At Tuesday night's Santa Maria City Council meeting, community members spoke out both for and against adding an immigration ad hoc committee.
"It's a very low threshold ask, and we hope they can at least do that." said Patricia Solorio from the 805 Immigrant Coalition
"We're here to ask the city council to get Ice out of 805," said Hailey Penserini, a Santa Maria Resident. "Santa Maria has been terrorized by ICE — our entire community."
"I think the law enforcement here should participate with ICE to keep our city safe until the criminals are deported out of here," an attendee said.
Agenda item 15a, which proposed discussing the addition of an immigration ad hoc committee, was introduced by Councilmember Gloria Soto.
"I've been receiving a lot of requests from members of the community wanting to talk about the immigration enforcement activity that we've been seeing here in the states and across the region," said Soto.
After hearing from over 25 speakers, the city council chose to postpone the vote on the topic because one of the councilmembers was absent.
Some of those who attended the meeting also called for the council to allocate funds for immigrants' legal defense.
The potential of adding an immigration ad hoc committee will be revisited in October at the next meeting.
