Tag Archives: Los Angeles

Rolling Stone: ICE Raids Aren’t Just a Latino Issue – Black Communities Are Also at Risk

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“It’s not just Mexican people they are looking for,” one TikToker told her audience, “it’s all immigrants that are obviously not white” 

“When ICE detained Rodriguez in February, weeks after filing her green card application, there was no consideration that she’d just given birth two weeks prior. ”I was just taken away from the child. I was leaking breast milk all over. I was still bleeding because I just had a baby and was on medication but I didn’t get those back.‘”

On Feb. 18, two weeks after having her son via C-section, Monique Rodriguez was battling postpartum depression. The Black mother of two, who was born and raised in St. Catherine Parish in Jamaica, had come to the U.S. in 2022 on a six-month visa and settled in Florida with her husband. But after finding herself alone and overwhelmed from the lack of support, she spiraled. “My husband is American and a first-time dad and was scared of hurting the baby. He kept pushing the baby off on me, which I didn’t like. I was in pain and I was tired and overwhelmed. I got frustrated and I hit my husband,” she says. A family member called the police, resulting in Rodriguez’s arrest. Suddenly, a private domestic dispute led to more serious consequences: When Rodriguez’s husband arrived to bail her out the following day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was waiting to detain her. Despite being married and having a pending Green Card application, she became one of thousands of immigrants deported this year because of contact with police.

Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, ICE has been raiding immigrant communities across the nation. Prior to the raids, Black immigrants, like Rodriguez, have historically been targeted at higher rates due to systemic racism. With a host of complications, including anti-blackness and colorism in the Latino community — which often leaves Black immigrants out of conversations around protests and solidarity — the future is bleak. And Black immigrants and immigration attorneys are predicting a trickle-down effect to Black communities in America, making them vulnerable even more. 

On June 6, protests broke out in Los Angeles — whose population is roughly half Hispanic, and one in five residents live with an undocumented person. On TikTok, Latino creators and activists called on Black creators and community members to protest and stand in solidarity. But to their disappointment, many Black Americans remained silent, some even voicing that the current deportations were not their fight. “Latinos have been completely silent when Black people are getting deported by ICE,” says Alexander Duncan, a Los Angeles resident who made a viral TikTok on the subject. “All of a sudden it impacts them and they want Black people to the front lines.” Prejudice has long disconnected Black and Latino communities — but the blatant dismissal of ICE raids as a Latino issue is off base. 

For some Black Americans, the reluctancy to put their bodies on the line isn’t out of apathy but self-preservation. Duncan, who moved from New York City to a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in L.A., was surprised to find the City of Angels segregated. “One of my neighbors, who has done microaggressions, was like ‘I haven’t seen you go to the protests,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘Bro, you haven’t spoken to me in six months. Why would you think I’m going to the front lines for you and you’re not even a good neighbor?’” 

Following the 2024 elections, many Black Democratic voters disengaged. Nationally, the Latino community’s support for Trump doubled from 2016, when he first won the presidency. Despite notable increases of support for Trump across all marginalized demographics, Latino’s Republican votes set a new record. “Anti-Blackness is a huge sentiment in the Latino community,” says Cesar Flores, an activist and law student in Miami, who also spoke on the matter via TikTok. “I’ve seen a lot of Latinos complain that they aren’t receiving support from the Black community but 70 percent of people in Miami are Latino or foreign born, and 55 percent voted for Trump.” Although 51 percent of the Latino community voted for Kamala Harris overall, Black folks had the highest voting percentage for the Democratic ballot, at 83 percent. For people like Duncan, the 48 percent of Latinos who voted for Trump did so against both the Latino and Black community’s interest. “The Black community feels betrayed,” says Flores. “It’s a common misconception that deportations and raids only affect Latinos, but Black folks are impacted even more negatively by the immigration system.” 

The devastation that deportation causes cannot be overstated. When ICE detained Rodriguez in February, weeks after filing her green card application, there was no consideration that she’d just given birth two weeks prior. “I was just taken away from the child. I was leaking breast milk all over. I was still bleeding because I just had a baby and was on medication but I didn’t get those back.” Rodriguez thought her situation was unique until she was transported to a Louisiana detention center and met other detained mothers. “I was probably the only one that had a newborn, but there were women there that were ripped away from babies three months [to] 14 years old,” says Rodriguez. 

On May 29, her 30th birthday, Rodriguez was one of 107 people sent to Jamaica. Around the same time, Jermaine Thomas, born on an U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father served for two years, was also flown there. Though his father was born in Jamaica, Thomas has never been there, and, with the exception of his birth, has lived within the U.S. all of his life. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” says Rodriguez, who is now back in Jamaica with her baby and husband, who maintain their American citizenships. “My husband and his mom took care of the baby when I was away. But there’s no process. They’re just taking you away from your kids and some of the kids end up in foster care or are missing.” 

In January, Joe Biden posthumously pardoned Marcus Garvey, America’s first notable deportation of a Jamaican migrant in 1927. His faulty conviction of mail fraud set a precedent for convicted Black and brown migrants within the U.S. 

“Seventy-six percent of Black migrants are deported because of contact with police and have been in this country for a long time,” says Nana Gyamfi, an immigration attorney and the executive director of the Black Alliance For Just Immigration. A 2021 report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants found that while only seven percent of the immigrant population is Black, Black immigrants make up 20 percent of those facing deportation for criminal convictions, including low-level, nonviolent offences. “If you’re from the Caribbean it’s even higher,” says Gyamfi. “For Jamaicans, it’s 98 percent higher. People talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act, but I’ve recently learned that the first people excluded from this country were Haitians.”

On June 27, the Trump administration announced the removal of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Haitians starting in September, putting thousands of migrants in jeopardy given Haiti’s political climate. Though a judge ruled it unconstitutional, the threat to Black migrants remains. “You have Black U.S. citizens being grabbed [by ICE] and held for days because they are racially profiling,” says Gyamfi, referring to folks like Thomas and Peter Sean Brown, who was wrongfully detained in Florida and almost deported to Jamaica, despite having proof of citizenship. “Black people are being told their real IDs are not real.” With much of the coverage concerning the ICE raids being based around Latino immigrants, some feel disconnected from the issue, often forgetting that 12 percent of Latinos are Black in the United States. “A lot of the conversation is, ‘ICE isn’t looking for Black people, they’re looking for Hispanics,’” Anayka She, a Black Panamanian TikTok creator, said to her 1.7 million followers. “[But] It’s not just Mexican people they are looking for, it’s all immigrants that are obviously not white.” 

“A lot of times, as Black Americans, we don’t realize that people may be Caribbean or West African,” she tells Rolling Stone. Her family moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, after her grandfather worked in the American zone of the Panama Canal and was awarded visas for him and his family. “If I didn’t tell you I was Panamanian, you could assume I was any other ethnicity. [In the media], they depict immigration one way but I wanted to give a different perspective as somebody who is visibly Black.” America’s racism is partly to blame. “Los Angeles has the largest number of Belizeans in the United States but people don’t know because they get mixed in with African Americans,” says Gyamfi. “Black Immigrants are in an invisibilized world because in people’s brains, immigrants are non Black Latinos.”

The path forward is complex. Rodriguez and Sainviluste, whose children are U.S. citizens, hope to come back to America to witness milestones like graduation or marriage. “I want to be able to go and be emotional support,” says Rodriguez. 

Yet she feels conflicted. “I came to America battered and bruised, for a new opportunity. I understand there are laws but those laws also stated that if you overstayed, there are ways to situate yourself. But they forced me out.” 

Activists like Gyamfi want all Americans, especially those marginalized, to pay attention. “Black folks have been feeling the brunt of the police-to-deportation pipeline and Black people right now are being arrested in immigration court.” In a country where mass incarceration overwhelmingly impacts Black people, Gyamfi sees these deportations as a warning sign. “Trump just recently brought up sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prison colonies all over the world. In this climate, anyone can get it.” 

ICE Raids Aren’t Just a Latino Issue — Black Communities Are Also at Risk
Tensions are mounting between Black and Hispanic communities amid the ICE raids and deportations, but solidarity is the only way to fight back.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/ice-raids-latino-issue-black-communities-1235384699

LA Times: Hiltzik: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke

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Stephen Miller, the front man for Donald Trump’s deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers.

“What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?” he asked on Fox News. “Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. … There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.” Etc., etc.

No one can dispute that the world Miller described on Fox would be a paradise on Earth. No waiting at the ER? School districts flush with cash? No drug deaths? But that doesn’t obscure that pretty much every word Miller uttered was fiction.

Trump aide Stephen Miller concocts a fantasy about L.A.

The gist of Miller’s spiel — in fact, the worldview that he has been espousing for years — is that “illegal aliens” are responsible for all those ills, and exclusively responsible. It’s nothing but a Trumpian fantasy.

Let’s take a look, starting with overcrowding at the ER.

The issue has been the focus of numerous studies and surveys. Overwhelmingly, they conclude that undocumented immigration is irrelevant to ER overcrowding. In fact, immigrants generally and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to get their healthcare at the emergency room than native-born Americans.

In California, according to a 2014 study from UCLA, “one in five U.S.-born adults visits the ER annually, compared with roughly one in 10 undocumented adults — approximately half the rate of U.S.-born residents.”

Among the reasons, explained Nadereh Pourat, the study’s lead author and director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, was fear of being asked to provide documents.

The result is that undocumented individuals avoid seeking any healthcare until they become critically ill. The UCLA study found that undocumented immigrants’ average number of doctor visits per year was lower than for other cohorts: 2.3 for children and 1.7 for adults, compared with 2.8 doctor visits for U.S.-born children and 3.2 for adults.

ER overcrowding is an issue of long standing in the U.S., but it’s not the result of an influx of undocumented immigrants. It’s due to a confluence of other factors, including the tendency of even insured patients to use the ER as a primary care center, presenting with complicated or chronic ailments for which ER medicine is not well-suited.

While caseloads at emergency departments have surged, their capacities are shrinking.

According to a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, from 1993 to 2003 the U.S. population grew by 12%, hospital admissions by 13% and ER visits by 26%. “Not only is [emergency department] volume increasing, but patients coming to the ED are older and sicker and require more complex and time-consuming workups and treatments,” the report observed. “During this same period, the United States experienced a net loss of 703 hospitals, 198,000 hospital beds, and 425 hospital EDs, mainly in response to cost-cutting measures.”

President Trump’s immigration policies during his first term suppressed the use of public healthcare facilities by undocumented immigrants and their families. The key policy was the administration’s tightening of the “public charge” rule, which applies to those seeking admission to the United States or hoping to upgrade their immigration status.

The rule, which has been part of U.S. immigration policy for more than a century, allowed immigration authorities to deny entry — or deny citizenship applications of green card holders — to anyone judged to become a recipient of public assistance such as welfare (today known chiefly as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) or other cash assistance programs.

Until Trump, healthcare programs such as Medicaid, nutrition programs such as food stamps, and subsidized housing programs weren’t part of the public charge test.

Even before Trump implemented the change but after a draft version leaked out, clinics serving immigrant communities across California and nationwide detected a marked drop off in patients.

A clinic on the edge of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that had been serving 12,000 patients, I reported in 2018, saw monthly patient enrollments fall by about one-third after Trump’s 2016 election, and an additional 25% after the leak. President Biden rescinded the Trump rule within weeks of taking office.

Undocumented immigrants are sure to be less likely to access public healthcare services, such as those available at emergency rooms, as a result of Trump’s rescinding “sensitive location” restrictions on immigration agents that had been in effect at least since 2011.

That policy barred almost all immigration enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, funerals and weddings, public marches or rallies, and hospitals. Trump rescinded the policy on inauguration day in January.

The goal was for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents “to make substantial efforts to avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities,” agency officials stated. Today, as public shows of force and public raids by ICE have demonstrated, instilling alarm in local communities appears to be the goal.

The change in the sensitive locations policy has prompted hospital and ER managers to establish formal procedures for staff confronted with the arrival of immigration agents.

A model policy drafted by the Emergency Medicine Residents Assn. says staff should request identification and a warrant or other document attesting to the need for the presence of agents. It urges staff to determine whether the agents are enforcing a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) or administrative warrant (issued by ICE). The latter doesn’t grant agents access to private hospital areas such as patient rooms or operating areas.

What about school funding? Is Miller right to assert that mass deportations will free up a torrent of funding and cutting class sizes in half? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Most school funding in California and most other places is based on attendance. In California, the number of immigrant children in the schools was 189,634 last year. The total K-12 population was 5,837,700, making the immigrant student body 3.25% of the total. Not half.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the estimated 30,000 children from immigrant families amounted to about 7.35% of last year’s enrollment of 408,083. Also not half.

With the deportation of immigrant children, the schools would lose whatever federal funding was attached to their attendance. Schools nationwide receive enhanced federal funding for English learners and other immigrants. That money, presumably, would disappear if the pupils go.

What Miller failed to mention on Fox is the possible impact of the Trump administration’s determination to shutter the Department of Education, placing billions of dollars of federal funding at risk. California receives more than $16 billion a year in federal aid to K-12 schools through that agency. Disabled students are at heightened risk of being deprived of resources if the agency is dismantled.

Then there’s fentanyl. The Trump administration’s claim that undocumented immigrants are major players in this crisis appears to be just another example of its scapegoating of immigrants. The vast majority of fentanyl-related criminal convictions — nearly 90% — are of U.S. citizens. The rest included both legally present and undocumented immigrants. (The statistics comes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.)

In other words, deport every immigrant in the United States, and you still won’t have made a dent in fentanyl trafficking, much less eliminate all drug deaths.

What are we to make of Miller’s spiel about L.A.? At one level, it’s echt Miller: The portrayal of the city as a putative hellscape, larded with accusations of complicity between the city leadership and illegal immigrants — “the leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens,” he said, with zero pushback from his Fox News interlocutor.

At another level, it’s a malevolent expression of white privilege. In Miller’s ideology, the only obstacles to the return to a drug-free world of frictionless healthcare and abundantly financed education are immigrants. This ideology depends on the notion that immigrants are raiding the public purse by sponging on public services.

The fact is that most undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for most such services. They can’t enroll in Medicare, receive premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or collect Social Security or Medicare benefits (though typically they submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payments for the program are deducted from their paychecks).

A 2013 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that low-income immigrants use public benefits for which they’re eligible, such as food stamps, “at a lower rate than native-born low-income residents.”

If there’s an impulse underlying the anti-immigrant project directed by Miller other than racism, it’s hard to detect.

Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who last week blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in Los Angeles, ruled that during their “roving patrols” in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work.

Miller goes down the same road as ICE — indeed, by all accounts, he’s the motivating spirit behind the L.A. raids. Because he can’t justify the raids, he has ginned up a fantasy of immigrants disrupting our healthcare and school programs, and the corollary fantasy that evicting them all will produce an Earthly paradise for the rest of us. Does anybody really believe that?

Commentary: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke
Will mass deportations make wait times at the ER get shorter and schools have more money? The truth is just the opposite

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-07-15/stephen-miller-says-americans-will-live-better-lives-without-immigrants-hes-blowing-smoke

MSNBC: A federal judge’s ruling against ICE should be required reading for every American

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Los Angeles is a city under attack. Spurred on by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrage that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not been deporting enough people, ICE agents have been sweeping through the city, often clad in full military attire like a conquering army. Photographs and videos document ICE’s “arrest first and ask questions later” approach on a daily basis.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong ordered ICE to stop “conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.” She refused to be taken in by the Trump administration’s fog of deception and disinformation. “The federal government agrees: Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment and denying access to lawyers violates the Fifth Amendment,” she wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”

Frimpong’s ruling should be required reading for every American. She modeled the kind of resistance that is essential in the face of the administration’s concerted attack on facts, truths and common sense. Her “believe what you see, not what they say” response sets an example for all Americans who wish to resist an authoritarian takeover in this country.

The Courthouse News Service reports that, at a hearing held Thursday, the government wanted the judge to believe “that the ICE raids were sophisticated operations, based on surveillance and information from other law enforcement agencies targeting specific individuals.” According to CNS, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that ICE could “also stop and question other individuals there who they suspected were immigrants without legal status….” That would be acceptable, a DOJ lawyer argued, based on the “totality of the circumstances.”

The government offered these claims against the weight of the evidence and out-of-court statements. In an appearance last week on Fox News, the administration’s border czar Tom Homan included “physical appearance” in the list of things that ICE takes into account during their patrols in Los Angeles. At the Thursday hearing, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that ICE was engaging in racial profiling, targeting members of the Hispanic community and ignoring people of European ancestry who might be in the country illegally. “The evidence is clear that they’re looking at race,” Mohammad Tasjar, an attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, told Frimpong. Even a lawyer for the government acknowledged that “agents can’t put blinders on.”

During the hearing, as The New York Times reported, the judge “was skeptical of the government’s assertions that it was not violating the constitutional rights of people and that agents were stopping immigrants based on ‘the totality of circumstances,’ rather than relying on race.”

That skepticism was reflected in the 52-page opinion the judge handed down one day later. Frimpong wrote that the migrants who filed suit were likely to prevail in their claim that ICE had no legitimate basis to stop and detain most of the people caught up in its military style operations in Los Angeles. She found that the ICE operation constituted a “threatening presence” that left people fearful that they were being “kidnapped.” The judge ordered that, when conducting such operations, the government must stop relying on factors such as race, ethnicity, speaking Spanish, speaking English with an accent, presence at a particular location, or type of work.

Frimpong seemed particularly disturbed by the government’s failure to “acknowledge the existence of roving patrols at all.” As she put it, “the evidence before the Court at this time portrays the reality differently.” She also noted that the government had failed to provide any evidence that what ICE is doing could pass constitutional muster, despite “having nearly a week” to do so.

This judge’s insistence that reality does in fact matter is particularly important in the face of an administration that time and again demands Americans accept whatever it says.

In the immigration context at least, that ploy seems not to be failing. A recent Gallup poll found that 79% of respondents say immigration is “a good thing” for the country versus just 20% who say it is a “bad thing.” Just a year ago, those numbers were 64% and 32% respectively. The percentage of Americans who want to see a decrease in immigration also sharply declined, from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. And 62% of Americans now disapprove of President Trump’s handling of immigration.

Judge Frimpong’s determined refusal to be deceived by the administration’s smoke and mirrors and her rebuke of ICE’s “roving patrols” shows other members of the judiciary — and the rest of the country — that the White House’s rationalizations of its immigration policy deserve not a shred of deference. It should serve as a wake-up call to all of us and a reminder of the damage the administration’s anti-immigrant crusade is doing to our constitutional order.

A federal judge’s ruling against ICE should be required reading for every American
U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong refused to be deceived by the administration’s smoke and mirrors.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ice-los-angeles-judge-ruling-profiling-immigration-rcna218624

Popular Information: Trump manufactures a crisis in LA

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For years, President Trump has dreamed of mobilizing the military against protesters in the United States. On Saturday night, Trump made it a reality, ordering the deployment of 2,000 members of the California National Guard — against the wishes of state and local officials — in response to protests against federal immigration raids on workplaces in and around Los Angeles. By the time Trump issued the order, the protests consisted of a few dozen people at a Home Depot.

The move violated longstanding democratic norms that prohibit military deployment on American soil absent extraordinary circumstances. The last time the National Guard was mobilized absent a request from local officials was in 1965 — to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama marching from Selma to Montgomery.

Trump strongly advocated for using the military to quell racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. He encouraged governors to deploy the National Guard to “dominate” the streets. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Trump said.

Behind the scenes, Trump was even more ruthless. According to a 2022 memoir by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Trump asked Esper if the military could shoot at people protesting George Floyd’s murder. “Can’t you just shoot them?” Trump allegedly asked. “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

On another occasion that summer, according to a book by journalist Michael Bender, Trump announced that he was putting Army General Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in charge of quelling the protests. This reportedly led to a shouting match:

“I said you’re in f—ing charge!” Trump shouted at him.

“Well, I’m not in charge!” Milley yelled back.

“You can’t f—ing talk to me like that!” Trump said. …

“Goddamnit,” Milley said to others. “There’s a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?”

The lawyers, including Attorney General Bill Barr, sided with Milley, and Trump’s demand was tabled. (Trump called Bender’s book “fake news.”)

During a March 2023 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump pledged to deploy the National Guard in states and cities run by Democrats, specifically mentioning Los Angeles:

You look at these great cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, you look at what’s happening to our country, we cannot let it happen any longer… you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in, the next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it, and we’re going to show how bad a job they do. Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.

In October 2023, the Washington Post reported that Trump allies were mapping out executive actions “to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”

In an October 2024 interview on Fox News, Trump again pushed for the National Guard and military to be deployed against “the enemy within,” which he described as “radical left lunatics.”

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” Trump said. “And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Were there “violent mobs”?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was necessary because “violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles, California.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the National Guard would “support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles” in response to “violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement.”

These claims were directly contradicted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which described Saturday’s protests as “peaceful.”

The LAPD statement said it “appreciates the cooperation of organizers, participants, and community partners who helped ensure public safety throughout the day.”

There were some reports of violence and property damage in Paramount and Compton, two cities located about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it “arrested one person over the protest in Paramount” and “two officers had been treated at a local hospital for injuries and released.” As for property damage, “one car had been burned and a fire at a local strip mall had been extinguished.”

Trump’s order, however, says the unrest in California is so severe it constitutes “a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” that necessitates the mobilization of military personnel. Although any violence and property destruction is a serious matter, local law enforcement appears fully capable of responding to the situation.

Trump’s Unusual Legal Theory

The Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits using the military for domestic law enforcement without specific statutory (or Constitutional) authority. The most famous exception to the Posse Comitatus Act is the Insurrection Act, which permits the President to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement under specific circumstances. But, historically, the Insurrection Act has “been reserved for extreme circumstances in which there are no other alternatives to maintain the peace.” It also requires the president to issue a proclamation ordering “the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.”

Trump, however, invoked a different federal law, 10 U.S.C. 12406. That provision lacks some of the legal and historical baggage of the Insurrection Act, but it also confers a more limited authority. That is why Trump’s proclamation authorizes the National Guard to “temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur.” In other words, the National Guard is not authorized to engage in law enforcement activities, but to protect others doing that work. It remains to be seen whether the administration will respect these limitations in practice.

Trump is Confused

At 2:41 a.m. on Sunday morning, Trump posted: “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest.” At the time, the National Guard had not yet arrived in Los Angeles. Trump had spent the evening watching three hours of UFC fighting in New Jersey.

Trump also asserted, without evidence, that those protesting the immigration raids were “paid troublemakers.”

The National Guard arrived in Los Angeles much later on Sunday morning, when the streets were already quiet.

Trump told reporters on Sunday that he did not consider the protests an “insurrection” yet. About an hour later, Trump claimed on Truth Social that “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try to stop our deportation operations.”

Trump’s order mobilizing the National Guard, however, likely inflamed tensions — and that may have been the point. Federal and state authorities clashed with protesters in downtown LA on Sunday afternoon. Law enforcement “used smoke and pepper spray to disperse protesters outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Trump manufactures a crisis in LA
For years, President Trump has dreamed of mobilizing the military against protesters in the United States.

https://popular.info/p/trump-manufactures-a-crisis-in-la

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE traumatizes a child with leukemia

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The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia

Salon: Stephen Miller can’t make America white. LA is paying for his impotent rage

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Mass deportations were never going to work, so Trump and Miller resort to authoritarian theater

Donald Trump loves authoritarian theater, but let’s not forget that Stephen Miller is also to blame for the violence and chaos in Los Angeles. Last week, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported that Trump’s deputy chief of staff called a meeting with the top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “eviscerate” them for falling far short of the ridiculous goal he set of 3,000 deportations a day. In their desperation to keep Miller happy, ICE has already been targeting legal immigrants for deportation, mostly because they’re easy to find, due to having registered with the government. ICE agents stake out immigration hearings for people with refugee status and round up people here with work or student visas for minor offenses like speeding tickets, all to get the numbers up. But these actions were not enough for Miller.

“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” he reportedly screamed at ICE officials. One ICE leader protested that the agency’s lead, Tom Homan, said they’re supposed to be going after criminals, not people who are just working everyday jobs. Miller reportedly hit the ceiling, furious that arrests aren’t widespread and indiscriminate. Trump has repeatedly implied he was only targeting criminals, but as Charles Davis reported at Salon, that conflicts with his promise of “mass deportations.” Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. The expansive efforts to find and arrest immigrants in California, which kicked off the protests, appear to be a direct reaction to Miller’s orders to grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence. 

But Miller doesn’t seem to care about crime. Or, perhaps he thinks having darker skin should be a crime. For Miller, the goal of “mass deportations” has never been about law and order, but about the fantasy of a white America. His desire to deport his way to racial homogeneity has always been not only deeply immoral, but pretty much impossible. His impotence shouldn’t breed complacency, however. As the violence in Los Angeles shows, petty rage can lead to all manner of evils. 

The term “white nationalist” is often used interchangeably with “white supremacist,” but it has a specific meaning. White supremacists think the government should enshrine white people as a privileged class over all others. White nationalists, however, want America to be mostly, if not entirely, white — a goal that cannot be accomplished without mass violence. That Miller appears to lean more into the white nationalist camp is well known. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center reviewed a pile of leaked emails Miller had sent to media allies that illustrated his obsession with white-ifying America. He repeatedly denounced legal immigration of non-white people and endorsed the idea that racial diversity is a threat to white people. He longed for a return to pre-1965 laws that banned most non-white immigrants from moving to America.

“Trump’s mass deportation project is actually a demographic engineering project,” Adam Serwer of the Atlantic explained on a recent Bulwark podcast, pointing to the administration’s expulsion of legal refugees of color while making exceptions to the “no refugee” policy for white South Africans. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau defended the exception by claiming that “they can be assimilated easily into our country.”

But it’s clear this language is code for “white.” By any good-faith definition of the word, thousands of non-white people targeted for deportation have also assimilated. They have jobs. They get married. They have kids. They are part of their communities. 

Sure enough, a sea of MAGA influencers have responded to the Los Angeles protests like parrots trained quite suddenly to say “ban third world immigration.” 

Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA followed up by praising Steve Sailer, a white supremacist who peddles debunked “race science” falsely claiming skin color and ethnicity controls IQ. The Groypers, a Hitler-praising group that doesn’t even pretend not to be racist, was ecstatic to see MAGA leaders edge closer to openly admitting to being white nationalists. 

Miller’s whites-only dreams aren’t going to happen, though it’s unclear if he’s delusional enough to think otherwise. White non-Hispanic Americans are 58% of the population, according to the Census. That means nearly 143 million Americans — most of whom are citizens— fall outside the strict parameters of what white nationalists like Miller would see as “white people.” Even if the Trump administration met its unlikely goal of deporting 11 million people, this would still be a racially diverse country by any measure. And it’s becoming more diverse: the non-white population is younger and having more children. 

If it feels gross to treat human beings like a math problem, that’s because it is. But that’s what we’re dealing with: an administration, led by a would-be strongman and his little deputy, that can’t engineer American demographics, no matter how hard they might try. MAGA Republicans flip out when liberals correctly point out that diversity is America’s strength. But what really makes them crazy is knowing, deep down, that diversity is America’s inevitability. 

This impotent rage factor is important for understanding what’s happening in Los Angeles. Trump and Miller can’t achieve their whites-only dreams, so they’re lashing out violently at communities, like in southern California, that remind them of their powerlessness in this department. 

Make no mistake: the Trump administration is the instigator here, and not just because they sent ICE in to start nabbing people willy-nilly. As Judd Legum of Popular Information carefully detailed on Monday, the violence began because Trump called the National Guard. Before that, the protests had been relatively small and contained. The Los Angeles Police Department released a statement commending the protesters for their cooperation and peacefulness, which led to a demonstration “without incident.” 

Trump started the chaos by sending in the National Guard. He wants violent visuals for right-wing media to run on a constant loop to serve his authoritarian agenda. When the protesters in Los Angeles didn’t give Trump the imagery he wanted, he deliberately escalated and lied about the reasons. Now he is celebrating his victory because of the violence he unleashed. He’s not subtle, and it’s a failure of the media every time they report on the “violence” without noting that Trump was the instigator.  

Small, weak men can cause a lot of damage. No one should be complacent about either the violence in Los Angeles or the thousands of lives being destroyed by these deportation schemes. But it’s also important to not be cowed by Trump and Miller’s theater, which they put on in no small part to conceal the myriad ways they will never be as all-powerful as they promised their supporters they would be. Understanding this can help people find the courage needed to fight back, because the best shot that MAGA has at winning is if their opponents give up the struggle. Already the administration’s overreach is creating a backlash: 

Stephen Miller can’t make America white. LA is paying for his impotent rage
Mass deportations were never going to work, so Trump and Miller resort to authoritarian theater

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/11/stephen-miller-cant-make-america-white-la-is-paying-for-his-impotent-rage

Raw Story: Tom Homan spews insults as he challenges ‘ultra MAGA’ protester to fight

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Tom “Pugsley” Homan = low-class thug with no class whatsoever!

Kudos to the protestor who “owned” Pugsley with that parody of what Pugsley and his flunkies had tried to do regarding an innocent detainee!

Pugsley is just too stupid to realize how he was being mocked here.

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan didn’t hold back when faced with a heckler during a conservative conference over the weekend, launching into a profanity-laced tirade that included questioning the protester’s masculinity.

“Are you a MS-13 member?” a man shouted at Homan during a speech at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida on Saturday. The heckler, ironically sporting Trump gear including an “I identify as ultra MAGA” t-shirt and Trump hat, carried a poster of Homan. He was escorted out to boos from the crowd.

But rather than ignoring the disruption, Homan seized the moment to unleash a stream of insults, the Daily Beast reported.

“Come up here and hand me that picture? Bring it,” Homan challenged, before whipping the crowd into “U-S-A” chants. Then came the personal attacks: “They’ve got morons like this all over the country … this guy ain’t got the balls to be an ICE officer. He hasn’t got the balls to be a border patrol agent.”

The border czar’s verbal assault didn’t stop there. “This guy lives in his mother’s basement. The only thing that surprises me is that you don’t got purple hair and a nose ring. Get out of here, you loser … If you’re such a bada–, meet me offstage in 13 minutes and 50 seconds.”

The crescendo of Homan’s rant came with a crude attack on the protester’s masculinity: “I guarantee you he sits down to pee,” he said.

Misogynist!

Though it’s unknown what sparked the protest, Homan is one of thefaces of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has sparked massive unrest. The White House has set a target of 3,000 immigration arrests each day as part of a drive for mass deportations across the country.

The administration’s aggressive approach has triggered widespread resistance, particularly in liberal strongholds like Los Angeles, where widespread demonstrations broke out in early June against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The protests led Trump to deploy 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to quell the unrest over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Despite the growing opposition, Homan remained defiant about the administration’s plans. “We’re going to do the job that President Trump gave us to do,” he declared.

Tom Homan spews insults as he challenges ‘ultra MAGA’ protester to fight

https://www.rawstory.com/tom-homan-2673151677

Washington Post: L.A.’s protest movement shifts tactics as ICE raids continue

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Volunteers are monitoring Home Depots and coordinating know-your-rights workshops as organizers prepare for a long-term battle.

A little more than a month after mass demonstrations against federal immigration raids gripped Los Angeles, the protest movement hasn’t stopped — it’s transforming.

Its spontaneous nature has shifted into a methodical one, as activists prepare for a longer fight against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Volunteers are stationing themselves outside Home Depots to monitor for ICE activity targeting day laborers, and a citywide strike is planned for next month to protest the raids. Organizers are hosting smaller demonstrations, coordinating know-your-rights workshops and passing out pamphlets to keep community members informed. And some residents who weren’t involved before are getting involved now.

There’s strategy behind the shift. Immigration advocates and some city leaders told The Washington Post it’s crucial to continue finding ways to dissent as the Trump administration continues targeting Los Angeles County’s large immigrant community. Thousands of National Guard troops, which Trump deployed to L.A. in an unprecedented move in June, remain in the area. ICE continues to conduct operations, showing up last week at MacArthur Park in central Los Angeles and at two Southern California cannabis farms.

“We’re in this for at least three and a half more years,” Los Angeles City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez (D) said, describing the thought process behind the anti-ICE movement. “What are the values that we’re leading with? What is the core messaging that we are trying to uplift? What are our demands?”

The White House in a statement said that it’s committed to removing people who are in the country illegally. “In LA, these were not merely ‘demonstrations,’ they were riots — and attacks on federal law enforcement will never be tolerated. The Trump Administration will continue enforcing federal immigration law no matter how upset and violent left-wing rioters get,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.

The protests began in June after a series of immigration raids across the greater Los Angeles area. More than 100 people were arrested around that time, including outside of a Home Depot in Paramount, a city in Los Angeles County. Workers who witnessed the June 6 ICE operation said officers began handcuffing anyone they could grab as more than a hundred men and women standing in the parking lot began to run.

Protesters hit the streets that weekend, in demonstrations largely organized by activist groups and labor unions. They drew thousands of people but were not especially large by Los Angeles standards. While videos circulated showing self-driving Waymo cars set ablaze and windows smashed, and Los Angeles police reported that some people threw “concrete, bottles and other objects,” the protests were mostly peaceful according to local authorities and previous reporting by The Post. Trump repeatedly condemned participants as “insurrectionists,” “looters” and “criminals” — and ordered thousands of California National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines to the city.

During those protests and in the weeks since, Soto-Martínez, the son of two Mexican immigrants, said labor unions, nonprofits and volunteer groups have banded together to defend, educate and protect immigrant communities. Last week, Soto-Martínez said, more than 1,000 people gathered at a convention center for a two-hour training on nonviolent direct action. Residents also conduct walks around their neighborhoods to spot ICE agents, sign up for networks that quickly disseminate information about ICE sightings and deliver food to families who are afraid of leaving their homes.

Social media posts shared by the Los Angeles Tenants Union on July 3 showed volunteers tabling near the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard, the site of an ICE raid late June. While there, residents passed out fliers with information on how to report ICE sightings.

Coral Alonso, a mariachi performer, said many residents have also turned to fundraising for those impacted by the raids or gathering to protest at La Placita Olvera, a historic plaza in Los Angeles.

Friday morning, immigration activists gathered at La Placita Olvera to announce a citywide strike on Aug. 12 to rally against the ongoing federal immigration actions.

The advocacy groups, including labor unions SEIU 721 and United Teachers Los Angeles, urged all community members to keep protesting as part of the “Summer of Resistance.”

“We are going to stop Trump’s terror campaign against our community,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). “We will not stop marching. We will not stop fighting. We will continue to appeal to the hearts and minds of all Americans.”

She said the city remains under a “military siege.”

There are about 4,000 service members from the California National Guard on the ground currently in the Los Angeles area, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army said in an email to The Post. “Title 10 forces are protecting federal personnel conducting federal functions and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area,” the spokesperson said, citing the statute that allows federal deployment of the National Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against the government. “They can and have accompanied federal officials conducting law enforcement activities, but they do not perform law enforcement functions.”

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, representing immigration advocacy groups such as CHIRLA and five workers, on July 2 sued the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The lawsuit alleged that the federal government is violating Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by “abducting individuals en masse” and holding them in a federal building in Downtown Los Angeles “which lacks beds, showers or medical facilities,” without counsel, due process or probable cause.

ACLU attorneys delivered arguments in federal court Thursday, and the city of Los Angeles and several other Southern California cities are seeking to join the lawsuit. Jackson, the White House spokeswoman, said of the lawsuit: “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge.”

Some magazines and content creators that hadn’t focused on immigration issues are also taking a new approach. L.A. Taco, once a food and culture publication on the verge of shuttering, has shifted its focus to a social-media-first strategy covering ICE activity. And after attending a few protests in June, Jared Muros, a content creator with more than 250,000 followers on Instagram, moved his content away from fashion and entertainment to emphasize video journalism about the impact of ICE raids.

Muros, who grew up in Los Angeles’ Latino-populated neighborhoods, said he had concerns over how his audience would react to the transition, but ultimately was motivated to correct rhetoric he overheard that those detained in the raids were “just criminals.”

“I feel like more people have started to speak up, but it’s more so people who are affected or who have immigrant parents or know somebody who is Latino and has been profiled.” Muros said, “But more and more, I do see more people speaking up.”

L.A.’s protest movement shifts tactics as ICE raids continue
Protests in downtown Los Angeles last month against the federal immigration crackdown have faded away, but city residents are finding new ways to push back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/14/los-angeles-immigration-protests-ice

Charlotte Observer: Officer Shot Near Detention Center — Border Czar Responds

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Border Czar Tom Homan expressed concern over the growing dangers ICE officials face following an incident in which a Texas police officer was shot near a detention facility. Homan noted that rising attacks, including vandalism of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, have come amid increasing threats to federal agents. Homan urged politicians to tone down their rhetoric against the agency.

…

Just get your masked Gestapo thugs off our streets and keep them off!!!

Officer Shot Near Detention Center — Border Czar Responds

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/officer-shot-near-detention-center-border-czar-responds/ss-AA1IxjXz

Reuters: In California strawberry fields, immigration raids sow fear

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Flor, a Mexican migrant, picks strawberries in the agricultural town of Oxnard, but immigration roundups in recent weeks have infused the farmworker community in the strawberry capital of California with stress and fear. 

Flor said the raids are taking a toll on the farmworkers’ children, who fear that their parents will be detained and deported and some are depressed. Flor, who has a permit to work in the fields, is a single mother of three U.S. citizen daughters and when she picks them up in the afternoon she feels a palpable sense of relief.

“It hurts my soul that every time I leave the house they say, ‘Mommy, be careful because they can catch you and they can send you to Mexico and we will have to stay here without you,'” said Flor, who asked that only her first name be used. 

“You arrive home and the girls say, ‘Ay Mommy, you arrived and immigration didn’t take you.’ It is very sad to see that our children are worried.”

President Donald Trump has increased immigration enforcement since taking office in January, seeking to deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Farmers, who depend heavily on immigrant labor, have warned raids could damage their businesses and threaten the U.S. food supply.

Trump has said in recent weeks that he would roll out a program that would allow farmers to keep some workers, but the White House has not yet put forward any plan. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Tuesday that there would be “no amnesty.”

The Trump administration has arrested twice as many alleged immigration offenders as last year, but the number of farm workers specifically remains unclear. An immigration raid at marijuana farms near Los Angeles on Thursday prompted protests.

Many Oxnard residents have not left their houses for three or four weeks and some simply don’t show up for work, Flor said.

“It is really sad to see,” Flor said. “We have senior citizens who work with us and when they see immigration passing where we are working , they begin to cry because of how fearful they are. They have been here many years and they fear they could be sent to their home countries. Their lives are here.” 

Flor has little hope that the circumstances will improve.

“The only hope we have is that the president touches his heart and does an immigration reform,” she said. 

The president of the United Farm Workers union, Teresa Romero, said they are working on organizing workers so they “really stick together” as the fear persists.

“What the administration wants to do is deport this experienced workforce that has been working in agriculture for decades. They know exactly what to do, how to do it,” Romero said.

A White House official told Reuters that Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, decided in January not to heavily target farms because the workers would be difficult to replace.

When asked on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday about people afraid of possible arrest even if they have legal immigration status, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan was unapologetic about the crackdown.

“It’s not OK to enter this country illegally. It’s a crime,” Homan said. “But legal aliens and U.S. citizens should not be afraid that they’re going to be swept up in the raid(s).”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

“Came for a Dream”

The farmworkers get up at around 4 a.m. local time (1100 GMT) and then wake up their children, who Flor says are suffering with the roundups.

“It is sad to see our community suffering so much. We are just workers who came for a dream, the dream we had for our children,” Flor said.

Flor’s daughters are 10, 7, and 2 – and the 10-year-old wants to be a police officer. 

“And it breaks my heart that she might not fulfill her dream because they detain us and send us to Mexico,” Flor said. “It makes me very sad to see how many children are being separated from their parents.”

While some politicians in California have been outspoken about the immigration raids, Flor said they have not come out to the fields or come to learn about the workers’ plight. 

“I would like to invite all the politicians to come and see how we work on the farms so they can get to know our story and our lives,” said Flor. “So they can see the needs we have.” 

Romero said they are working with representatives in Congress on a legislative bill called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would protect the workers and has the support of at least 30 Republicans. Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California has introduced the bill to Congress, but it may not pass until the next Congress takes over in 2027. 

“We are not going to give up,” said Romero. “Si se puede (yes we can).”

Flor earns about $2,000 a month, a salary that often does not go far enough. She pays $1,250 for rent each month and pays the nanny that helps care for the girls $250 per week. Sometimes, she doesn’t have enough food for the children. 

She also says the back-breaking harvest work means she cannot spend enough time with her children.

“My work also means that I cannot dedicate enough time to my children because the work is very tough, we are crouched down all day and we lift 20 pounds every few minutes in the boxes,” Flor said. 

Romero said she has talked to some of the children affected by the raids. 

“I have talked to children of people who have been deported and all they say is ‘I want Daddy back,’” she said.

“It is affecting children who are U.S. citizens and who do not deserve to be growing up with the fear they are growing up with now,” Romero added. “Unless we get this bill done, this is what is going to continue to happen to these families and communities.”

In California strawberry fields, immigration raids sow fear
“We have senior citizens who work with us and when they see immigration passing where we are working, they begin to cry because of how fearful they are,” said Flor, a Mexican migrant who picks strawberries in the agricultural town of Oxnard.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-strawberry-fields-immigration-raids-sow-fear-2025-07-14