ICE in L.A.: Texts of terror
As immigration raids continue in Southern California, Angelenos are using cellphones and other digital platforms to share fears, concerns and warnings.
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3 hours ago
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‘A moral obligation to protest': LA residents on being thrust into chaos
As thousands of military personnel descended on Los Angeles under the orders of Donald Trump and their city was thrust into the center of a political crisis, Angelenos have largely voiced their support for the immigrant community and resistance to the administration targeting them. 'When you are rounding up people with no criminal record while they are at their jobs, it is very clear that the cruelty is indeed the point,' said Alex Berg, 42. 'As Americans, we have a constitutionally protected right to protest. As Angelenos, we have a moral obligation to protest Ice raids on members of our community,' he added. Predominantly peaceful protests, which erupted after federal agents swept into workplaces, immigration hearings and elementary schools last week, were met with an unprecedented and heavy-handed response from the president, in a move the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, has called 'unlawful'. Related: 'Snatching off the streets': Ice targets churches, car washes and workplaces Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested or detained in the past week. Officers and troops in tactical gear have relied on chemical irritants, fired rounds of 'less-lethal' projectiles and deployed flash-bang grenades in attempts to squash the unrest. Scores of armored vehicles have been crowded into a small part of the vast city's downtown in a striking show of force. Berg believes the escalation was by design, 'to chill vocal opposition to the administration', he said. 'They cannot remove our constitutionally protected right to protest through the law, but they can certainly make us think twice about how badly we're willing to deal with the consequences of protesting.' While the marches mostly remained nonviolent, dramatic images of burning cars and graffitied buildings have been splayed across the internet and on social media sites, and Trump has used them to validate his orders. In a speech on Tuesday, the president promised he would 'liberate Los Angeles', and, calling the protesters 'animals', he made a baseless claim that the demonstrations were part of a 'foreign invasion'. Many residents, however, have challenged the president's descriptions of their city's demonstrations. 'The protesters have my full support,' said William Rosencrans, a 57-year-old stonemason, who called the moves by the administration cruel and chaotic. 'Trump and his allies are using tactics shared by every other authoritarian regime and they must be resisted at all costs and, ultimately, by any means necessary if the country is to be saved.' Several people echoed these calls. Some described scenes they said felt reminiscent of dystopian movies; large armored vehicles on city streets driven by masked men and women, protesters detained and immigrants taken from their jobs and homes. 'It feels like roving federal kidnap gangs disappearing people off of the streets and the people disappearing are our friends, our neighbors, the people who care for our kids and our homes, and the people that greet us at the shops where we buy the things that make living possible,' said Lon Grabowski, 65, a systems architect who lives in the Hancock Park area of LA. 'The effect the raids have on the city and the people in it is purely negative.' Celeste Perry felt Trump's mass deportation agenda was part of a ploy. 'Last year Republicans blocked meaningful immigration reform per Trump's instructions to Speaker Mike Johnson. Trump desperately needed to keep immigration his central issue for his campaign,' she said. 'The raids are performance to sell his base on the lie that all their troubles should be blamed on immigrants.' But for many Angelenos life goes on as normal, with people carrying out their lives far from the smoke-filled scenes and skirmishes that are confined to just a few blocks. 'When I walk around downtown Los Angeles – where I live – it's a quiet, sunny day with light traffic, people walking dogs, meeting friends for lunch, or getting coffee,' Tom Mott, 58, said. 'All the rhetoric about the city being 'on fire' or Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom being on the side of 'criminals' is puffed-up nonsense.' But even in a county where votes were overwhelmingly cast against Trump (he got just over 30% in Los Angeles in 2024) there are some residents who support his actions. David Oddone, 46, said he thought sending in reinforcements for local police 'was smart and necessary'. 'I am glad it was ordered so quickly to secure the city,' he said. Oddone blamed California's leaders for the 'negative impact on people that created families here and are now forced to leave', but added that deportations were a 'necessary step to protect citizens and resources that are already scarce in Los Angeles and California'. The raids are performance to sell his base on the lie that all their troubles should be blamed on immigrants Celeste Perry With or without local support, Trump has been clear that he intends to keep his troops in the state, even as California leaders mount an opposition. The state filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the president's move to take over the state national guard. Newsom, California's governor, has been among those calling for continued resistance to the administration. 'If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe,' he said in a speech this week. 'Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.' Mott called the raids unnecessary and pointed to agreements between Republicans and Democrats that there was a need for 'sensible immigration reform'. 'Instead, we have theatrics like this,' he said. 'Two thousand national guardsmen to do what, exactly? Guarding the building where they're detaining a guy Ice nabbed who was selling cantaloupe on the corner?'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘We're seeing the best of LA': as Ice raids haunt the city, Angelenos show up for each other
In the days after ramped-up immigration raids began in Los Angeles, 50-year-old Lorena, who has been running a tamale cart in Koreatown for decades, stayed home. So did her husband, who works as a day laborer. Worried about paying their bills, both of them after a few days went back out to work. 'My son would go around the block and watch out for us,' said Lorena, whom the Guardian is not identifying by her full name for fear of reprisal. He'd text them a warning when he suspected that immigration agents were nearby. Eventually, though, they concluded the effort was not only risky, but futile. There was no business. 'People are scared. They do not go out to buy anything,' she said. Then Lorena was offered a grant by a local advocacy group, KTown For All, which had raised money online from supporters to 'buy out' street vendors at risk of being detained. Related: As Ice infiltrates LA, neighborhoods fall quiet: 'We can't even go out for a walk' She and her husband have been able to remain home since, and keep a low profile. She knew the group because they had organized initiatives to support vendors during the height of the coronavirus pandemic – and on occasion she had worked with them to distribute her tamales to unhoused people and others in need. 'That is why I believe that when you give love, you receive love,' she said. 'I want more people to know about [how] this way they can also support more vendors, more sellers. Because there are many, many vendors who are still taking risks because they need to make money.' KTown for All has said publicly that its supporters donated enough money to cover a month's rent and food for at least 42 vendors and their families, and it has shared links to street vendor fundraising efforts in other Pasadena, LA's South Bay and other neighborhoods. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The LA Street Vendor Solidarity Fund, a similar effort organized by several non-profits, has raised $80,000 so far, with the goal of raising at least $300,000. An estimated 1 million of Los Angeles county's more than 10 million residents are undocumented people, the largest undocumented population of any city in the US. Street vendor buyouts are just one of the ways Angelenos are responding to the Trump administration's raids, which are continuing to spread terror across Los Angeles, with many immigrant families afraid to leave their homes for school or work. 'Community members that have not been traditionally plugged into politics or the current state of affairs are plugging in – they're getting informed,'said Eunisses Hernandez, a 35-year-old city councilmember who represents a quarter-million people in a majority-Latino district in northern Los Angeles. Many Angelenos who did not attend protests against the new Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids are doing other kinds of work, Hernandez said, like providing 'know your rights' information to small businesses about interacting with law enforcement officials, or figuring out how to deliver food to immigrant families too afraid to leave home even to buy groceries. Related: 'A moral obligation to protest': LA residents on being thrust into chaos Mutual aid networks created to help people affected by the January's wildfires have been 'reinvigorated' to respond to the Trump administration's raids, Hernandez said. 'In this moment, while we're seeing the worst of our federal administration, we are seeing the best here in the city of Los Angeles,' she said. The pervasive fear of federal raids is reshaping the daily life of the city, leaving streets emptier and quieter. One in five local residents lives with someone undocumented or are undocumented themselves. Half the total population is Latino. 'Our economy is being destroyed, our culture is being destroyed,' said Odilia Yego, the executive director of Cielo, an advocacy group focused on local Indigenous migrant communities. 'The buzzing feeling of being an Angeleno is under attack.' When Yego went out with Cielo workers earlier this month to deliver food to 200 families, she said, the streets were eerily quiet, and restaurants were half-empty, raising concerns about how small businesses already battered by Covid, Hollywood strikes and the wildfires will weather this new crisis. It's not only undocumented residents who fear being snatched up by masked federal agents in raids community members say look and feel like kidnappings, Yego said. 'Even with documents, people are afraid to go out. Even citizens are afraid to go out. People are afraid to encounter an Ice agent regardless of their status, because of the level of violence they have seen on social media or on TV,' she said. Multiple US citizens in the Los Angeles area have reportedly been detained as part of immigration raids this month. As Cielo and similar advocacy groups help frightened immigrant families, other people are stepping up to help them. In early June, one of the city's most popular taquerias and an immigrant-owned coffee shop in West Hollywood held fundraisers for Cielo. 'We own a business, so we can't go protest,' one of the West Hollywood coffee shop's owners said. The Guardian is not identifying the businesses or its owners for fear of reprisal. Helping raise funds for Cielo was 'a way for us to show up to be a voice with our community'. 'In LA, we support each other during times of crisis,' Yego said. 'Someone sent us $100 and said: 'You helped me during the pandemic, and today, I'm able to give back.''
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
US citizen arrested during Ice raid in what family describes as ‘kidnapping'
A US citizen was arrested during an immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles this week in what her family described as a 'kidnapping' by federal immigration agents. Andrea Velez, 32, had just been dropped off at work by her mother and sister, the pair said, when they saw agents grab her. 'My mom looked at the rear mirror and she saw how my sister was attacked from the back,' Estrella Rosas told ABC7. 'She was like: 'They're kidnapping your sister.'' Velez, a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona, was taken into custody during an immigration raid on Tuesday. In video captured from the scene, agents can be seen surrounding her as a crowd gathers in the street and police officers stand by. Meanwhile, Rosas and her mother, who has residency but is not a citizen, screamed from a nearby vehicle for help. 'She's a US citizen,' Rosas said through tears. 'They're taking her. Help her, someone.' In other video, an agent can be seen lifting Velez off the ground and carrying her away. Witnesses told media, including CBS Los Angeles, that the agents never asked Velez for identification, and that she did nothing wrong. 'The only thing wrong with her … was the color of her skin,' Velez's mother, Margarita Flores, told CBS Los Angeles. Related: 'We're seeing the best of LA': as Ice raids haunt the city, Angelenos show up for each other The incident comes as numerous US citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants. People have reported they are being targeted for their skin color and for attempting to aid immigrants being detained by immigration agents. While it's not yet clear how many citizens have been affected by the administration's attack on immigrant communities, a government report found that between 2015 and 2020, Ice erroneously deported at least 70 US citizens, arrested 674 and detained 121. Velez's family was unaware of her whereabouts for more than a day until attorneys for the family tracked her down. 'It took us four hours to find her and we're attorneys. That's crazy,' attorney Dominique Boubion told ABC7. 'Just to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and you have the full weight of the federal government against you and your family can't find you – it is very scary.' Authorities have not told lawyers what charges Velez faces, but an official with the Department of Homeland Security told media that she was arrested for assaulting an Ice officer. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
