ICE arrests alarm California’s community colleges. How much can campus officials do?
In summary
California community colleges are trying to discourage immigration enforcement on campuses, but they can’t do much to bar ICE agents from public spaces.
Immigration enforcement agents are inciting panic at California’s community colleges.
Santa Monica College said that one of its students was arrested and deported last May. Then in December, Santa Barbara City College said that federal immigration officers used their campus parking lot as a staging ground, prompting an uproar from community activists.
Last month, the San Diego Community College District said ICE agents arrested a student on a public street that cuts through the urban campus and proceeded to chase another student up the steps of the school’s Arts and Humanities building.
Last Monday, federal agents arrested the father of a student in a campus parking lot at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, south of San Luis Obispo.
College presidents say they’re doing everything in their power to keep students safe and prevent federal immigration enforcement officers from coming on campus. But they admit that they have limited power in these situations.
“If ICE agents want to come and walk in the middle of campus, they can do that,” said Kevin Walthers, the president of Allan Hancock College.
State laws require colleges to notify students if immigration enforcement agents are on campus and agents must present a warrant before entering a “nonpublic” area in a school, such as a classroom or office building. But parking lots, quads and many other outdoor spaces are considered public.
Graffiti against immigration enforcement officials at San Diego City College in downtown San Diego on Oct. 8, 2026. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
By the time Walthers learned ICE agents had arrived at the campus parking lot, they were gone — the arrest happened in a matter of minutes. He said he never received a warrant and was only able to issue a notification to students and faculty after the arrest. The same was true in San Diego, said district Chancellor Gregory Smith.
President Donald Trump rescinded a longstanding policy that prevented immigration enforcement in “sensitive” locations, such as schools. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the state’s 116 colleges, has been outspoken about protecting students without legal status and offered guidance to schools on dealing with immigration agents. Attorney General Rob Bonta released his own, more detailed guide last month.
Chandler Rebel, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, said “ICE does not target schools” and denied arresting anyone on the Allan Hancock campus, despite witness testimony and photographs. Rebel did not respond to questions about the officer who chased a San Diego City College student on campus.
After their interactions with immigration agents, Santa Barbara and San Diego city colleges put up or are in the process of installing signs in parking lots, sidewalks or at the entrances to classrooms and buildings, telling agents they need approval to enter.
In practice, these messages may not prevent immigration agents from coming onto their campuses, college presidents say. “It’s kind of our district putting every effort that we can think of, and hopefully it is a deterrent,” Smith said.
A regular Monday
Last Monday morning, Mayrin, 18, said she was sitting in the passenger seat while her father drove her to Allan Hancock College, where she had statistics class that day. As they drove by the Olive Garden just outside of campus, she said she saw a large black car follow them down the road.
Mayrin and her father parked in the campus lot, she said, where a masked man approached the window and asked for their identification. CalMatters agreed to withhold her full name because she fears drawing attention to her family’s legal status.
“I was calling people. I was crying. It was a mix of emotions, mostly just worried about my dad,” she said. Maryrin gave the officer her state ID and told him that she’s a U.S. citizen. Her father, who immigrated from Mexico and has lived in the U.S. for about two decades, did not have identification on him and the officer pulled him into his car, she said.
Mayrin spent the next 20 minutes alone in her father’s car, crying and calling family, before college staff, including campus police officers and the dean of counseling, brought her into a conference room to ask what happened and provide support.
Mayrin’s father was one of at least 17 people who were arrested last Monday by immigration enforcement agents in the Santa Maria area, said Assemblymember Gregg Hart , a Santa Barbara Democrat, in an emailed statement. “Mass enforcement sweeps like this are designed to send a message of fear and intimidation – one straight from President Trump.”
A student walks through San Diego City College in downtown San Diego on Oct. 9, 2026. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
The largely Latino towns in California’s Central Coast region, which include Santa Maria, have experienced waves of immigration enforcement since Trump took office.
In April, Walthers said the college’s police chief had a meeting with other local police chiefs, the FBI and ICE officers who oversee the Central Coast. The college’s police chief asked immigration officials to provide advance notice before coming on campus. “The response was that ICE would not be coming to campus,” Walthers said. In retrospect, he said he wished the agreement was more formal.
After the arrest last week, Walthers said he got in touch with a federal immigration officer in Los Angeles and said he felt “optimistic” after the conversation that it wouldn’t happen again.
‘Without us knowing or without any previous approval’
In December, a local organization that advocates for immigrants, 805 UndocuFund, alerted Santa Barbara City College officials that ICE agents were at a campus parking lot and appeared to be using it as a staging area, according to Jordan Killebrew, the executive director of public affairs for the college.
Killebrew said agents were “occupying our parking lots without us knowing or without any previous approval.”
The college has since signed an agreement with 805 UndocuFund to help alert the college of the presence of federal law enforcement agents. The group will also provide college students and staff with resources and referrals including legal, financial, mental health, and emergency support services for immigration-related matters.
Killebrew said the college spent about $1,200 on 12 signs, which say its campuses “may not be used for civil immigration enforcement staging areas, processing locations, or operations bases.”
The San Diego college district was already in the process of putting up similar signs when ICE appeared on campus last month. District spokesperson Jack Beresford said the four-college district spent $71,000 on 68 signs, including the cost of the labor to install them. The district also created a new policy requiring any entity, including law enforcement, to get prior approval before conducting “official business” on campus.
“We don’t let a bank just come and set up a booth,” said Smith, the chancellor of the San Diego district. He said immigration enforcement agents would need approval before conducting their business, including arrests.
Whether the policy will actually work is less clear. “By the time I know that they’re here and get down there to tell them they’re not allowed to be here, they’re going to be gone,” Smith said. “What I’m hoping that we have set up with this is a legal argument that it’s an illegal seizure, the same as if they just broke into somebody’s home.”
The policy has never been tested in court. He said he hopes it never gets there.
