Till just lately, nobody would have mistaken Arianna Barrios for a wokosa.
The Orange metropolis council member comes from O.C. Republican royalty. Her grandfather, Cruz, was a Mexican immigrant and civil rights pioneer who registered with the GOP within the late Nineteen Forties after Democratic leaders wouldn’t assist him and different activists combat faculty segregation in opposition to Mexican American college students in Orange County. Her second cousin, Steve Ambriz, was a rising GOP star serving on the Orange Metropolis Council when he was killed by wrong-way driver in 2006.
The 55-year-old has helped Republicans on coverage and dealt with communications for the Orange County Taxpayers Assn. and the Richard Nixon Basis. Pleasant, sensible, quick-witted and a complete goodie-goodie, she corrected me final fall once I launched her to my Chapman College historical past college students as a Republican. To my shock, the Orange native proclaimed that she has by no means been a Republican — she began out as a Democrat and is now an impartial.
And that’s not the primary shock she’s sprung on me. Her latest rise as certainly one of O.C.’s most vocal politicians opposing President Trump’s deportation machine has been surprising — and welcome.
She known as out her council colleagues in July for not approving a decision that might have required federal immigration brokers to take away their masks and put on IDs inside metropolis limits. She connects younger activists to authorized and monetary assets and has participated in neighborhood patrols alerting people who la migra is coming. She has accompanied Orange residents to hearings at Adelanto’s immigration courtroom and hosted a two-part video collection for the civic affairs group Orange County Discussion board on how the U.S. acquired to this second in immigration.
Why, Barrios has turn out to be so radicalized that she used the hash tag #brownwar all through the summer season and into the autumn when posting immigration-related tales on Fb. That stopped after her husband, an anti-Trump Republican, advised it was a bit a lot.
You’ll count on this of a politician from an O.C. metropolis with a progressive streak, like Santa Ana, Anaheim and even Laguna Woods. However not from Orange, whose metropolis fathers have lengthy forged it as a slice of small-town Americana free from big-city issues or nationwide points.
And undoubtedly not from Barrios, whose demeanor is often extra baseball mother than strident activist.
“I’ve been requested a number of instances, ‘What’s up with Arianna? This isn’t her,’” mentioned Orange Councilmember Ana Gutierrez, who has seen ICE brokers invade her road twice. “Properly, when she cares about one thing, she’s loud.”
Working with Barrios on pro-immigrant actions is “like speaking to an adolescent,” mentioned 20-year-old Chapman pupil Bianey Chavez, who belongs to a neighborhood youth activist group. The 2 linked at a protest of their hometown’s picturesque Orange Circle. “It’s contemporary air for somebody of her age and energy to be so open-minded and useful.”
Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava, who has identified Barrios for over a decade, mentioned she had “by no means heard Arianna communicate on any subject like this previously. However it’s nice. Possibly she simply felt empowered at this level. Possibly anger simply boiled up in her, and he or she couldn’t be quiet anymore.”
That’s precisely what occurred, Barrios informed me over breakfast at a Mexican café in Previous Towne.
The immigration raids which have rocked Orange County as laborious as L.A. “simply hit all of these buttons,” she mentioned. Sporting a shirt adorned with orange poppies, the bespectacled Barrios seemed each bit the well mannered pol that O.C. leaders had taken her to be. “Not solely is it simply patently unfair, it’s simply so mistaken. And it’s so inhumane.
“And one of many issues that I can’t stand — and certainly one of issues I taught my youngsters — is in case you see a child being bullied, my expectation of you is that you simply go as much as that child and also you go shield them.”
Councilmember Ariana Barrios holds up a vest and hat she purchased from Amazon whereas arguing in regards to the risks of ICE imposters.
She credit what her father jokes is “an overactive sense of justice” to her grandparents, who ran a nook retailer in Santa Ana within the Nineteen Forties. Barrios Market grew to become a gathering place for the households who helped arrange the 1946 lawsuit that ended Mexican-only colleges in California.
Their granddaughter didn’t know any of that historical past till her 20s, as a result of her upbringing in Eighties Orange County was “like a John Hughes film.”
“We didn’t even actually consider ourselves actually as, like, Hispanic — I imply, all of us had been, however it wasn’t the end-all be-all,” Barrios mentioned. “We had been all attempting to be Valley women.”
Residing in Nacogdoches, Texas, for a couple of years within the Nineteen Nineties “woke her up” to anti-Latino racism. However after returning house to seek out county and state officers passing anti-immigrant legal guidelines, she didn’t be part of the resistance, as many Latinos of that period did. As an alternative, Barrios centered on beginning on her profession in communications and later elevating two sons.
“I keep in mind even having my very own stereotypical ideas about [illegal immigration], probably not understanding what the expertise was, how individuals acquired right here,” she mentioned.
Issues started to vary as Barrios labored for college districts “ensuring that youngsters had entry. I didn’t care about their standing.” It grew to become private as soon as she was appointed to the Rancho Santiago Neighborhood Faculty District Board of Trustees in 2011 and met refugees in addition to recipients of Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals, which grants a reprieve from deportation to some immigrants who got here to the U.S. as kids. She employed some at her PR agency.
The council member introduced up the 1986 immigration amnesty that Ronald Reagan signed and an unsuccessful 2001 invoice co-sponsored by the late U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that might have created a pathway to citizenship for individuals who got here to this nation with out papers as minors.
“That’s what’s so odd about the place we’re proper now,” Barrios mentioned. “The 2 greatest packages, to get individuals to protected standing and to authorized resident standing, got here out from underneath Republicans.”
After successful one other four-year time period in 2024, Barrios figured she’d spend her time attempting to repair Orange’s fiscal disaster, particularly as a result of she thought “a lot of what [Trump] was promising on immigration was rhetoric.”
An onslaught of federal immigration raids within the L.A. space beginning in June made her understand issues could be completely different. What lastly sparked her furor was when federal brokers handcuffed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla after he crashed a June information convention that includes Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem.
“All of this rubbish about [Noem claiming], ‘I didn’t know who he was and he didn’t determine himself’ was bulls—,” she mentioned. “It was simply bulls—. However in case you’re keen to try this, you’re keen to do something. There are not any limits.”
She admits to typically “los[ing] my cool” whereas talking out in opposition to Trump and his deportation deluge, arguing it’s essential to spark change in a spot like Orange, which has a protracted historical past of anti-Latino sentiment. Inside strolling distance from her house is a former movie show the place Latinos had been pressured to take a seat within the balcony into the Nineteen Fifties. In 2010, the Metropolis Council tried to ban day laborers and voted to assist an Arizona legislation that made it authorized for native legislation enforcement to query individuals about their immigration standing.
It’s historical past Barrios is aware of and cites now however that hardly registered together with her again then.
“If individuals wish to be nasty to me, I can’t cease them,” she mentioned. “However I can attempt to clarify the place I’m coming from in order that, as I informed my sister as soon as, it’s not for the individual I’m speaking to, it’s [for] everyone who’s watching the combat.”
Her husband — who joined her at a No Kings rally throughout the summer season and can be part of her this weekend at one she helped organized — feels “nervous” about her newfound advocacy, she mentioned.
However her late grandfather and her father, a Democrat who was the primary Latino elected to the Orange Unified faculty board, wouldn’t have hesitated to protest in opposition to Trump’s cruelty, she mentioned. “They wouldn’t even suppose twice about it.”
Barrios requested for a to-go field for her chorizo and eggs, which she barely touched throughout our hourlong chat. Then she reached right into a cream-colored Kate Spade purse to drag out pink playing cards.
“Know Your Rights,” they learn, delineating what individuals can and may’t do if la migra asks them questions.
“I carry these on a regular basis,” she mentioned, leaving some on the desk. “I see individuals and go, ‘Right here you go. Simply take some, OK?’”
