Local members of Congress address national immigration enforcement turmoil and regional impacts.

During simultaneous press conferences, one in Santa Cruz, the other in San Jose on Thursday, Jan. 29, U.S. representatives Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, and Sam Liccardo, D-San Jose, condemned the brutality of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers across the country and specifically in Minneapolis. 

“The images and the videos that we're watching on television and on our small screens should outrage every American when we see masked, armed, poorly trained ICE agents breaking down doors without warrants, dragging elderly people into the freezing cold, executing mothers and nurses in the street,” Lofgren said in San Jose.

“At the federal level, we are doing what we can to make sure that we prevent further deadly shootings of U.S. citizens—in violation of civil liberties—by ICE and CBP agents and at the local level. We're doing everything we can to prevent them and prepare for them being in our communities,” Panetta said in Santa Cruz.  

Both press conferences included local politicians as well as law enforcement leaders. 

Prior to the public remarks, Panetta hosted a private roundtable meeting with local sheriffs, including Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto and Sheriff Chris Clark from Santa Cruz County, as well as community leaders.

“Congressman Panetta brought us together to share our concerns with him so he could take it back to the federal level,” Nieto says. "We were also here to share with each other on how we could work together better, as a group, to bring our communities together to be able to deal with the many issues that are [here] as a result of all this fear, anxiety, frustration, the erosion of trust of our institutions that are taking place because of the actions of ICE,” she adds.

Panetta encouraged people to keep taking videos and documenting ICE enforcement peacefully. “Right now, that's how we're getting transparency and accountability,” he said. 

He said immigration agents must have proper training and follow the law while doing their jobs and wear body cameras. "We're going to increase the training, not from this reduced 47 days of training and homage to the 47th president, but actually have proper training so that you know how to engage, not just in any sort of detentions with undocumented, but how you not just escalate a situation, but how you de-escalate a situation,” he said. 

Panetta and Lofgren both voted against the 2026 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which passed in the House on Jan. 22 by a 220-207 vote. That bill failed in the Senate later in the day on Thursday; the Senate later made an agreement to extend government funding for another two weeks, holding off a federal government shutdown.