“This Is a Hunting of People”: LA Protesters Turn Out to Resist ICE

On June 7, when Donald Trump opened thousands of troops of the National Guard and hundreds of Marines in Los -Angeles to reinforce more and more ICE confrontational strategies against the immigrant community, the locals took to the streets in protest against immigration raids of the administration and a major violation of their rights.

If the main media does not ignore the protests, the coverage too often repeated the story of the violence, which pushed the administration, or, as an alternative to the passivity, the population either too cow, or too uninterested in response. But, in the places, in the neighborhoods that had a major blow of this attack, the organizers of the immigrant rights, trade unions and public groups, feel their way to construct a resistance movement against will.

These participants of the rally who refuse silently go on the night to the American reaction are the heroes of our age. They are the equivalent of the United States in the Central and South American woman who went out on the streets for decades to draw attention to the disappearance of their loved ones. One day, if there is some arc of justice, they will be recognized as such.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people headed to MacARTOR Park where last month last month Federal authorities She carried out an unusual cavalry and an armored car force to return the space. Many demonstrators wore unite 11 red T -shirts here. Others who got out of work In local fast food restaurants To protest against the escalation of immigration repression, the SEIU’s purple shirts were worn. And others wore shirts carrying the logo Center of clothingAn organization providing low -wage clothing workers with or without legal status. Were representatives of the immigrant rights groups such as Clergyand from legal networks because of rights.

Twenty -seven -year -old, a US citizen, remained further from McDonald’s change that morning in solidarity with neighbors and staff who were sent during the raids. “A lot of people are too afraid to go to work,” she said, “so the work is slow. They cut your hours back or have fewer people for a change; This is a problem of mental and emotional security. “Although the delayed is a citizen, she is afraid that she will be delayed from the color of the skin and the sound of her name.” On Wednesday or Thursday, there was a raid a few quarters from this park, not far from the home depot, “she said.” They took several people who were just walking down the street. Just grabbed them, you know how you pick up a bottle of water. “

Another worker McDonald’s, Kandy, originally from Salvador, told about how one of her employees was crying about the prospect of arrest and deportation. “I never saw a man cry, but I did at work. And it really influenced me. My employee who cried actually quit his job. He said he would rather sell all his things than arrested by ice.” Kandy told about how quiet and empty her neighborhood streets became. “Now the community avoids going outside. They are avoiding. They ask their neighbors who can go outside to help them.”

Kandi saw military vehicles on the streets; She saw in the masks of men, without putting the official form, arresting people on the streets. “Everyone chooses not to go outside,” says a woman from Mexico, who works in a company that is engaged in the airline. “It’s very quiet. Stores, everything is calm.” The lady she saw to sell Tamala outside the local grocery store disappeared. Other companies for moms and pop close their doors, or withdrawn from business, missing customers, or go down, and hoping that more tolerant times are coming back.

This is an auxiliary consequence of ice raids: since customers and entrepreneurs avoid publicly, masked agents conduct fabric of immigrants LA, leaving economic destruction during the course. The Macrtur Park, the adjacent streets of which were previously filled with the bustle of street sellers and carriers, these days are terribly destroyed, the park and the streets adjacent to it, filled mainly homeless and mentally ill. Immigrants still live in buildings surrounding the park, but these immigrants lie as little as possible.

The protest on Tuesday helped expose the heart that is too often invisible when people are forced to hide, trying to avoid detention and deportation.

Fifty -six years Javier Garcia (alias) told me that the government’s attack “pressed my panic.” Garcia has been in Los -Angeles for the last four decades, after leaving Herrero’s home in Mexico in Guerre. For many years, he bounced from one dangerous work to another, in an array of different branches. Then he settled in clothes. For over 20 years he has earned his profits at the city’s clothing factories, rarely earning more than $ 15,000 a year.

Since June, Garcia has not been able to work as because some factories where he used to pick up the work closed to avoid ice raids, as well as because he is increasingly concerned with detention and deportation. Like the many people I talked to, he disappeared greatly from public places, spending almost all his time in his family’s apartment, where he lives with his wife, daughter and grandchildren, and relying on casual financial assistance from the workers’ clothing clothes Fund Defense Immigrants. He lagged lagged and does not know how he would approach in the coming months.

It is clear that an unusual act of personal courage was required to participate in the public protest. In the end, despite the recent court rulings that oblige Ice and other agencies to stop their quotas from voices, many accounts show that this is so Business as usual for a concealed secret police.

Agents terrorize California with months, with operational brutally seizing peopleIncluding elderly men, Home Depot, car wash parking and many other places. These stories and videos filmed by Baystanders show how the secret police of Trump acts with wide daylight; Craven cowards who hide their faces when they do their dirty work and all armed to the teeth when they terrorize poor, vulnerable, marginalized. These are images that must shock every American’s conscience.

Garcia knew where he was in order; He came to the protest, with an emergency number outlined on the forearm, in case the ice agents grabbed it.

“I would say that there is a psychological influence and economic impact on my family. It was like an unexpected bomb of emotions,” Garcia explains. “It’s a hunt of people. I live near where some of these raids took place in the quarter.” He is not afraid, he clarifies. “What I feel is more panic. This is another level. Panic is the thought to be detained and parted with my family. This feeling that no matter where you are, something bad may happen. In one minute I never saw my family again. In one minute I could take, who knows where.”

This is America in 2025. The land of men in masks working with impunity when they terrorize communities and abducted workers. The country of horrific workers is desperately trying to restore its dignity and return its neighborhoods before the relentless federal accent.

I asked in clothes what he would say Trump if he met him. He turned to empathy. “Trump was not injured in what I suffered. Like crossing the border and risk his own life. He does not know how to build something from scratch. He only knows how to sit at a completely built table. He was not injured as in others.”