occur here in Santa Cruz or in Watsonville? 

That’s a good question because part of me thinks that can genuinely happen anywhere. And it’s arrogant to assume that it’s [only] going to happen in L.A. or in New York and that won’t directly affect me. I think that’s an easy perspective to take, to distance yourself from it. But also, this was happening in L.A. L.A has always been a central point of [where] political and cultural life boil overs. So it would happen in L.A., but that isn’t to say that it wouldn’t happen anywhere else. 

Are you a political person? And would you take part in protests?

Yeah, I would. I know people that are much more outspoken than I am, but I do go to protests when I have the resources to get there. Especially people in my generation, college students, we don’t really have the luxury of not being political anymore. That’s not something we can afford to do. It’s gone from just a [difference of] opinion on how the government money should be spent to questions of actual human rights, which I feel we can’t afford to sit out anymore. It’s gotten so polarized that it has to be a fight, I think.

Do you find yourself getting a lot of anxiety from it? Or have you just been able to keep on with your life?

I will say I stopped watching the news as much because I came from a house where news was on three times a day. Seeing that does foster a sense of anxiety. Being confronted with everything all at once is very scary. It’s paralyzing, almost. So I have made a conscious choice to unplug a little bit from just not spending my time watching biased news sources because that’s when it really gets scary. 

Bonnie Morris

Women’s history lecturer at UC Berkeley

What are your thoughts on the political unrest that’s going on in Los Angeles?

It’s so distressing. I was born in L.A. and my parents took me to peaceful anti-war demonstrations from the time I was 6. I saw firsthand as a first grader how it could escalate into violence, but the intentions initially were First Amendment protest, something immoral. 

I’m completely in support of opposing ICE. The fact that there’s a quota has accelerated raids on graduations in elementary schools and obviously kids under the age of 18, as well as working mothers who lack a criminal record. So I understand the onset of the protest. It’s eminently reasonable. 

I don’t support setting cars on fire, but that would be a tiny percentage of all the people enraged. It makes for devastating television imagery, which allows more conservative politicos to say, “You see, they’re violent offenders,” but you have so many people affected so profoundly by masked, unbadged, offensive, who knows what kind of authorities, and like everyone else, I’ve observed in the tattoos of bare-armed ICE agents Nazi symbolism and other ink, which suggests some of these guys may be recruited from January 6 protesters. So that’s all to say, I don’t like ICE, but I am sorry to see the effort to bring in troops to contain a protest.

Do you feel that the situation in Los Angeles is something that could happen in Santa Cruz or Watsonville?

I don’t think people are going to send the National Guard into a smaller town. And I would imagine they see a community like Watsonville, which is so primarily agricultural workers who are not Anglo, they would probably perceive that as a place they could control or manipulate more readily than the huge sprawling L.A. 

And L.A. has a depth that we don’t have. There’s the coast, but then there’s this huge south central and eastern region where you can have people called in from all directions. And I think the feeling of being overwhelmed is part of what makes L.A., “let’s try the National Guard here.”

There’s also the history of demonstrations that have turned violent in L.A. and a general distaste for California as a bubble of progressive difference, the Left Coast and all that.

For you personally, do you find yourself a political person? Would you take part in the protest? 

I’m a political feminist. I’m active in LGBT writing, archiving, documenting, publishing, advocacy. I’ve gone to a number of demonstrations. I don’t live where I work, so when I’m in Berkeley, a lot of what I’ve observed on campus, I’ve mostly been taking notes as faculty concerned about the safety of my own students. I worry about ICE interrupting enrollment, or the flow of international students to the campus and their funding in the sciences and stuff. I’m pretty watchful at the same time as I show up. 

How do you get rid of any potential anxiety?

It’s a great question. I’m actually writing about that right now. Well, I write in my journal. I’ve been writing in a journal since I was 12, so I have a really wonderful arc of political change in American history over many decades. And I encourage all my students to keep journals, not just to have a record of the time they’re living through to be able to go back and use it as a reference. And also, it is a great way to get anything out of the body at the end of the day, then you don’t carry around the angst into sleep. You can certainly ponder, but I think it’s a great it’s a great outlet.

Sam Altis

Santa Cruz resident

What are your thoughts on Trump calling the National Guard against the protests and now the Marines and threatening to jail Gov. Gavin Newsom?

It feels like a wild overreaction that is pretty unprecedented, from what I can tell, based on how the National Guard has been federalized in the past, based on what I’ve read in the last 24 hours. It seems like a political move that is unjustified based on the action of protesters.

Do you ever see a situation like the one unfolding in Los Angeles happening in Santa Cruz or in Watsonville?

It’s harder to imagine on that scale and that level because I don’t think Santa Cruz would draw the same political attention that Los Angeles would, or even the same attention from Gov. Newsom’s office. I think on a smaller scale, I could see something like that happening. Particularly because the Trump administration has said that they’re going to potentially start looking at agricultural areas, and that’s part of our county and part of our ecosystem and our economy. I can’t imagine it escalating, I hope, to the point that the reaction that we saw out of the Trump administration and Los Angeles, but I can certainly see protests happening. And if this is a pattern that the administration is going to use, then I suppose it could happen here. 

Are you a political person and do you protest?

I’m a political person. I certainly lean on the liberal side of things. I would take part in protests, depending on what it was about and the nature. I have in the past as well. I run a local nonprofit so it affects our work. Our nonprofit is not political, but when something is affecting folks, I will personally take action, not as a representative of that organization necessarily, but just as a concerned citizen.

Has the political unrest brought any anxiety to you personally?

Yes and no. I would say not as much as the political unrest from the protester side of things, but more the government’s response. But it’s another event in a series of very alarming tendencies from what seems to be an autocratic-leaning leader, and it certainly brought me stress. 

It’s also been so pervasive that it’s been hard to pay attention to. If anything, this probably is a little more in my face and in everyone’s face in some ways, and it’s hard to ignore. And certainly seeing Marines deployed in Southern California when we have U.S. citizens protesting like that’s not really what I imagine our U.S. military being pointed towards. It’s our own citizens. And that’s incredibly alarming.

How do you get rid of the anxiety?

I focus on what I can do. I work in kind of the helping sector, and so I work with folks who are affected by this. I try to stay informed. At this juncture, it’s tough, there’s lots of processing with friends and venting and those sort of things. I don’t have a great solution or a great medication for what ails me.

Do you read books or do anything special?

I’ll definitely decompress, and I try to unplug from things. I’ve spent two of the last three weekends traveling to visit friends, and it still comes up, but it’s sort of meant to be a bit of an escape from this present reality.

Do you find that it’s easy to find an escape, or has it been harder to do in Santa Cruz?

I think in some ways it’s easy, because I know Santa Cruz isn’t a monolith but it’s not hard to find people who are outraged or upset by what’s going on at our federal government’s level. That can also skew the opposite direction, where people can get so upset, like we can kind of work ourselves up into an emotionally unhealthy frenzy. In that sense, maybe it’s harder to find some of that respite when everyone is always upset, for good reason, it can be tricky to find pockets of calm.

— Hillary Ojeda and William S. Woodhams contributed to this report.

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