By Adriana Flores Solis, Feb 18, 2025
Los Angeles County high school students have walked out of classes in protest of the deportation of Latinos happening around the country. There have also been protests in Orange County since early February, particularly in the city of Santa Ana. What was once a Republican-leaning county, has shifted to become more geographically diverse.
Santa Ana, with a 77% Latino population and an estimated 80,000 undocumented residents, is the only sanctuary city in Orange County; nevertheless, many of its residents of different origins live in fear of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts and hide from the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers.
For Jose, a local Santa Ana man who does not want to reveal his last name in fear of ICE, it has been disheartening to be considered a criminal. He has been in the U.S. for decades, established a family, started a business, and has no criminal record.
Jose, who has been undocumented since 1990 when he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, said to The Poly Post despite his citizenship status, he works six days a week and has been paying taxes every year.
“I started a journey from Jalisco, made it through the desert and crossed the border with a group of people at night,” Jose said while looking at the floor. “I hoped that America would provide better job opportunities.”
He said he started working in the landscape business making only $30 a week. After a few years of saving up, he bought a work truck, equipment and started his own freelance landscaping business. When he eventually made enough money to sustain his family, he hired an assistant to go to work with him every day.
“Today I am the gardener for over 35 homes every month,” Jose said. “My clients range from college professors to lawyers.”
Santa Ana has been his home for 35 years, where he met his wife and had his two daughters who are both university graduates.
“In my free time, I enjoy riding an electric bike down the Santa Ana River trail or tending to my home garden,” Jose said.
However, he said, the fear of deportation has always lingered, but now more than ever. Leaving to work in the morning and not coming home to his wife and daughters is something he described as “unfair.”
“It’s tremendous anxiety that you feel,” he said in tears. “Everything you have worked for, everything you have built from the ground up,it can be taken from you in an instant. All we want to do is work.”
With Trump’s executive order for mass deportation of migrants who were called invaders, Jose now fears encountering ICE officers while driving to and from work. He works in predominantly white neighborhoods in Orange County, such as Irvine, Tustin, Laguna Beach and Coto de Caza.
His wife immigrated to the U.S. in 1997 from Michoacán, Mexico. She left Mexico with her mother and older brother, fleeing domestic violence from her father. She is also undocumented.
With her family’s help, she started working as a babysitter, but later got a job as a housekeeper cleaning houses with her older sister.
With the current immigration events she sees on the news, she fears for the safety and well-being of hard-working immigrants who work tirelessly to provide for their families.
“It makes me feel sad,” she said. “It worries me, because of my status and that of my husband’s. There are millions of other people who are also like us who work tiring labor jobs just to put food on the table.”
The process of naturalization is not simple for these Santa Ana residents since they are both undocumented. Although they have both been in the U.S. for several decades, they don’t have high hopes of obtaining their permanent resident status because they don’t meet the requirements . Jose and his wife have heard about obtaining a Green Card through consular processing. This process involves applying for a green card from outside the U.S. Jose and his wife would have to leave the U.S. and stay in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, a location notoriously known for drug trafficking and homicide. The stakes are high. They don’t know how long they would have to stay there, and it’s no guarantee they would get approved.
ICE can now arrest undocumented immigrants in churches, schools, hospitals and courthouses. Communities are anxious about family separation and how deportation can impact their lives.
“Our home country is unsafe, that’s why we left,” she said. “I hope that politicians can do something to stop the current hatred towards immigrants in the U.S. I hope they can let us work safely and continue to go about our lives.”
The Santa Ana City Council is working toward protecting immigrants from Trump’s anti-immigration policies, but policies and practices across the U.S. are expanding on a daily basis, including Tramp’s deportation quotasand ICE was granted access to unaccompanied children databases.
Hector Hernandez, a mechanical engineering student at Cal Poly Pomona, is a San Bernardino native. Hernandez’s mother immigrated from Santiago, Chile, and his father immigrated from Mexico City. Both of his parents were fortunate enough to obtain their U.S. citizenship a few years after arriving in the U.S.
Hernandez said he believes the current immigration events and ICE raids have gotten out of hand.
“I see on the news that they’re not just arresting criminals; they’re just grabbing whoever they can,” Hernandez said. “For them, it’s like meeting a quota. They’re just going to see any person of color and grab them. They’re grabbing people that are just trying to do their jobs, and I don’t think that’s OK.”
Residents of Orange County can call the OC Rapid Response Network hotline if they experience or witness an unlawful ICE arrest, while the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice offers similar resources for residents of the Inland Empire area or San Bernardino County. These nonprofit organizations also host community events, connect affected individuals with attorneys and confirm ICE sightings in communities.
