Friday and Saturday, federal officers went down to the streets and workplaces of the County of Los Angeles to stop and expel undocumented immigrants. There was a large raid with apparent atmosphere, in the fashion district, and a force of force, thick with grenades of tear gas and flash-bang, between demonstrators and protective agents of American border in Paramount, in the south-east of Los Angeles, certain immigrants who appeared for the registration appointments at the level of the Federal Justice Palace in Little Tokyo In the basement, then removed, by Van, so as not to know. Homeland Security had recently confirmed that a nine -year -old primary school in Torrance, who had been detained after a hearing at the end of May and moved to a prison in Rural Texas, is now expelled. It was not the first immigration measures taken by President Trump, who had trouble carrying out his campaign promise to lead “the greatest operation of expulsion in the history of our country”. But these tactics were, like Oscar Zarate, of the coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said to me: “Looless, quite simply not normal.” Lawyers have been denied access to prisoners; Workers were picked up on the basis of their racial appearance, he said. “There are rules of commitment that are not followed. It is incredibly dangerous, not only for immigrants but for citizens. ”
Los Angeles is, of course, an immigrant city. A third of the county residents were born outside the United States, and more than half speak a language other than English at home. East a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state: local authorities are not authorized to cooperate with federal immigration executors. And therefore, as a word of recent detentions – described to me by the defenders of immigrants as “kidnappings” or “abductions” or “disappearances” – have spread through text messages and social networks, thousands of people have presented themselves to confront an influx of federal personnel for the application of the law of various organizations. The demonstrators paraded and chanted and put their bodies on the way to vehicles and officers who intended; Garbage cans on fire, thrown rocks and sprayed graffiti (“fuck ic”; “I can’t stop Da Raza!”). The agents responded with drones, batons, tear gas and rubber bullets. With an apparent atmosphere, they arrested David Huerta, president of the California branch of the International Union of Service Employees. They also blocked a delegation of elected officials and immigration defenders to see the prisoners at the courthouse, a form of monitoring previously routine.
Federal agents have captured some two hundred immigrants in two days, according to the coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which helps manage a network of hotline and legal services. The Ministry of Internal Security has confirmed the arrest of one hundred and eighteen people. However, Trump could apparently not tolerate – or may have seen an opportunity – the friction caused by community efforts to intervene. Late Saturday evening, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he would deploy two thousand members of the California National Guard to repress what Stephen Miller, the chief of the Childhood Maison Deputy Staff, called a “violent insurrection”. Governor Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, opposed the order; They could manage the situation by themselves, they said. Nevertheless, three hundred members of the National Guard were in place early on Sunday, because a certain number of steps and gatherings took place in various parts of the county.
I met around twenty members of the National Guard – in camouflage, armed, broken, tightening the shields – next to the metropolitan detention center in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. Behind them were half a dozen tactical vehicles. The scene has more to provoke than to appease. Hundreds of activists have filled the surrounding streets and sidewalks, demanding the end of raids and deportations. The crowd had not gathered in the instruction of a particular group. They wore rainbow of pride, kaffiyehs and Mexican and Salvadoral flags. (Miller wrote on X: “Foreign flags flying in American cities to defend the invasion.”) The prisoners of the prison rising above us participated behind their tiny windows by lighting the light and extinct lights.
A woman who asked to be called Xiomara, because she feared reprisals if she used her real name, and her partner, the social workers and the native Angelenos of immigrant families, held panels by reading “What if it was your family?” You don’t need to be undocumented to stand with us “and” Basta con la migra! Xiomara told me that she was close to many people who had voted for Trump and have now regretted this decision. “The administration originally said that deportations should withdraw persons with violent criminal history,” she said. “This is not what we have seen. We saw them target children and people in manual jobs. We will tear families. ” (Internal security said that at least some of the arrested people are “gang members” and “murderers” – “the worst of the worst”)))
Despite the warrior position of the National Guard, it was the Los Angeles police service that did all the work. There seemed to be more than a hundred LAPD officers, all equipped with Black Riot equipment. For hours, they have positioned themselves as human cords, killed tear gas and gave confusing instructions to the demonstrators. “Move south!” “Leave the region!” “You can’t go!” “You can’t leave!” A pair of officers pushed me several times and pushed me towards the sidewalk with their batons. (When I identified myself as a press, one said: “I don’t care.”) Helicopters and surveillance drones stole low. There were lapd cars, SUVs (including one that accelerated dangerously through the crowd), trucks, motorcycles and, later, horses.
In the early evening, the confrontation warmed up. A message released from a helicopter, threatening the crowd with an arrest and “serious bodily injuries” unless the area is released in one minute. (Nothing happened after a minute.) The demonstrators threw stones and plastic water bottles in the police cruisers and on the 101 motorway, temporarily stopping traffic, and the crowd members set up several driver -free Waymo cars, producing a funnel of black smoke. The agents began to shoot rubber bullets and covered the demonstrators near the town hall. Xiomara has seen people on horseback “trampling people,” she said. Aimee Zavala, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who left the region at that time, thought that the police ‘response was not deserved. “People will be passionate,” she told me, “but I haven’t seen any demonstrators with weapons. I have not seen anyone causing physical damage. ” On a sidewalk section, I watched a volunteer doctor administering gauze and aspirin to three young men with round and bloody injuries. The LAPD arrested ten demonstrators, bringing the total of the weekend to thirty-nine, and used X to declare all the “illegal assemblies”.
Not all weekend events did not correspond to a specific raid or expulsion. Some were more basic: expressions of rage with relaxed and spectacular cruelty of the administration. Only a few days after the inauguration of Trump, Kristi Noem, the interior security secretary, had participated in a video series of immigration raids in New York, also a sanctuary jurisdiction. Now it was Los Angeles’s turn, and it was as if immigrant workers, children and families had been launched in a film made for Fox News. Local authorities were not entirely irreproachable; The LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell, underlined during the weekend that, technically, the department “is not involved in the application of civil immigration”. The Sheriff of the County, Robert Luna, said the same thing. “But there is a flaw,” said Anthony Bryson, an activist from the Socal Uprising group. “If they help traffic, it is not the application of immigration.” The police were present during raids and demonstrations; They willingly saved their federal peers. “The police were encouraged, creating a militarized border,” continued Bryson. “The conviction that Los Angeles is a sanctuary city is a myth.” ♦
