Friday’s national day of protest over ICE prompted some community leaders in Ventura County to come together and call for change.
They used the backdrop of the ICE Field Office in Camarillo to speak out against the agency’s actions.
“Families are living in fear. Lives have been lost. And, many of us are struggling to reconcile the violence and cruelty we are seeing with the values we hold close,” said Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley of Westlake Village, who organized the event.
“Ventura County was used as a litmus test for what we saw in Chicago, what we saw in Portland, and what we've been seeing out of Minneapolis,” said Genevieve Flores-Harro, with the Mixteco-Indigena Community Organizing Project. She added that last summer’s raids in Camarillo and Carpinteria set the stage for what was to come from ICE.
“We cannot lose sight of why these tactics are being used against communities. It’s to keep us in silent complicity as families are being torn apart.”
Democratic State Assemblyman Steve Bennett of Oxnard thinks the ICE actions in Minnesota have pushed the country too far.
“There is in Minneapolis right now a buzz saw of opposition, and it is creating a tipping point,” said Bennett. “It’s a tipping point all of us in the country need to participate in.”
