ICE impacts Ventura
Introduction
In early 2025, federal immigration enforcement actions intensified across California. In Ventura County, a series of federal immigration raids targeted agricultural workers, leading to over 200 detentions. The raids are a result of President Donald Trump’s objective of reaching 3,000 undocumented immigrant arrests per day, according to the American Immigration Council. Trump’s deportation policy focuses on rapidly deporting undocumented individuals through expedited removal powers and increasing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] arrests within the country.
As reported by the International Organization for Immigration, “each year, thousands of people leave their homes in Latin America, the Caribbean and other regions in an effort to secure futures that have become practically unattainable in their countries of origin.” Since January 2025, following Trump’s executive orders on deportations, nearly 200,000 undocumented individuals have been transferred to out-of-country facilities, some not returning to their country of origin.
The Center for Migration Studies reported that mass deportations have been linked to increased family instability, housing insecurity, and mental health challenges, particularly for children in mixed-status households, or households where at least one member is an undocumented immigrant, and at least one other member holds legal status. On Jan. 21, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden Department of Homeland Security policy that limited ICE actions near or in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and places of worship.
Current Immigration Process and Policies
The U.S. Department of State lists 32 types of visas that serve different purposes for immigrating to the U.S. A visa is an official document or endorsement that allows a foreign person to enter and stay in the country for a specified purpose and temporary time period. The steps to applying for a visa include submitting a petition, processing with the National Visa Center, paying fees, submitting financial documents, completing applications and attending a visa interview.
To be an undocumented immigrant means to be a non-U.S. citizen residing in the U.S. without documentation authorizing their stay. A Permanent Resident Card, commonly known as a Green Card, is a document that grants non-U.S. citizens the right to permanently work and live in the U.S. Anyone in the U.S. who is not a U.S. citizen, including visa holders and green card holders, can be subject to deportation proceedings under certain circumstances such as if they are convicted of federal, local or state offenses. Green Card holders can apply for citizenship once they have had a Green Card for at least five years.
According to the White House website, Trump’s 2024 campaign promises to “launch the largest deportation effort in American history.” Part of his effort includes increasing funding towards immigration enforcement programs. PBS News reported that the Trump Administration has outlined plans to hire 10,000 more ICE agents by the end of the year.
On March 15 of last year, Trump invoked the “Alien Enemies Act,” a wartime act initially passed in 1798. This mandates a wall to be built on the Mexican Border, removes the right to asylum and suspends the entry of aliens through the southern border.
The Pew Research Center reported that “as of June 2025, 51.9 million immigrants lived in the U.S., making up 15.4% of the nation’s population. This was down from January, when there were a record 53.3 million immigrants in the U.S., accounting for 15.8% of the country’s population.” Trump’s immigration orders rescind all prior policies regarding removal priorities. The Trump Administration has reported 350 thousand deportations since Trump’s inauguration. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Immigration [TRAC] reported that there are 58,766 people being held in ICE detention and that 41,589, or 70.8%, of those in detention have no criminal conviction, as of Sept. 7.
Supreme Court Injunction
On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court removed a Los Angeles federal judge’s injunction, a court-ordered pause, on the case Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo that prevented ICE from conducting detective stops based on factors like race. The previous ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong stated that “[ICE’s] roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment.” The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, including the seizure of a person without a warrant based on probable cause, the likelihood that a crime has been committed.
The Central District of California court’s injunction created a temporary restraining order that prevented ICE agents in the Central District of California from questioning people on four factors: speaking Spanish, one’s presumed ethnicity or race, one’s job and one’s presence at locations like bus stops and day laborer pickup sites. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction of the district court. The Supreme Court removed the injunction while the case was further litigated and its merits were examined, and did not explain its decision to grant the stay.
Meanwhile, the stay on this federal ruling means it will not go into effect until the case is decided at the district court.
CVUSD
Within the Conejo Valley Unified School District [CVUSD], concerns regarding ICE in schools have been raised by community members during school board meetings. CVUSD Board of Trustees member, Bill Gorback, feels that school should be a safe place for students, and the threat of ICE has taken away that sense of stability. “Every one of our people is a person beyond their title of student, and they have lives,” Gorback said.
Finn Kerns, CVUSD Student Trustee, expressed concern over the toll ICE’s intensified actions are taking on the community. “This is not normal for people that I’ve spoken to. It’s not normal that there are people having their doors banged on, people just out of thin air, being arrested,” Kerns said. “If you have undocumented parents, undocumented immigrants in your family, you don’t know what’s going to happen if you come to school,” Kerns said.
After the increase in deportation rates in Ventura County, CVUSD has implemented procedures to prevent ICE from obtaining information about students. Stephen Lepire, NPHS Principal, detailed the procedure that NPHS follows. “[ICE] is not allowed to come on campus and just walk around campus and start talking to kids,” Lepire said. “The school district and the school sites do not cooperate with ICE.”
Gorback believes that the emphasis of ICE is no longer placed on deporting undocumented immigrants, but on the numbers and filling a quota. “They advertised on getting rid of criminals. Now, the President’s top assistant is saying that we want to arrest 3,000 people a month. […] It’s like you have a mouse in the house, and they’re throwing blankets down on the entire floor of the whole house,” Gorback said.
Local Impact
*In the interest of protecting the identities of some sources, pseudonyms are indicated by an asterisk
805 UndocuFund is a 501 c(3) nonprofit organization focused on supporting immigrant families in the 805 area code, which encompasses most of Santa Barbara County, Ventura County, and San Luis Obispo County. 805 UndocuFund was originally founded to support people who lost their livelihoods in the 2018 Thomas Fire and Montecito mudslide and continues to provide support to undocumented people in times of emergency. They run the 805 Rapid Response Network, which provides resources to undocumented people facing ICE actions. Other than 805 UndocuFund, there are several organizations in Ventura County that aim to protect immigrants in the community, including VC Defensa, ICE Out of Ventura and 805 Immigrant Coalition.
Cesar Vasquez, 805 UndocuFund’s rapid response organizer for North County Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, has been protesting since he was 12 years old, supporting different campaigns. “[I was advocating for] women’s rights to education, environmental protection, [gun regulation] and field worker pay. Now, I’m spending my time advocating for the community at risk. Both of my parents are field workers. They’re from Mexico, so the struggle is very personal for me,” Vasquez said.
Now at 17 years old, Vasquez has observed and encountered ICE through his work. “There’s been a time in Santa Maria, the ICE agents tell each other and tell the other volunteers that I’m a gangster. They’ve had their hands on their weapons when speaking to me quite a few times. […] There’s just a fear circulating through the blood of a lot of community members,” Vasquez said.
In the Thousand Oaks community, Sally Hibbitts volunteers for the 805 Rapid Response Network as a responder. Hibbitts and other volunteers are connected through a subgroup of the network, aiming to protect students from ICE actions. “We have active patrols that are occurring at the schools, including neighboring high schools, middle schools and some of the more endangered or vulnerable middle [and] elementary schools,” Hibbitts said
A former CVUSD student, Julia Jones*, is a class of 2025 graduate and wrote a statement that Hibbitts read to the Thousand Oaks City Council about the ICE raids in her community at the beginning of June 2025. “Friday, they were just in the area. Then on Saturday, they actually came into my neighborhood and took people away: some gardeners, some women who were waiting to get picked up to clean houses on the corners. So it was this pattern of every Saturday we were thinking that they’re coming,” Jones said.
805 UndocuFund and similar organizations have been protesting and sharing individual stories on social media and at city hall meetings. Erika Perez, a firefighter with the Fresno Fire Department, had both of her parents deported by ICE. Perez spoke about her mother’s deportation at the Thousand Oaks City Council meeting on June 24. “I hope that people open their eyes and see [that] families [are being torn] apart. No matter how much therapy I go through, I can never forget 2011 when my dad was deported. I can’t get over the fact that my mom was deported and taken from me,” Perez said.
As a senior in high school in 2011, Perez answered the door to ICE agents. “They tricked me. They said, ‘Hey, we’re looking for this person.’ Me, innocent, didn’t think anything of it and just let them in, and then they finally told me, ‘We’re here for your mom and dad,’” Perez said.
Her mother stayed while her father was deported. At the time, the Obama Administration allowed one parent to remain in the country. Perez’s mother had lived in the U.S. for 35 years before being detained in June at the Camarillo detention center. She was later transferred to the Los Angeles federal building. “She loved this country like she loves her country as her own. And it’s sad the way that she was mistreated in the [Los Angeles] detention center, where […] people would start hallucinating because they weren’t getting a proper meal. My mom got thrown a pair of pants to use as a sweater. When they go to the bathroom, there’s a camera watching them from both sides. There’s no privacy,” Perez said.
Many other families are experiencing situations similar to Perez’s. “We’ve been able to connect with numerous families. A little under 800 families that we know of have been separated across the Central Coast. […] I’ve been speaking with so many families, and now, a lot of them are questioning which way is home because they’re so scared to be in Mexico or their country of origin. But in a lot of ways, this country has become the exact country they were running from,” Vasquez said.
Conclusion
Currently, organizations such as the Immigrant Legal Resource Center [ILRC] aim to improve immigration law and policy, expand the capacity of legal service providers and advance immigrant rights. Grisel Ruiz, Senior Managing Attorney with the ILRC, has been working in immigration law for over 15 years. “I think the brutality of what we’re seeing [is] just really intense. It’s also very different from [the past]. This is the first time that I’ve practiced as an attorney where the rule of law seems to be completely disregarded,” Ruiz said.
TRAC has reported that there have been 505,599 immigration court cases so far in 2025. The increase in ICE enforcement across California is contributing to the ongoing legal and social developments in U.S. immigration policies, which have impacted both members of the Thousand Oaks community and the surrounding counties. “I think that being an ally is so important right now. We’re living in a time where so many people are so divided by their politics. I think that the most important thing to do right now is to understand why people are struggling and why people are fighting,” Vasquez said.
