L.A. Was Destined to Be Where Trump Staged His ICE Fight
This isn’t the first time the city has stood up for immigrants and civil rights. But will Democrats stand with them or fold?
WHEN JOURNALIST RYANNE MENA TOOK TO THE STREETS of Los Angeles Friday to cover the protests against ICE, she figured she knew what to expect. As a Southern California News Group reporter whose beat includes crime, public safety, and (recently) immigration, Mena had covered her share of protests.
She’d never been shot before, however. But as she was covering it all from outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, that’s precisely what happened.
A protester threw a desk chair at an entrance to the detention center, prompting agents to launch a fusillade of pepper balls and rubber bullets. Mena was hit with a pepper ball projectile on her upper-left thigh, leaving a nasty bruise and the dark realization that this would be unlike any protest she’d covered before.
The next day brought further affirmation, as federal agents shot Mena again, this time with a rubber bullet that hit her on the right side of her head an inch above her ear. She and another journalist who was hit were then both tear-gassed by men Mena said were Homeland Security Investigations agents responding to protests in Paramount, California, after the ICE raid targeting the area around a Home Depot sparked the weekend’s protests. She posted photos to Instagram documenting her and her colleague’s injuries.
“It’s very violent, and it seems intentional,” Mena told The Bulwark. The Trump administration, she added, “is using Los Angeles as an example.”
Mena has her reasons to believe this. As she noted, Los Angeles “has a longstanding history of large protests going back to the civil rights era.” The city is also filled with immigrants. “Everyone knows someone who isn’t authorized to be in this country, so this hits home for Angelos because immigrants are the lifeblood of our city.”
Far from the musings of just one reporter on the ground, Mena’s comments reflect an emerging consensus of those pushing back on the Trump administration in this most precarious moment: L.A. was chosen for a reason; the White House wanted this to be their staging ground.
The first reason for this belief is historical: Los Angeles has for decades been a frequent site of major civil rights–related protests, from the 1968 East L.A. walkouts, when thousands of Chicano students protested inequality and prejudice in the public education system; to the riots in 1992 over the acquittal of police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King; to historic protest marches in 2006 for immigration reform.
The second point has to do with demographics. In covering that rollout so far, I’ve often written about Louisiana’s detention centers, which have come to be known for human rights abuses and for making detainees inaccessible to their lawyers and families. In such deep-red states, there’s also a sense among undocumented people that they are clearly, vastly outnumbered—and also with fewer allies. In that context, it makes sense to try to evade any kind of public scrutiny, to keep your head down and your profile low to try to keep your family together.
But Los Angeles? It’s almost half Latino; immigrants really are, as Mena said, the lifeblood of the city and the state. In L.A., nearly half a million people live in mixed-status families. Paramount—where agents sought out day laborers outside Home Depot after Stephen Miller suggested more Home Depot raids were needed—is 82 percent Latino, according to census figures. Once reports spread of the ICE offensive, it was only a matter of time before people took to the streets to defend their families, friends, and neighbors.
THAT’S THE HISTORICAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CONTEXT through which to view these protests. There is a similarly important political context too.
We are long past the phase of “mass deportation” in which bad actors or those with scary rap sheets are the main focus. Real, hard-working people—taken from the L.A. garment district or in front of a Home Depot while trying to find work—are being targeted. Americans were promised a crackdown on criminals and are instead watching masked people destroy families. Some were pleased to hear this. But others either did not believe Trump when he said he would do this or did believe him and opposed him—and it’s many of those people who now are rising up to say no.
Flor is one of those saying no.1 She’s a 24-year-old graduate student in Los Angeles, and her dad—who has lived in the United States for 27 years, quietly working and providing for his three daughters for all that time—was one of the garment workers seized outside Ambience Apparel on Friday by agents in tactical gear, helmets, and masks.
After the 9:30 a.m. raid, her father was taken to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A. Democrats reacted with alarm to the news that immigrants were being held in the basement of the building, which was not designed to hold immigrants for long periods. Flor was trying to establish that her father was there, and she said officials used the protests outside as an excuse to cut off visitation.
Officers inside the federal building told lawyers to return between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturday and family members to return between 1 and 4 p.m., but Flor came at 7 a.m. to try to visit with her father. She never got the chance. While outside, she caught a glimpse of him and other immigrants being put into white vans to be shuttled to the Santa Ana USCIS offices. On Sunday, they were then moved to Adelanto ICE Processing Center two hours away. Each step of the way, Flor joined with activists and members of other families also dealing with what she was going through to try to get answers and figure out how to see their detained loved ones.
Flor learned resilience from her dad, she says, a man who has always worked, including in sweatshops, as the sole provider—“emotionally and financially”—for her and her sisters, who have gone on to succeed as college graduates and graduate students. Her father likes bike rides and is a fan of both Club America, a Mexican soccer club, and Real Madrid. When Flor played soccer, he made sure she had the pricey gear she needed. When she went through her ballet phase, he was there, too, paying for it all.
“He supported us through his labor and always wanted to give us a better life,” Flor told me. “They’re not doing these things to go against the law, they’re doing it to provide for their kids, to have a better job, and have good homes.”
Can Democrats unshackle themselves from mediocrity on immigration?
THESE STORIES, AND TRUMP’S DELIBERATE actions, have put Los Angeles on edge. And they’ve raised challenges for those who recognize that the president is trying to fan the flames rather than calm them. What is the best way to respond to it?
Angelica Salas, a veteran immigration leader for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), watched as Flor did everything she could to see her father again, impressed with the young woman and speaking to her about her plight.
Salas told me that she expects Democrats to have the backs of Californians who are standing up to fight back against ICE. The question is what should that support look like?
Her view is that the real way through this is to find enduring solutions to the problems at hand. There are, after all, 13 million people who have been denied access to legal status—the result of inaction and neglect on the part of both major parties. As for now, she says Democrats have a responsibility to do everything in their power to back the cause of immigrants.
“On the Democratic side, this has to be an unapologetic fight for immigrants because it’s a fight for U.S. citizens now, too,” she said. “This is one of our most vulnerable communities, and we’re being used as a political piñata—they’re beating us up and denying due process. We cannot live like this.”
The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has begun picking up the fight, even inviting “tough guy” border czar Tom Homan to arrest him. But for folks like Salas, more is needed. She challenged Newsom last month for proposing cuts to health care for undocumented immigrants in his budget.
“Someone has to stand with us and see us as your constituents,” she said. “They have to use their power at every level of government to stop this travesty.”
Many Democrats did credit Congressional Hispanic Caucus members for showing up to ICE facilities across the country to conduct oversight, which led to their being rebuffed (and sometimes charged with crimes) by federal officials. But they say the party has to do more.
“How will they get loud?” asked Alida Garcia, a veteran immigration advocate and Latino vote organizer for Kamala Harris. “This only gets worse when [Trump’s spending and tax cut] bill passes and Homan has a green light to hire 10,000 people, build millions of dollars in cages, and get a whole fleet of jets to send people God knows where.”
“I want to see Democrats not afraid to fight to defeat the expansion of the authoritarian regime,” she continued. “A lot of people will act like it’s a border bill, but it’s a family-separation-and-raid-workers-at-workplaces bill.”
“Flor” asked to have her identity masked to protect her family.
He picked the wrong state and the wrong city. Perhaps it’s time for the West Coast states to consider secession—our combined economies would be the fifth largest in the world.
Since every action is personal with Trump, he’s long hated Los Angeles. He never got that Emmy, his show was canceled, and Hefner made it clear that Trump couldn’t just waltz into his mansion, select a playmate, and escort her upstairs. Staffers knew of the city’s historic demonstrations.