Tag Archives: Los Angeles County

KTLA: Los Angeles nurse released from ICE custody without charges

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A Los Angeles nurse and community activist whose arrest drew protests and sharp criticism from local officials and advocacy groups was released from federal custody Saturday without criminal charges, according to National Nurses United.

Amanda Trebach, a registered nurse and member of the community group Unión del Barrio, had been detained Friday morning while monitoring immigration enforcement operations in San Pedro. Her release came after more than a day of demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles and calls from elected leaders who described the arrest as illegal and politically motivated.

Unión del Barrio said Trebach was taken into custody around 6 a.m. Aug. 8 while participating in a Harbor Area Peace Patrol outside the Terminal Island staging area, a Coast Guard base used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to prepare for raids across Southern California. The patrol, run by community volunteers, documents and monitors immigration enforcement activity.

Witnesses and video from the scene show masked individuals, identified by organizers as federal agents, pinning Trebach face down on the street, handcuffing her and placing her in an unmarked black van. The group said agents falsely claimed she assaulted a federal vehicle and alleged she was targeted for her political activism.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection offered a different account, saying that “as Border Patrol Agents departed Terminal Island to conduct immigration enforcement operations, Amanda Trebach jumped in front of moving vehicles, causing drivers to swerve out of the way. She continued to hit the car with her signs and fists while yelling obscenities at agents. After vehicles evaded her, she again physically blocked and impeded CBP from completing their duties. Agents arrested her for impeding and obstructing federal law enforcement.”

“Secretary Noem has been clear: Anyone who seeks to harm law enforcement officers will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the spokesperson added.

“They charged at her and she dropped the poster,” said Cynthia Avina with Unión del Barrio. “The agents are claiming that she attacked them with that poster, and we know that that is not true. They are making false claims to try to intimidate us, to try to stop us from doing the work that we’re doing.”

Councilmember Tim McOsker called the incident “apparently illegal and unconstitutional” and said it violated a Ninth Circuit–upheld temporary restraining order restricting certain immigration raids. He reported the arrest to the Port Police, noting that Terminal Island falls under their jurisdiction.

Trebach, a U.S. citizen, works as a nurse in Watts, Compton and South Central Los Angeles. “She did not break ANY laws” and was exercising her constitutional rights, Unión del Barrio said in a statement. The group credited members of the Harbor Area Peace Patrol for recording video of the arrest, saying the footage helped secure her release.

News of her detention quickly spread, prompting a rally outside the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles on Friday evening. The protest escalated when Los Angeles police declared an unlawful assembly, citing “the aggressive nature of a few demonstrators,” and shut down Alameda Street between Temple and Aliso streets. Police said officers attempting to contact an organizer were surrounded, and items were thrown at vehicles. By 11 p.m., a small group remained, lining the bridge over the 101 Freeway.

Her arrest occurred amid a new wave of federal immigration raids across the region, which critics say violate the court-ordered restrictions. Several cities, including Long Beach, have joined lawsuits filed by Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles challenging the federal government’s enforcement actions.

National Nurses United, which had urged members to rally for Trebach’s release, called her freedom “a testament to the power of organizing resistance and solidarity against the ongoing attacks by the Trump administration on our lives and livelihoods.”

Los Angeles nurse released from ICE custody without charges
A Los Angeles nurse and community activist whose arrest drew protests and sharp criticism from local officials and advocacy groups was released from federal custody Saturday without criminal charge…

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/nurse-released-from-ice-custody-without-charges

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump asks SCOTUS to allow profiling in California ICE raids

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Any attorney who files or argues in favor of this appeal should be disbarred!

Any justice who votes in favor of this appeal should impeached and removed!

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow officers to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants in Southern California because of how they look, what language they’re speaking and what kind of work they’re doing, factors that federal judges have found to be baseless and discriminatory.

Last month’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong, upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “threatens to upend immigration officials’ ability to enforce the immigration laws in the Central District of California,” D. John Sauer, the Justice Department’s solicitor general, said Thursday in a filing with the Supreme Court. “This Court should end this attempted judicial usurpation of immigration-enforcement functions” and suspend the injunction while the case is argued in the lower courts, Sauer wrote.

The Central District, which includes Los Angeles County and six other counties, has nearly 20 million residents, more than any other federal court district in the nation. It became the focus of legal disputes over immigration enforcement after President Donald Trump took control of the California National Guard in June and sent thousands of its troops to the streets in Los Angeles to defend immigration agents against protesters of workplace raids.

A 9th Circuit panel upheld Trump’s commandeering of the National Guard, rejecting a lawsuit by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But Frimpong, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ruled July 11 that immigration officers were overstepping legal boundaries in making the arrests, and issued a temporary restraining order against their practices.

In a ruling Aug. 1 upholding the judge’s decision, another 9th Circuit panel said federal officers had been seizing people from the streets and workplaces based on four factors: their apparent race or ethnicity, the language they spoke or accent in their voice, their presence in a location such as a car wash or an agricultural site, and the type of work they were doing.

That would justify the arrest of anyone “who appears Hispanic, speaks Spanish or English with an accent, wears work clothes, and stands near a carwash, in front of a Home Depot, or at a bus stop,” the panel’s three judges said. They agreed with Frimpong that officers could not rely on any or all of those factors as the basis for an arrest.

But the Trump administration’s lawyers said those factors were valid reasons for immigration arrests in the Central District.

In April, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston issued a similar order against the Border Patrol, prohibiting immigration arrests in the Eastern District of California unless officers have a reasonable suspicion that a person is breaking the law. The district is based in Sacramento and extends from Fresno to the Oregon border.

“You can’t just walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” Thurston, a Biden appointee, said at a court hearing, CalMatters reported. The Trump administration has appealed her injunction to the 9th Circuit.

The administration’s compliance with the Central District court order was questioned by immigrant advocates on Wednesday after a raid on a Home Depot store near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, in which officers said 16 Latin American workers were detained. An American Civil Liberties Union attorney, Mohammad Tajsar, said the government “seems unwilling to fulfill the aims of its racist mass deportation agenda without breaking the law.”

There is ample evidence that many businesses in the district “unlawfully employ illegal aliens and are known to hire them on a day-to-day basis; that certain types of jobs — like day labor, landscaping, and construction — are most attractive to illegal aliens because they often do not require paperwork; that the vast majority of illegal aliens in the District come from Mexico or Central America; and that many only speak Spanish,” Sauer told the Supreme Court.

“No one thinks that speaking Spanish or working in construction always creates reasonable suspicion” that someone is an illegal immigrant, the Justice Department attorney said. “But in many situations, such factors — alone or in combination — can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States.”

The Supreme Court told lawyers for the immigrants to file a response by Tuesday. 

The case is Noem v. Perdomo, No. 25A169.

Trump asks SCOTUS to allow profiling in California ICE raids
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to let officers arrest suspected undocumented immigrants in Southern California because of how they look.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/scotus-immigration-california-20809308.php

AFP: Trump’s crackdown leaves LA’s undocumented migrants on brink of homelessness

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When her husband was arrested in an immigration raid near Los Angeles last month, Martha was abruptly separated from the father of her two daughters. But she also lost the salary that allowed her to keep a roof over their heads.

“He’s the pillar of the family… he was the only one working,” said the undocumented woman, using a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.

“He’s no longer here to help us, to support me and my daughters.”

Los Angeles, where one-third of residents are immigrants — and several hundred thousand people are undocumented — has been destabilized by intensifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids under the Trump administration.

Since returning to power, US President Donald Trump has delivered on promises to launch a wide-ranging deportation drive, targeting undocumented migrants but also ensnaring many others in its net. 

After her husband’s arrest, 39-year-old Martha has joined the ranks of people barely managing to avoid ending up on the streets of Los Angeles County — a region with prohibitively high housing prices, and the largest number of homeless people in the United States outside New York. 

Her 700-square-foot apartment in Buena Park, a suburb of the California metropolis, costs $2,050 per month. After her husband’s arrest, she urgently found a minimum-wage night job in a factory to cover their most pressing needs.

It pays just enough to keep them afloat, but has left Martha unable to cover a range of obligations.

I have to pay car insurance, phone, rent, and their expenses,” she said, pointing to her six- and seven-year-old daughters, who need school supplies for the new academic year.

“That’s a lot of expenses.”

– ‘Bigger storm brewing’ –

How long can she keep up this punishing schedule, which allows her barely three hours of sleep on returning from the factory before having to wake and look after her daughters?

“I couldn’t tell you,” she said, staring blankly into space.

Los Angeles has seen some of the worst of the ICE raids. Squads of masked agents have targeted hardware stores, car washes and bus stops, arresting more than 2,200 people in June. 

About 60 percent of these had no prior criminal records, according to internal ICE documents analyzed by AFP.

Trump’s anti-immigration offensive is taking an added toll on Latino workers, who were already among the worst-affected victims of the region’s housing crisis, said Andrea Gonzalez, deputy director of the CLEAN Carwash Workers Center, a labor rights non-profit.

“A bigger storm is brewing. It’s not just about the people that got picked up, it’s about the people that are left behind as well,” she said.

“There is a concern that people are going to end up on the streets.”

Her organization is helping more than 300 struggling households whose incomes have plummeted, either because a family member has been arrested or because they are too afraid to return to work.

It has distributed more than $30,000 to help around 20 families who are unable to afford their rent, but covering everyone’s needs is simply “not sustainable,” said Gonzalez.

– ‘An emergency’ –

Local Democratic Party leaders are trying to establish financial aid for affected families.

Los Angeles County is planning a dedicated fund to tackle the problem, and city officials will also launch a fund using philanthropic donations rather than taxpayer money.

Some families should receive “a couple hundred” dollars, Mayor Karen Bass said last month.

But for Gonzalez, these initiatives do not “even scratch the surface” of what is needed, representing less than 10 percent of most affected families’ rent requirements.

She called for a “moratorium on evictions” similar to one introduced during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Otherwise, Los Angeles’ homeless population — currently numbered at 72,000, which is down slightly in the past two years — risks rising again, she warned.

“What we’re living through right now is an emergency,” said Gonzalez.

Maria Martinez’s undocumented immigrant husband was arrested in June at a carwash in Pomona, a suburb east of Los Angeles.

Since then, the 59-year-old has had to rely on help from her children to pay her $1,800 monthly rent. Her $1,000 disability allowance falls far short.

“It is stressful,” she said. “We’re just getting by.”

Trump’s crackdown leaves LA’s undocumented migrants on brink of homelessness
When her husband was arrested in an immigration raid near Los Angeles last month, Martha was abruptly separated from the father of her two daughters. Maria Martinez’s undocumented immigrant husband was arrested in June at a carwash in Pomona, a suburb east of Los Angeles.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-s-crackdown-leaves-la-s-undocumented-migrants-on-brink-of-homelessness/ar-AA1JNxWp

KTLA: Border Patrol agent accused of assaulting Long Beach police officer, entering women’s bathroom

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These Border Patrol / ICE goons & thugs are multi-talented f*ck*ps!

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent appeared in a Los Angeles County courtroom Friday to face felony charges for assaulting a Long Beach police officer and resisting arrest while off-duty and armed with a department-issued handgun.

Isaiah Anthony Hodgson, 29, faces four felony and three misdemeanor charges related to the incident, which happened Monday at Shoreline Village.

According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Hodgson was drunk inside a restaurant when he followed a woman into the women’s restroom. The woman alerted restaurant management and reported that Hodgson’s firearm and magazine were visible.

He fled the restaurant shortly after and was confronted by a security guard who saw the federal agent carrying his magazine in his hand while his gun was tucked into his waistband. That security guard asked him repeatedly to leave, the D.A.’s Office says.

The Long Beach Police Department was eventually called to the scene, and officers approached Hodgson in the parking lot.

“When they arrived, they reportedly observed Hodgson intoxicated and unwilling to cooperate with their commands as they tried to detain him,” a release from the D.A.’s Office states. “As Hodgson resisted arrest, he allegedly became agitated and physical with the officers, injuring one of them.”

He was eventually arrested and released, and made his initial appearance Friday.

He’s been charged with three felony counts for resisting arrest, one felony count of battery on an officer and three misdemeanor gun charges.

If convicted, he could face up to seven years in state prison.

District Attorney Nathan Hochman called Hodgson’s alleged behavior “unacceptable and deeply troubling.”

“No one is above the law, regardless of their position or badge,” Hochman said. “Law enforcement officers have a responsibility to always conduct themselves with integrity and professionalism. Our office will pursue prosecution accordingly to ensure justice is served.”

Hodgson is due back in court on July 17, and is prohibited from possessing firearms or leaving California, and has to attend at least three alcohol counseling meetings a week as a condition of his release.

Border Patrol agent accused of assaulting Long Beach police officer, entering women’s bathroom

https://ktla.com/news/california/border-patrol-agent-accused-of-assaulting-long-beach-police-officer-entering-womens-bathroom

Wall Street Journal: Newsom Leans Into L.A. Unrest to Position Himself as Leader of Opposition

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California governor’s presidential prospects hang in the balance as he defends Los Angeles from ‘authoritarian overreach’

Gavin Newsom is, once again, in the eye of a tempest. “It is a profoundly important moment,” the California governor said in an interview Monday evening as protesters massed in the streets and U.S. Marines made their way to the state on the president’s orders.

It is also an important moment for Newsom, widely seen as a top potential Democratic presidential candidate, who has leaned into the conflict to position himself as the leader of the opposition. “Seven hundred brave men and women are being used as pawns in Trump’s war on the Constitution,” he told The Wall Street Journal of the Marine deployment, speaking from the Los Angeles County emergency operations center where he has been holed up helping coordinate the protest response. “Our Founding Fathers didn’t live and die for this.”

Newsom Leans Into L.A. Unrest to Position Himself as Leader of Opposition

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/california-gavin-newsom-trump-los-angeles-1e2ec00f

New York Times: Trump Is Calling Up National Guard Troops Under a Rarely Used Law

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President Trump bypassed the authority of Gov. Gavin Newsom to call up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests.

President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

It is the first time since 1965 that a president has activated a state’s National Guard force without a request from that state’s governor, according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy organization. The last time was when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators in 1965, she said.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, immediately rebuked the president’s action. “That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” Mr. Newsom said, adding that “this is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”

Governors almost always control the deployment of National Guard troops in their states. But the directive signed by Mr. Trump cites “10 U.S.C. 12406,” referring to a specific provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services. Part of that provision allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

It also states that the president may call into federal service “members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.”

…

Although some demonstrations have been unruly, local authorities in Los Angeles County did not indicate during the day that they needed federal assistance.

Trump Is Calling Up National Guard Troops Under a Rarely Used Law

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/trump-national-guard-deploy-rare.html