Ontario Mayor Paul Leon has walked back his comments about ongoing immigration raids in Southern California, which some residents felt minimized their fears.

“I feel bad about how bad you feel about the things I said. That wasn’t my intent, not at all,” Leon told attendees at the Tuesday meeting of the Ontario City Council. “I take responsibility for what I said and for hurting you. I’m sorry.”

Leon and the council had just gotten an earful from more than two dozen people during the public comment portion of the meeting, many of them blasting Leon for his comments at the council’s June 17 meeting.

At that meeting, Leon had said fears expressed by Ontario residents over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity were overblown and were the fault of “legacy media” and social media.

“To think that they’re coming after you, just profiling you on the way that you look, I just haven’t seen that happen in this town yet,” Leon said at the earlier meeting. “I don’t live in fear, and I don’t want you to live in fear, because our police are not looking for you.”

On Tuesday, residents let Leon know they weren’t happy with his comments.

“There’s something deeply wrong with our city,” said Ontario resident Luis Suárez. “While ICE terrorizes our streets and detains our neighbors, your response, Mayor Leon, has been denial. You didn’t just stay silent: You dismissed the truth entirely. You denied the profiling. You denied the violence. And that kind of dismissal isn’t just offensive, it’s reckless. It shows a dangerous disconnect from the people you were elected to serve.”

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, as of 2024, 68.3% of Ontario residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, Leon among them.

Speakers at Tuesday’s meeting said they’d seen local Latino-owned or -serving businesses targeted by immigration enforcement agents.

Suárez and other speakers called on the council to declare Ontario a sanctuary city, which would limit the city’s cooperation with the federal government on immigration enforcement. Others in the audience held up signs expressing their support for the idea.

“Let me be clear, this is not about you,” resident Connie Cornejo told Leon. “This is about the people you claim to serve. You said you don’t walk in fear. Well, congratulations. Many of us don’t have that luxury.”

Resident Sofia Juarez told Leon she was “gravely disappointed” in his comments at the June 17 meeting.“Fear of ICE is not hypothetical,” she said. “It’s real, it’s daily and it impacts many in this city. Families that live and work here, but do so under the threat of detention, separation, being kidnapped or picked up without warning. To suggest that their fear doesn’t matter, simply because you don’t feel it is not leadership. It’s negligence.”

Leon said that he understood that he’d hurt residents.

“I completely understand how it came across,” he said at the end of the meeting. “I’ve always been taught to not defend myself when people are telling me their truth. And everyone spoke their truth.”

His remarks had been misunderstood, Leon said, and they didn’t reflect the stance of the city of Ontario.

“Of course I’m sorry for having said it, with all of the misunderstanding especially. It had nothing to do with these people,” he said, gesturing to the council members and city officials on the dais. “I said it. And now it’s laying on the City Council and that hurts me too: I didn’t mean to do that.”

Other members of the council also expressed empathy for residents frightened by ICE raids in recent weeks in Southern California.

Mayor Pro Tem Alan Wapner told the mayor he had also been concerned about his June 17 comments.

“I think we’ve all learned, the mayor’s said he’s learned, from everything going on here,” Wapner said. “I was really put off by what I heard that evening. I was surprised by what I heard.”

Councilmember Debra Porada agreed.

“When people feel they are underheard or overlooked, it creates real frustration and pain,” she told attendees. “Your voice matters and I’m committed to making sure it’s part of the conversation.”

In recent weeks, protesters have taken to the streets in communities across Southern California in response to federal immigration enforcement raids in the Los Angeles area. In response, President Donald Trump deployed the California National Guard — over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom — and the U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to support those efforts, drawing further protest.

“If masked people without identification pull you over, the Ontario Police Department is your police department. Call us. We will come out and verify their identity,” Ontario Police Chief Mike Lorenz told attendees at Tuesday’s meeting. “We do not share information with ICE, we do not do anything with ICE, except keep the peace.”

He explained that Senate Bill 54, signed into law in 2017, prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from making their resources available to federal immigration enforcement agencies, other than stopping violence.