Sitting in a downtown Santa Ana café, Sandra De Anda paused mid-conversation to take a call, confirming details of an immigration raid earlier in the day in Anaheim. Minutes later, her phone rang again — this time a caller reporting immigration activity to the Orange County Rapid Response Network’s hotline.
De Anda switched into dispatch mode.
Using the SALUTE method – size, activity, location, uniform, time and equipment – to document the sighting of immigration enforcement officials, she asked how many vehicles and agents the caller saw, establishing exactly the where and when. Whoever takes the hotline calls shares the details out to volunteer “ICE watchers” who respond to the location and verify the activity before an alert is posted on social media to warn those who might be undocumented in the area.
The interrupted afternoon chat was supposed to be a break for De Anda, who had already taken multiple hotline calls while patrolling near East 17th Street and North Main Street with other watchers.
Calls reporting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sightings or stagings have skyrocketed in Orange County since the Trump administration moved to ramp up deportations this summer, she said, estimating the hotline has received between 8,000 and 9,000 calls over the course of 2025. The rapid response network tries to monitor enforcement actions as they unfold, to be witnesses if there are rights violations, but also in hopes of notifying families who might not learn for days that their loved one has been detained.
People also call the hotline in search of legal resources and support.
“I worked 12 hours yesterday,” De Anda said the day after the interrupted sitdown, already having attended an immigration court appointment that morning with an undocumented community member. “I’m working on this third removal case and then blowing off some steam with my boo.”
As a community organizer and immigration policy advocate, De Anda has become a familiar face in Santa Ana and across Orange County, livestreaming to document enforcement operations and even standing toe-to-toe with federal agents out in the field.
She regularly represents the OC Rapid Response Network — a volunteer organization of civil rights attorneys, clergy, nonprofit organizations and community members — at city council meetings, lobbying for resources and policies to support those in the community who are undocumented.
The 32-year-old Santa Ana resident joined OCRRN as a volunteer in 2017, then was hired as a network and program coordinator before becoming its director of policy and legal strategy. Her efforts have made her a central figure in Orange County’s rapid-response infrastructure — from fielding hotline calls to document and dispatch reports of immigration activity to helping advocate for the release of those detained.
As President Donald Trump took office for his second term, he promised mass deportation across the country, arguing the United States had seen an “unprecedented flood of illegal immigration” and there was a state of emergency at the southern border.
In Orange County, groups such as the rapid response network began keeping watch and educating residents on their rights and the resources available. With the county’s large immigrant population, fear and anxiety were on the rise.
In May, De Anda said she and her team checked out reports of masked agents at the immigration courthouse in Santa Ana, and “something immediately felt wrong.”
It was the first time she saw the agents in court, and remains “one of the most shocking moments of my life.”
Masked men in jeans and khakis were detaining people inside a courthouse, she said. “People who never saw it coming.”
“A wave of terror came over me,” De Anda recalled. “People who were following the law and trusting the process were sharing space with these agents.”
It was a sign that things were changing.
Then on June 9, federal immigration officials made their first mass sweeps in Santa Ana, ratcheting up enforcement, targeting car wash workers and day laborers across the county in the weeks and months that followed.
That didn’t sway De Anda, or her team, whose consistent presence at the immigration courthouse and weekly meetings with impacted families have made her a trusted voice for the immigrant community.
“She’s always on it,” said Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana). “And that’s so gratifying to see — people like Sandra stepping up in a moment of crisis and taking care of our community.”
Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez credited De Anda for establishing a sense of urgency and pushing for action on funding financial assistance programs such Ayuda Sin Fronteras and improving Santa Ana’s U-Visa application process. Those efforts directly impact families, Lopez said, calling De Anda “a true guardian of our Orange County community.”
The daughter of mixed-status parents from Sinaloa, Mexico, De Anda grew up on Minnie Street, a Santa Ana neighborhood with a high concentration of Mexican, Laotian and Cambodian immigrants, including refugees who fled in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal rise to power.
Because her father was granted permanent residency under the Reagan administration, the risk of deportation did not hang over her family as De Anda was growing up.
But in the neighborhood, there was “the ever-present specter of immigration enforcement,” she said.
“La migra” and “watch out for la migra” were common phrases in her neighborhood, traded in concerned murmurs as warnings and passing jokes. “People would joke about la migra. They would scream it just to mess around with people,” she said.
When she was about 7 or 8, De Anda saw Immigration and Naturalization Service agents park a van outside the neighborhood’s 7-Eleven, taking multiple people away. It was the first raid she witnessed.
She didn’t understand what was happening at the time, she said, but could tell it was a “big deal.”
De Anda said she wanted to “honor her parents’ sacrifices” so she focused on her education. A standout student, she was selected for A Better Chance, a program that offers city kids an opportunity to attend private school.
She spent her high school years at an elite all-girls boarding school in southern Virginia and then went to college in Oregon, but said “home” was never too far away.
“My family would send me these care packages with boxes of Mexican candy, so I never lost touch,” De Anda said. “But when I was away, I would always just miss Santa Ana. I would miss the neighbors and Minnie Street — and I would always just think about it, you know?”
In 2017, De Anda read an article in the OC Weekly written by undocumented youth from Orange County Immigrant Youth United who were resisting deportations. She realized she had “studied and struggled everywhere for the last decade,” except where she came from.
She soon began volunteering with OCRRN.
“It’s been almost like a full-circle moment,” De Anda said. “Border Patrol has been seen by those train tracks on Minnie Street.“
To this day, some of the same undocumented families she grew up around still live in the area.
It feels special, she said, knowing she’s earned the trust of so many community members — including that of her older neighbors on Minnie Street, who still refer to her by her childhood nickname, “Tita.”
But the days can be “heavy,” she said, watching her community be scared, taking hotline calls and rushing to help, sitting in court with residents worried a check-in appointment might become a detention, helping family members struggling after losing income because of a deportation.
Still, she said, even on the hardest days, community and being part of a broader shared effort are what drive her and remind her that she’s not alone.
“I have learned that people confront enormous systems every day — the criminal legal system and the immigration system — systems designed to alienate, erode trust and dehumanize our communities. What stays with me is that, despite this, families continue to find the spark to fight back. Our people are deeply resilient,” De Anda said.
“Every call answered, every ICE watcher dispatched, every grocery drop-off and every accompaniment is an act of resistance carried out collectively,” she continued.
“This work is bigger than me, and it is that shared commitment that keeps me going.”
Leave a Reply