Remembering Alex Pretti

Sandra De Anda gave the following speech at the “Remembering Alex Pretti” Vigil, hosted by WoundWalk and Medical Community on January 30, 2026.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Sandra. I am a longtime resident of Santa Ana, a writer, and the Director of Policy and Legal Strategy at the Orange County Rapid Response Network. I am honored to be a featured speaker today alongside the medical community on such a historic day for our country and our local community.

Today, many who could make that choice did not go to work. Students walked out of school in solidarity. Protests have filled the streets of cities across the country, pointing to one of our most urgent public health crises: the violence of mass deportation and immigration enforcement.

I am also in awe of the solidarity shown here at home. More than twenty local businesses chose to support our organization today, with many donating over half of their sales to sustain the integral, life-saving work of our community defenders. My heart is full of gratitude.

Today, we have drawn a clear line. We have declared who we are and what we value: the dignity, the rich histories, and the futures of our immigrant and refugee communities. We make this stand at a time when these communities face a mortal danger every single day.

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are that mortal danger. We saw it in Minneapolis with the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Their deaths are a stark warning: these agencies are a threat to anyone who dissents, regardless of race, background, or gender. The temerity of dissent itself can become a death sentence.

So let me be unequivocal. When we say abolish ICE, we mean to get rid of it entirely. Not reform. Not train officers better. Not replace it with another agency of terror. We must abolish.

When we say abolish ICE, It means the people are no longer tired of being persecuted by the very systems that claim to serve us. It is an end to the deceit, the collaboration, the partnerships that local agencies maintain with ICE even as they deny it. We see you. We are done.

When we say abolish ICE, It means migration will not be criminalized. It means families will never again be separated by any cage, detention center, prison, and jails because we know that cages always beget more cages. 

When we say abolish ICE, It also means that the clarity we have gained on our streets—about state violence, displacement, and the right to a home—must bring us closer in our compassion to all struggles for liberation including that of the Palestinian people. Our fight for justice here is woven into a global fight against oppression everywhere.

When we say Abolish ICE, it means that our local budgets—our city and county budgets—will finally reflect the needs of our communities. Our budgets are moral documents. They ask a fundamental question: Whose lives are deemed worth investment? We demand an answer that invests in health, in housing, in education, and in care.

When we say Abolish ICE, that after all of this is over, there will be long-standing, transformative policies, tapestries that center our most vulnerable communities. 

When we say Abolish ICE, it means never again forcing our communities back into the shadows when they need to eat, when they want to feel joy, when they want to simply feel the warmth of the sun. A simple thing that so many of our family and neighbors inside ICE detention are reportedly rationed—sometimes just an hour a day. We fight for that sun. For that light. 

To make room for what must be built but as we have seen it can only be built by us. In its absence, we will create something life-affirming. Something rooted in care, in community, in growth and beauty. A system that protects and nurtures, rather than incarcerates and destroys.

I feel a profound connection to this vision. As a legal observer, a poet, the sister of an immigrant’s son who served as a veteran, and as someone raised in the vibrant Latino and Cambodian community of Santa Ana’s Minnie Street, I understand the human cost of this machinery of exclusion. And I know the profound beauty of what we are fighting to protect.

Our community knows this cost intimately. And tonight, we stand together to say: no more. We stand together to build.

Thank you.

Sandra E. De Anda is an award-winning Santa Ana-based writer and immigrant rights advocate. She received her BA in English from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured in the LA Times, Voice of OC, Sin Cesar, The Ear, Makara Arts, Khabar Keslan, and the late OC Weekly, where she co-founded a weekly column titled, “Deport This” which highlighted the stories of local immigrants and refugees in resistance. 

You can follow her recently published work here: https://linktr.ee/Basurababushka  

Instagram & Twitter: @basurababushka