Santa Barbara residents have joined forces to oppose the detention and deportation of our immigrant neighbors by ICE. In this same spirit, we must act now against anti-immigrant initiatives that harm vulnerable populations — specifically Asian immigrant women workers — under the guise of public safety.
In November 2025, city officials proposed modifications to the Massage Ordinance in the Santa Barbara Municipal Code because massage businesses “may be associated with unlawful activity and pose a threat to the quality of life in the local community" and serve “as a front for human trafficking.” The ordinance contains several insidious components:
Biometric scans of all employees, including reception and administrative staff
Unannounced warrantless inspections by police at any time
Restricting workers’ personal items inside massage businesses
Doubling mandatory training hours from 250 to 500
The proposed ordinance claims to protect the public by framing massage businesses as hubs for dangerous and illegal activity like sex trafficking. Brown University Professor Elena Shih reports that such ordinances disproportionately target and criminalize Asian women massage workers without evidence of a public threat. When questioned on local activity, the Santa Barbara Police Department offered only an anecdotal estimate of “at least a dozen complaints” over several years, failing to substantiate the need for the ordinance.