Close to 1,000 demonstrators crowded into downtown Oxnard the evening of June 10 to protest increasing reports of federal immigration agents operating in Ventura County.
The protest, announced on social media on Tuesday, began in front of Oxnard City Hall at 7 p.m. with a few hundred demonstrators, swelling in size over the next hour. Around 8 p.m., the downtown demonstration was joined by hundreds more protesters that Oxnard police say marched over from an earlier event on Saviers Road.
Federal immigration raids in neighboring Los Angeles County sparked days of predominantly peaceful protests marked by some fierce clashes between demonstrators and police. In Oxnard, the gathering was loud, soundtracked by a chorus of chants and car horns, but remained peaceful.
A crop of flags sprang from the field of protesters, dominated by the Stars and Stripes, the Mexican tricolor and printed cloth rectangles that combined the two into something new.
Some carried the U.S. flag upside down, a symbol of distress. Signs cursed ICE and bore slices of watermelon, butterflies and Oxnard strawberries.
Drivers passed by, some with faces covered, waving massive flags and adding car horns to the din.
“Shout for those who cannot,” one sign read in Spanish.
Uptick in federal immigration enforcement reports
Multiple reports surfaced on social media earlier in the day of immigration agents visiting agricultural facilities outside Camarillo and passing through Oxnard and Port Hueneme.
Federal authorities, though, remain tight-lipped about the extent of their activity in Ventura County under President Donald Trump.
Video posted on social media June 10 by the 805 Immigrant Coalition — a cooperative that helps run an immigration hotline — showed men in fatigues and a truck in U.S. Border Patrol livery moving about an agricultural field. In another fuzzy clip, purportedly taken early in the morning at an agricultural facility in Camarillo, a dark-colored SUV flashed a red light.
A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement did not return a June 10 request for comment. A national data dashboard on ICE arrests, meant to be updated with monthly data, has no new numbers since the beginning of 2025.
Local police said they don’t work with ICE and can’t confirm the specifics of alleged operations. But federal agents sometimes call local police to say they will be in an area and may be armed in unmarked vehicles.
Oxnard Police Chief Jason Benites told The Star last month that his department logged 51 notifications about ICE operations in Oxnard from late January to mid-May. The city had 43 check-ins in all of 2024.
But June has seen a “surge” in check-ins, Benites said. Oxnard police logged 18 check-ins from June 2-8 — the highest number since late January — and started the week of June 9 with three more.
“It’s very real,” he said.
U.S. Reps. Julia Brownley and Salud Carbajal — two Democrats who each represent a part of Ventura County — issued a joint statement Tuesday saying that ICE has not shared any information about operations and that inquiries to Trump’s administration went unanswered.
“This total lack of transparency is unacceptable,” the statement said. “The Trump administration continues to use immigration enforcement as a political weapon, targeting vulnerable families to score political points. This is not how you keep people safe.”
Oxnard protests
After an hour of speeches in front of City Hall, a throng of protesters stepped off of the sidewalks where they’d gathered and turned into the street, marching over a bridge on Third Street and chanting.
Some donned masks, but most wore steely expressions and dragged signs and flags through the dusky air.
Oxnard police stayed largely out of sight, though a dark-colored drone hovered above the downtown protest.
“We are around but we do not make a presence since it tends to escalate the demonstrators,” Benites wrote in a text.
Benites, who confirmed that Oxnard police had a drone monitoring the event, said neither the Saviers Road protest nor the downtown group had seen any issues beside pedestrians stepping into the road.
Police estimated that close to 1,000 demonstrators were in the downtown area, broken into several groups.
As the sky grew dark, the demonstrators continued to troop through downtown, taking over one half of Oxnard Blvd. They marched in circles around the city, chanting, and drivers made long blasts with their car horns.Asst. Chief Rocky Marquez said most protesters dispersed around 10 p.m., with a few leaving by 11 p.m.
Marquez said that the demonstration remained largely safe throughout the evening. Demonstrators obstructed traffic, fired some illegal fireworks into the air and a scrawled a small amount of sporadic graffiti, but police had no contact with the demonstration and made no arrests, Marquez said.
Isaiah Murtaugh covers Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahembee.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: As ICE reports spike, protesters respond in Oxnard
Reporting by Isaiah Murtaugh, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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