Santa Ana, CA – On Sunday, May 18, about 30 protesters marched on the Santa Ana Police Department to demand the jailing of officers Luis Casillas and Isaac Ibarra for the murder of Noe Rodriguez and for SAPD to immediately make public any ICE and DHS alerts they receive.

Community Service Organization Orange County (CSO OC) independently obtained the names and body camera footage of the officers who killed Noe Rodriguez through a Public Records Act Request since this information was never shared with the family of Rodriguez. In that footage it can be seen that officer Casillas shot Rodriguez 18 times and officer Ibarra shot him 11 times.

Protesters held signs with the pictures and badge numbers of Luis Casillas and Isaac Ibarra demanding that they be jailed and chanted, “Justicia para Noe Rodriguez!” David Pulido from CSO OC kicked off the protest with, “We invite you to join us in the fight for community control, not just today but in the future. We must organize ourselves and build working-class Chicano power so that when racist police terrorize our community, we can rein them in!”

Gathered in front of the police station, Erika Armenta spoke about the racist nature of Rodriguez’s killing and her demands for justice, stating, “If the police were told Noe was a Hispanic man, for what reason would they arrive speaking to him only in English and took his life in under five minutes? This must end! They should pay in jail time for what they did!”

Armenta went on to state that neither she nor Rodriguez’s family have received any information about the killing, “They [the police] have been hiding information from us. They haven’t given us any of the videos we have requested, from the car video footage to unedited body cam footage. It has been five months since the killing, and I hope justice is served because he was an innocent human being!”

CSO OC Police Accountability Committee member Annabelle LeBeau spoke about the need for police transparency and CSO OC’s 24/28 campaign, “The current state and city law only requires the release of footage after 45 days for such incidents and is full of exemptions and caveats. These exemptions often lead to delays of many months. This also allows for potentially dangerous police officers to continue in their roles while remaining anonymous, without facing public scrutiny for their actions. One of the demands of our committee is that, after a critical incident, the release of the involved officer names within 24 hours as well as related footage in 48 hours without being edited. We refer to this as our 24/48 campaign.”

Lebeau explained that the 24/48 campaign is about police transparency and ultimately a step towards community control of the police, “It is for reasons like these that CSO and our police accountability committee believe that the only way forward is for the community to have more direct control of the local police department. The police are intended to serve and protect the community, yet they continuously appear to be more interested in dominating and oppressing us.”

Rain Mendoza of the Immigration Committee for CSO OC spoke about the recent ICE deportations and detainment in Santa Ana after routine check-ins, “On April 29, Egyptian immigrant Mina Soliman was kidnapped by ICE during a routine visit to the ICE Field Office in Santa Ana. This is only the latest case in the disturbing pattern in which ICE brutally detain and deport immigrants during their ICE appointments in Santa Ana, which is supposed to be a so-called sanctuary city!”

Mendoza shed light on SAPD's shameful actions of hiding ICE and DHS reports from the Santa Ana community: “The Santa Ana Police Department has been hiding ICE and Department of Homeland Security activity – over 42 alerts over the past four months! If SAPD cared about public safety, they could have been transparent and warned the community about ICE, but they chose not to! CSO OC demands SAPD immediately release alerts about ICE and DHS activity in Santa Ana!”

Mendoza ended with talking about the escalating attacks on immigrants by the Trump administration, particularly Chicanos and Latinos, with the recent deportations of U.S. citizen children. On May 6, Denisse Parra Vargas and her three children went to an ICE appointment and were deported by ICE along with her three children, two of them being U.S. citizens. On April 25, a mother and her three children, including one with stage 4 metastatic cancer, were deported despite all three children being U.S. citizens. When asked about this directly, the Department of Homeland security maintains that they are keeping families together by removing children with their mothers who requested the children depart with them.

“The DHS wants to continue to deport children without having the narrative that they are separating families, so they are trying to spin this and are cornering parents and forcing them to have their children deported with them. The deportations of U.S. citizens are an escalated attack on working-class Chicanos and other oppressed people! We, CSO OC, demand an end to the deportation of U.S. citizens and all deportations!” said Mendoza.

Protesters marched back chanting, “When immigrants’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” and “La migra, la policía, la misma porquería!”

The protest was organized by CSO OC and the wife of Noe Rodriguez. Community members, activists and Rodriguez's family were in attendance.

CSO OC, besides working with families impacted by police violence, is working towards fighting for community control of the police and forming an immigration campaign to fight the Trump administration attacks on immigrants.

If you live in Orange County and are interested in CSO OC’s work fighting police crimes and deportations, please reach out to us: Phone: (714) 367-6350, Instagram: cso.oc Email: [email protected].

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