photo credit: Syed Qaarif Andrabi courtesy of Pexels.com
Stock photo of a film crew.

The City of Santa Rosa is advising residents that a film crew will be working in the downtown area on Thursday evening, July 23rd, and the scenes will involve actors portraying immigration agents.

The city posted on social media a warning to the public that these are not actual immigration enforcement activities, even though it may seem authentic.

In the post, they linked to their new initiative launched early in 2026 called SR Film, which includes liaison services for filmmakers.

“To provide hand-holding level guidance on permits, locations, coordination with other city departments, connecting filmmakers with resources, etc. to help ensure that their shoot, their filming experience in Santa Rosa is successful and positive.”

That’s Scott Adair, Chief Economic Development Officer for the City of Santa Rosa. He says there is financial incentive to encourage film productions to shoot here.

“The state's budget to support film for this fiscal year is over $700 million dollars," said Adair. "And so we recognized that if we were going to lean into a new project, lean into something that was supporting the economy, we wanted to do something that was in sort of synergistic harmony with what the state was doing as well.”

The advisory about Thursday’s film shoot featuring actors portraying immigration agents in downtown Santa Rosa was posted on social media and has been shared over 100 times, reflecting community concern over immigration raids.