As President Donald Trump ramps up his nationwide crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally, Santa Clara County’s Rapid Response Network is seeing a surge of calls from concerned residents.
The volunteer network, which is led by a group of local nonprofits, has a hotline where people can report suspected Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. Trained responders then confirm whether the reported activity is ICE or other law enforcement agencies. If an arrest is made by ICE, the network helps connect the individual to an immigration attorney.
Since Jan. 1, the network’s hotline has received 2,590 calls, averaging roughly 200 calls per month in March, April and May, according to the county. But in the first 18 days of June, the hotline has been flooded with 840 calls.
Rebeca Armendariz, who helped establish the county’s Rapid Response Network as part of CARAS – an organization that serves Latino and low-income communities in Gilroy – said that last Friday the hotline received “no less than 20 calls per hour.”
“It was really difficult, it was really challenging,” she said in an interview of manning the phones.
“I would say the vast majority of calls were just folks that were just scared…Folks are terribly afraid.”
The uptick in calls comes amid growing fear across California’s immigrant communities as Trump, in a June 15 Truth Social post, pledged to carry out “the largest mass deportation operation of illegal aliens in history.”
In San Francisco and Concord, federal authorities have carried out arrests at immigration courts. Protests over immigration raids have also erupted in Los Angeles in recent weeks, creating a standoff between Governor Gavin Newsom and Trump, who mobilized the California National Guard without the governor’s approval and sent in the U.S. Marines. An appeals court on Thursday ruled that Trump can keep the National Guard in L.A.
Santa Clara County is the main funder of the Rapid Response Network. Earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors allocated close to $1 million to the network, which also provides know-your-rights training. It’s part of more than $8 million that the board set aside for immigration support services in the upcoming fiscal year’s $13.7 billion budget, making it the largest annual investment of its kind by the county.
In December, the county started building its war chest to protect its immigrant population from Trump’s deportation threats, allocating $5 million from its reserves to the county executive’s office. $530,784 of that fund went to emergency response efforts like the Rapid Response Network. The county said that money helped expand the hotline’s capacity. The rest of the funds went to direct legal support services for immigrants, education on immigrant rights and other outreach efforts. In many cases, these funds allow community groups to provide services for free.
County Executive James Williams said in an interview that the network is a “way to help ensure that there is accurate information in the community.” He said that there have been times when the county’s Sheriff’s deputies or other local law enforcement has been confused for ICE.
“That’s not good for the community because that undermines safety. It undermines safety for our officers and it undermines safety for dealing with actual criminal threats that maybe the Sheriff’s Office was trying to address,” he said. “Having a trusted community resource that can help distinguish those things and that can help people get accurate, complete and timely information is actually something that helps ensure the safety and well-being of the community overall.”
On the Friday that Armendariz was monitoring the hotline, she said a majority of the calls stemmed from activity that was later confirmed to be the San Jose Police Department. In another recent case, rumors of ICE raids at the southern end of Gilroy resulted in the network sending a group of observers out at 5:30 a.m. to wait for hours only for ICE never to be seen.
Armendariz said it’s critical that people not share suspected sightings of ICE without verifying it first with responders, who are trained to confirm ICE activity and then immediately share it with the public.
“Folks are being blinded by their fear…we have to take a deep breath,” she said. “Even then if it’s a real threat, we don’t need to be acting in fear or in panic. It’s not good for any of us.”
Board President Otto Lee said in a news release that “as an immigrant myself, I understand deeply the anxiety and uncertainty that many in our community might be feeling right now. I want to assure you that in Santa Clara County, we have your back.”
The county has the largest share of immigrant residents of California’s 58 counties, with more than 40% of residents having been born outside of the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In early May, the county launched a $1 million multilingual marketing campaign called “One County, One Future” to educate residents – especially those the county said are being targeted by the federal administration – about the services available to them.
“Our immigrant communities help make us great and we embrace that as an organization and we don’t take that for granted,” Williams said. “Instead, I think we demonstrate very palpably that by embracing diversity, we have created extraordinary strength.”
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