According to South Coast activists monitoring ICE enforcement actions on the South Coast, seven ICE vehicles hit Santa Barbara’s Westside and Eastside before 7 a.m. on Sunday, detaining and arresting anywhere from nine to 11 individuals on unspecified charges related to their immigration status.
According to a spokesperson for S.B. Resiste, one of several groups bird-dogging ICE agents on patrol, three early-morning mariachi musicians were apprehended by San Pascual and Mulberry streets. Accounts differ whether they were in the act of serenading fathers — as part of a Mexican immigrant Father’s Day tradition known as “serenata to our father,” according to Katia Trujillo — or merely on the way to doing so. Reportedly the three were taken into custody while another one escaped.
A few blocks away, by San Pascual and Sola streets, a woman who belonged to one of the organizations monitoring ICE actions was reportedly bear-sprayed by an ICE agent who took advantage of an open rear window in her car. One of the spokespeople specified that bear spray had been deployed, not pepper spray.