Masked federal agents soon spread across Southern California. Protests followed.<\/p>\n
Many of the people arrested had no criminal record<\/a>, but that didn\u2019t stop the White House from depicting the sweeps as a vacuuming of hardcore criminals. Some protesters were charged with federal crimes on scant evidence<\/a>. Masked agents asked U.S. citizens of Latino heritage to produce ID to prove they were in this country legally<\/a>.<\/p>\n Janitors, veterans, students. Workplaces, residential streets, courthouses. MacArthur Park<\/a>, Home Depots, Dodger Stadium\u2019s parking lot<\/a>. No one and nowhere was safe from a toxic alphabet soup of federal agencies tasked with ridding the country of people without papers, damn the cost. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even deployed the National Guard<\/a> and Marines<\/a>to quell dissent in a show of imperial might better suited to a \u201cStar Wars\u201d Sith lord.<\/p>\n The raids rendered large swaths of L.A. as quiet as the coronavirus shutdown days; some areas still haven\u2019t rebounded and might never. That\u2019s why commemorations will happen this weekend across the Southland to remember the people and tranquility we\u2019ve lost over the past 12 months to Trump\u2018s immigration war. Although the official caravan of cruelty \u2014 led by former Border Patrol commander at large Gregory Bovino \u2014 departed L.A. after a few weeks for other U.S. cities, including Chicago and Minneapolis, deportations and detentions here have never completely stopped. <\/p>\n In fact, border czar Tom Homan recently vowed that much more is just over the horizon.<\/p>\n \u201cYou ain\u2019t seen s\u2014 yet,\u201d he bragged last month in opening remarks for the Border Security Expo in Phoenix. \u201cThis year will be a good year. Mass deportations are coming.\u201d<\/p>\n A federal immigration officer pulls the respirator mask from a protester outside Delaney Hall detention center Thursday, May 28, 2026, in Newark, N.J. <\/p>\n (Angelina Katsanis \/Associated Press)<\/p>\n An orange whistle hangs from my rearview mirror to make sure I never forget the horrors of those first few weeks of raids. Tear gas canisters and pepper balls tossed at activists. Businesses shut down out of fear. My social media timeline transformed into a newsreel of sobbing men and women chased down by anonymous agents. Telephone poles covered in fundraising pleas for families whose breadwinners either rotted in faraway detention center or were sent back to their home countries.<\/p>\n No one in my immediate circle of family or friends has been detained, thank God \u2014 the people in my life who were once undocumented legalized their status long before Trump poisoned our country. And yet even I\u2019ve had nightmares about ICE taking away loved ones \u2014 and myself. My passport has never left my side since last summer<\/a>. It probably never will again.<\/p>\n I picked up the orange whistle last fall while visiting Chicago<\/a>. At the time Bovino \u2014 who has since become an apostle for deporting 100 million people<\/a>, as if anything remotely close to that many undocumented people lived in the U.S. \u2014 was overseeing operations there. Windy City residents adopted the whistles as a cheap, accessible warning in case la migra was rolling in. They also represented a call to action.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why I can\u2019t only think sad thoughts on the one-year anniversary of the raids.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure the Trump administration, bolstered by a historic 2024 win that saw even Latinos embrace his mass deportation plans<\/a>, banked on public apathy or tacit approval when his Leviathan landed in L.A. That was our track record, after all.<\/p>\n Many Angelenos either applauded or stayed quiet when the U.S. government rounded up Japanese Americans during World War II<\/a> and when the Eisenhower administration deported hundreds of thousands of Mexican nationals in the 1950s during the caustically named Operation Wetback.<\/a> Only Latinos and progressive allies seemed to care when ICE\u2019s predecessor, Immigration and Naturalization Service, launched its own raids throughout the 1980s,<\/a> or when politicians passed or proposed anti-immigrant resolutions and propositions in the 1990s.<\/a> Even the immigration marches of 2006, among the largest rallies the United States had seen up to that time,<\/a> attracted people from just some parts of the city.<\/p>\n This time, it seemed as if all good Angelenos rose up. That couldn\u2019t literally be true, of course \u2014 but at least, at long last, it kind of felt so. <\/p>\n From the Westside to Boyle Heights, Wilmington up to Sylmar, people who had never engaged in street-level resistance bought out street vendors so they wouldn\u2019t be exposed to possible detainment and set up mutual aid societies and neighborhood patrols. People accompanied immigrants to court hearings or took them into their homes or handed out know-your-rights cards at businesses, like my wife does at her restaurant. No one bought Trump\u2019s lies that he only wanted to go after the worst of the worst because we saw beloved neighbors, favorite street vendors<\/a> and even high schoolers<\/a> nabbed.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why ICE\u2019s reputation, never particularly positive around here, is now somewhere between hantavirus<\/a> and rush hour on the Sepulveda Pass.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780740917_515_.jpeg\")
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