On Thursday, hundreds of protesters surrounded the Santa Barbara News-Press' building, demanding that the newspaper pull a Jan. 3 headline that referred to a group of immigrants as "illegals." 

The language is part of larger issue, protesters said. Groups like People Organized for the Defense and Equal Rights of Santa Barbara Youth (PODER SB) argued that local media failed to represent the Latino community in Santa Barbara, even though Latinos account for 44 percent of the area's population. The group said that local media often showed bias against immigrant communities as well.

An online petition calling for the paper to retract the Jan. 3 headline and start using Associated Press style (which stopped using the term in 2013) has so far garnered 2,875 supporters as of Jan. 9. The petition was written by Filiberto Nolasco Gomez, a first-generation Mexican American who grew up in Los Angeles.

"The word illegal evokes thoughts of "danger" and “the enemy” and causes others to look at our entire community as a threat, often times with fatal consequences," Nolasco Gomez wrote. "If the Santa Barbara News-Press cares about a large part of their readership as well as wants to be considered a reputable news organization they will retract this offensive story and apologize to the community."

The News-Press responded to demonstrators with an article that reported some vandalism following the protest, mentioning  fatal terrorist attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The News-Press' office, however, suffered nothing more than some paint on its exterior with messages like, "the border is illegal not the people who cross it." The News-Press reported that whoever is responsible for the vandalism could face felony charges.