Week 6: Interview with Jimmy Panetta (Pt 1)

Hi! Welcome back to my blog. This week, we’ll be looking over the interview I’ve had with Jimmy Panetta. The interview, despite being 15 minutes long, is very extensive, so I’ll be splitting it into two parts. This week, I’m going to look over who Jimmy Panetta is and go over the first half of the interview. 

So, who exactly is Jimmy Panetta? Congressman Panetta is one of the U.S. House Representatives, representing the 19th Congressional district, which includes parts of Santa Clara County, Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, and northern San Louis Obispo County. Following the redistricting of the region in 2021, he lost control of Watsonville and the other parts of Salinas, but still maintains representation over a small portion of it used to connect to the lower regions. He has worked steadily towards creating policies and advocating for immigrant rights and liberties. Here are some of his works: 

– Blue Card Agricultural Worker Program Act: This was a proposed U.S. Immigration bill that was designed to help farmworkers gain legalized status and work authorization. Essentially, farmers would apply for a “blue card” by proving that they had two years of farmwork, paying a fine, and passing background checks. Following this, they would get this blue card status, and in three to five years, they could apply for citizenship. While it did not pass, a similar act, known as the SAVE Act, was passed in the House, although it did not make it through the Senate. 

– Fam Workers Modernization Act: This act was first proposed in 2019, and has gone into the Congress every two years since. The original idea was an act that provided undocumented immigrants who had two or more years of agricultural service with a Certified Agricultural Worker (or CAW) status. This status was valid for five years, renewable, covered the entire family, and included built-in incentives for farmworker housing. This policy was actually passed in the House with a bipartisan vote, but died in the Senate. In the 2021 version, the bill added a few conditions, creating a minimum hour quota for the two-year requirement, and adding a new protection that stated farm workers could not be detained or deported as their application was pending. It was also passed in the House, only to die in the Senate. In the 2023 version, they increased the CAW status to 5.5 years and added Republican sponsors to try to widen the range. This time, the policy did not even make it into the House. Finally, the 2025 version allows CAW holders to travel internationally and re-enter the U.S. without needing another visa, and streamlines the H-2A process, which I explained in Week 2. This version is currently in Congress and has not yet been voted on. 

– Immigrant Witness and Victim Protection Act: This act was created in 2025 and would protect undocumented immigrants who report crimes and cooperate with law enforcement. This is primarily important as it gives agricultural workers, regardless of status, a fair standing by allowing them to report issues such as wage theft, pesticide exposure, and unsafe conditions, which they may have feared to do earlier. This is crucial in regions like Monterey county where the majority of workers are undocumented, as I mentioned in Week 4. The Immigrant Witness and Victim Protection Act is currently in committee.

– Panetta’s Vote Against DHS Funding: While this is not a policy created by Panetta, his vote denying the DHS funding was a crucial support for counties like Monterey. His vote against an increase in funding stood as a vote against the rapid increase for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). His reasoning was that the bill did nothing to stop the power of ICE and CBP, especially as they would be able to operate with masks and no required body cameras, no required warrants, and no proper training standards.

Alright then, now that we’ve been introduced to Congressman Panetta and his policies, let’s hear what he has to say. I’ll input parts of the transcript, and then pause for explanations. 

Question: Reports suggest immigrant residents are quietly withdrawing from public spaces, going out less, spending less, and staying home to avoid visibility. What can be and maybe is being done to help mitigate this fear, especially in regions with such a heavy immigrant population and dependency, such as Monterey County?

JP: “Yeah, look, a lot of fear stems from this administration’s mass deportation policy. A policy that is driven by Steven Miller, who is a special assistant to the white house and the DHS, and to me, has a great antipathy towards immigrants, especially those, no matter what their background is, to be honest with you, atleast that’s how it appears.” 

To interrupt here, the administration’s mass deportation policy Congressman Panetta refers to is the Immigration Agenda run by Steven Miller, an agenda that, instead of focusing on arresting and deporting the worst of criminals, focuses on arresting and deporting the people with the lowest level of reasonable suspicion. The intent of the policy is a clear indicator of the extent of apathy, as mentioned by Panetta, that this administration holds towards immigrants. This is, of course, a contradiction to the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of non-citizens but prevents bonds, and was created with the intention of detaining and deporting criminals, named after the murder of Laken Riley. 

JP: “So this administration’s policy has gone well beyond the targeting of felons and gang members as we’ve seen throughout communities, not just in California, but throughout the country. Obviously, peaking with what happened in Minneapolis, and the deadly shootings that took place of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. The reason that happened is because this administration is using ICE and CBP agents to carry out their own goals, yes, on immigration and deportation, but also targeting certain communities, and one of the reasons they are able to do this, because one, they’re properly funded.”

A few things to explain. First, the incidents in Minneapolis. On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by federal agent Jonathan Ross. The administration claimed it was in self-defense and that Renee had run over an agent. However, the variety of accounts from civilians who were present at the scene and recorded contradicted these accounts, claiming a different story altogether. Only 17 days later, on January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti was standing on the street recording ICE agents. At some point, he stood between a woman and an agent, and was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, and then shot, after which he unfortunately passed. Similar to Renee’s case, several civilians’ testimonies and recordings show that Alex was disarmed, as an agent removed his licensed gun from his holster, before being killed, indicating that he posed no threat.

Furthermore, what was claimed to be a gun being waved around by Alex before his death was reviewed and confirmed to actually be his phone, from which he recorded. These only go to show the extent of the aforementioned agenda and the goal mentioned of targeting not only criminals but everyone. Both these stories show the fatal impacts of targeting every immigrant, not simply the criminal ones. 

JP: “So it’s not only a strategy to send ICE and CBP agents to carry out the goals, be it mass deportation or be it to have fear in vulnerable immigrant communities, but two, they’re also funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill…a significant amount of funding went to DHS. 191 billion, with a B, went to DHS. Of that, I think it was about 65 billion that went, particularly, just to ICE. So you had a lot of funding, you had a lot of policy behind it, and then you also had a lot of politics that were driving the policy. And what I mean by that is that they were using the funding to get people into ICE and CBP and then literally throwing them out on the street in an untrained fashion.”

Congressman Panetta is, of course, referencing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, an act created on July 24, 2025, by President Trump, that achieved a lot of aspects of his agenda, including fully funding the DHS and, through them, ICE.

JP: “And so, that caused a lot of the chaos, confusion, consternation, and death that we saw based on the lack of training of these ICE and CBP agents. Therefore, you have the fear that you have been talking about that has been spreading throughout communities, even if there wasn’t ICE or CBP in these communities, there was still this fear of what they saw in these communities.”

I think Congressman Panetta does a great job explaining what exactly has caused this fear that I asked him about. It’s really the amalgamation of the administration’s actions and the impacts they have caused, an indicator of the lack of sensitivity with which they deal with their execution of the immigration policy. Whether it be an agenda that focuses on detaining common people rather than criminals, or the tragic deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, civilians who showed no aggression towards the agents, the actions of the government have done nothing to assuage the fear of entire communities, not only of undocumented immigrants, but also of almost all people in the country, immigrants and citizens alike.  

With that, I’ll leave you in suspense about what comes next. And by next, I mean, of course, next week. We’ll continue to look through the second half and what we can take away from this interview. Thanks for sticking around through this whole post, and I’ll see you the same time, in seven-ish days. 

That’s all for this week. See you next time!

Bibliography: 

Zolan Kanno-Youngs. (2026, April 6). Stephen Miller Is Still Pursuing His Immigration Agenda, but More Quietly. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/stephen-miller-is-still-pursuing-his-immigration-agenda-but-more-quietly/