The city has set up a $100,000 fund to assist impacted families with basic expenses like food, rent, and electricity as immigration raids continue to ravage Santa Ana scar washes and Home Depot parking lots, causing anxiety among the 77% Latino community.
The city is in crisis because to continued Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, according to Mayor Valerie Amezcua, who recommended the emergency fund. According to her, Sahuayo, Santa Ana’s sister city in Michoac, Mexico, has donated an extra $50,000 to support the project.
Amezcua stated during Tuesday’s City Council meeting that this is about the needs of our community. We do not want children to lose their home if the breadwinner, either the mother or the father, is removed.
The mayor, who has been called to step down for her quiet during the beginning of President Trump’s immigration raid in Southern California in early June, saw a dramatic change with the idea. More than a hundred irate citizens filled the public comment section of last week’s City Council meeting, many of whom criticized the Santa Ana Police Department’s use of force against protesters and criticized Amezcua for her handling of immigration sweeps and accompanying demonstrations.
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Emotions were running high in Santa Ana on Monday afternoon as roughly 120 protestors gathered outside a federal building next to City Hall.
In order to create a $1 million aid program, Amezcua first suggested removing eight events that the city sponsored: Juneteenth, the Chicano Heritage Festival, the Fourth of July, the Fiestas Patrias, the Noche de Altares, the Tet Festival, the Santa Ana Fun Run, the Summer Movie Series, and the Fourth of July.
We’ve observed that ICE appears at major events in various places. “Our families are being taken by the troops as they go through the parks,” she said. Large gatherings where they could come and hurt or abduct our family are not something I want to host.
However, a number of council members were against the plan, stating that it is crucial to keep honoring the traditions of the town and pointing out that many of these events are months away, when ICE might not be as involved.
Councilmember Jonathan Hernandez stated, “I will not support defunding cultural events in the brownest city in Orange County and forcing the public to choose between celebrating our culture and providing mutual aid.” We ought to be doing both.
Hernandez noted that Santa Ana is the only city in Southern California to conduct a Fiestas Patrias honoring Mexican independence and the only city in the nation to hold a Chicano Heritage Festival honoring the accomplishments of groundbreaking writer Ruben Salazar. Defunding these activities is not, in my opinion, the proper course of action.
The council then got into a contentious one-hour argument about where to find funding to establish the fund.
Hernandez proposed using funds designated for open Santa Ana Police Department posts. But Amezcua resisted, describing his suggestion as irresponsible. Councilman David Penaloza then suggested using the $1 million from the city’s rainy-day fund, but city officials clarified that more meetings and votes would be needed to pull from the reserves.
The council ultimately agreed on a compromise, taking 10% of the money from events sponsored by the city to start a $100,000 emergency fund right away. The motion’s creator, Councilmember Thai Viet Phan, also stated that staff members must provide a report on the fund’s effectiveness and recommendations for expanding its funding within ninety days or less.
Many locals discussed the suffering and grief that ICE raids were still causing to the Santa Ana community during the public comment time.
Our vendors are being taken away, and we have operations going on in our neighborhood Home Depots and car washes. Sandra De Anda, a staffer at the Orange County Rapid Response Network, which assists in tracking immigration raids and connecting impacted families with support, stated, “A lot is happening all the time and our team has never seen this sort of pain and suffering from our Santa Ana residents.”
According to De Anda, she makes a conservative estimate of 20 to 30 detainees per day. I work with a very dedicated group of ICE observers, dispatchers, lawyers, and clergy people, and the majority of us are volunteers, so I can tell you with confidence that, she stated.
In a letter endorsing the fund, Maria Ceja, a Santa Ana native, requested that the city create a respectable and easily accessible procedure for families to obtain assistance.
According to her, it is crucial that the City offer families financial assistance as they deal with life after a loved one has been forcibly removed without cause. We’ve seen that a large number of our abducted neighbors are the main providers for their families. Given the current state of our economy, where prices are rising and salaries are stagnating, this totally destabilizes their households.
Following in the footsteps of neighboring Anaheim, which launched the Anaheim Contigo website last month, Santa Ana’s fund provides emergency assistance grants in collaboration with the Anaheim Community Foundation and offers information to families impacted by immigration enforcement.
At the meeting, council members also approved a resolution urging Orange County members of Congress to support the removal of immigration agents and the National Guard from the city, as well as a motion to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for records related to recent ICE operations in Santa Ana.
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