While warm-blooded American patriots were enjoying their weekends like warm-blooded patriots, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was out doing the work of the people: arresting rapists, pedophiles, and murderers (and I assume, good people, too)—according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security press release you can find right on its website!
Direct-to-the-people news, direct from the source.
That’s the kind of information that people can trust: information that comes with a motive, designed to hide whatever the government doesn’t want you to know and highlight the things that it does.
Get rid of the middleman, you know? Let the people decide. Let the people do their own research … on all the platforms designed to give them everything they already believe to be true.
Nothing to see here, people. It’s just the public relations arm of Donald Trump’s administration, giving you the slant you need to keep supporting the things that they’re doing.
Who needs journalists, when you can trust the government?
I only bring all this up because you can’t. You can’t trust the government. You can’t trust elected officials. And you most certainly can never trust a press release, an official statement released to the media, or a social media post.
These things need to be turned over, looked at, and investigated for truthiness.
Duh! When did half of America become so gullible?
So, when ICE blocks off as street to conduct an operation in Santa Maria off Telephone Road, naturally some people were wondering what they were up to. ICE has got you covered: It put a press release out about arresting very bad men doing very bad things.
And really, officers likely did arrest some people who took advantage of vulnerable people who came to the U.S. with their help, and were taking money out of those people’s paychecks as payment for getting them here in the first place.
As ICE put it: It’s the equivalent of modern-day slavery. And ICE isn’t wrong. It’s a problem. And such employers preys on innocent people in desperate situations.
So, good on ICE. But wait, before you unleash a slew of angry words from your cellphone. I’m not done.
Some contend that there’s more to that story. And those people are also probably right. When Homeland Security raided Glasshouse Farms earlier this year, officers arrested way more people than the department alerted the public to in its official press release about the raid. And one man died.
Immigration rights advocates spoke up at the Nov. 18 Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting, saying there’s more to Telephone Road than ICE is saying.
“On that day, ICE agents took a baby and a pregnant mother but refused to report on that, because they knew it wouldn’t fit their narrative,” Cesar Vasquez said during public comment. “They also took 10 other individuals that they failed to report.”
I know nuance is lost on almost everyone these days, but two things can be true simultaneously—ICE likely arrested bad people doing bad things and innocent people who did nothing wrong (you know, collateral damage).
ICE should be arresting bad people. ICE shouldn’t be arresting people who haven’t done bad things.
That’s the conversation we should be having—Not, ICE is good; ICE is bad.
The Canary lives in a nuanced cage. Send gray thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 20 – Nov 27, 2025.