Palm Trees Burning―ICE Raids Ignite Pushback in L.A.

By Jordan Freeman, Guest Columnist, Managing Editor Terelle Jerricks contributed to this story.

Depleted tear gas canisters and flashbang shrapnel littered the intersection of Alondra Boulevard and Hunsaker Avenue as a flaming palm tree dropped embers on the Home Depot landscaping. One of the rounds had landed in the tree’s crown. 

Paramount residents, some on skateboards, came out with signs to protest the federal raid on day laborers gathering for work during the days leading up to June 7. They were intent on making their voices heard.

Police officers in riot gear gathered their numbers at the surrounding intersections, wielding live-fire weapons and weapons that fire less-than-lethal rounds.

 A young woman asked a Home Depot security guard for a fire extinguisher. A teenager took a selfie in front of the line of riot cops. With my camera almost out of battery and the sun going down, I heard a familiar announcement from the police loudspeaker. “This has been declared an unlawful assembly.” 

For me, it was time to go. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was witnessing the beginning of a sustained invasion of my city by the federal government. The National Guard would be called in the next day, over the objections of the California governor. Marines were next, equipped for battle with automatic rifles. They were ostensibly there to protect a wave of ICE raids on sewing shops, flea markets, taco stands and car washes. Instead, they are largely confined to closed federal buildings. The arrival of the Guards and Marines prompted a wave of protest, hundreds of arrests, and sparked a nationwide movement. 

I arrived downtown just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, June 10. Mass arrests were already underway, with a small crowd confined to the block in front of the federal detention center. Police in riot gear held a small crowd of peaceful protestors and journalists at the corner. After 15 minutes or so, I checked the KTLA live stream and saw that another group had walked onto the southbound 101 Freeway. 

The Highway Patrol soon cleared the freeway, and the crowd marched out towards downtown. The crowd on the adjacent street had thinned to journalists taking a break, and onlookers who chose not to follow the march. The scene was as calm as it could be, with hundreds of armed police in riot gear. I had a snack and took a few clips of the officers who would soon have me in handcuffs. A line of riot police converged from each corner, pinning in everyone left in the area. It happened in a moment, with no loudspeaker announcement or opportunity to leave. 

Accredited media were told to approach the line of cops on the north side and were let through. A few unaccredited journalists approached the line and were immediately and violently tackled to the ground. 

The plastic cuffs cut into my wrists as I was loaded onto a bus, one of over a hundred people arrested that day. Two hours later, we were made to sit in folding chairs in the parking garage of a South Los Angeles police station. We were fingerprinted and photographed multiple times by multiple agencies. Seven hours after arriving, I was processed out and let out at the gate with a ticket for failure to disperse and a court date, under a banner which read, “The Tradition Continues.” 

Each time a group was let go, in threes and fours, those remaining detainees cheered on. The group on my bus was as diverse as the city I’m proud to call home ― all united by our love for all of our fellow Angelenos. The atmosphere of resilience was tempered by the knowledge that the swelling wrists and discomfort we were experiencing were temporary for us, but were just the beginning of brutal confinement for so many others. In the last week, hundreds have been taken from their workplaces and sent to unknown confinement centers, ripped from their community, families, and homes.  

A federal court has ruled that the National Guard’s deployment, over the objections of a state’s governor, is illegal, yet they remain in place while the decision is appealed. By the statute, my charge (409PC), failure to disperse, requires that a dispersal order be given, and people be allowed to leave, yet no order was given. People were simply surrounded and arrested, with no consideration for the law. 

As we watch centuries of norms and well-established laws be trampled by our president, I have been inspired by Angelenos’ willingness to stand up in a largely nonviolent community resistance. The people of the city have set an example, rooted in American traditions of nonviolent resistance and civil rights. The city, however, seems to be taking cues from the lawlessness at the federal level, rounding up crowds without dispersal orders and arbitrarily firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. When local police fail to respect the laws regarding Angelenos’ right to free speech and freedom of assembly, in protesting federal action, they risk becoming the ground troops of federal overreach.  

In documenting the events of June 10, I did not break the law. I intend to plead not guilty. If anyone knows a good lawyer, please reach out.

The Zoom Out-As Things Fall Apart

But the experience has left many of us rethinking the role of law enforcement. 

In April, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho called out the federal government for using schools as a stage for its undocumented immigrant raids, calling it tragic for Los Angeles schools and the broader community. 

During that news conference and subsequent news conferences after, Carvalho did two things: He recounted his own story as an undocumented immigrant, in which he said, “I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world, regardless of my position today, if today, I did not fight for those who find themselves in the same predicament I faced over 40 years ago when I arrived in this country at the age of 17 as an undocumented immigrant.” Carvalho went on to say that education made him and saved him. He became a teacher, a principal and a superintendent, leading the nation’s largest district. 

“Do not underestimate the power of the immigrant child, who may very well become an adult who does well and good by America,” he said. 

The second thing he did was deploy school police to protect students and families from warrantless seizures, especially during high-profile events like graduations. This includes securing school grounds, facilitating safe entry/exit, and maintaining a strong stance against any ICE enforcement attempts, ensuring a threat-free environment for ceremonies. 

Other local institutions have not had the wherewithal to put forth such a full-throated defense.

Earlier this month, a Torrance 9-year-old boy and his 50-year-old father were detained by ICE agents during a routine immigration check. They were taken to a detention center in Texas, causing major concern among local elementary school teachers and parents about the impact of the son’s sudden disappearance

Last month, following leaked guidance targeting the sponsors of unaccompanied minors, ICE expanded courthouse and office arrests in Southern California, leading to instances where minors lost custodial adult supervision during routine check-ins.

Frequently, citizens, residents actively engaged in their community’s civic life ask why their community’s law enforcement can’t protect them from federal agents conducting raids without proper judicial warrants. And what’s to stop federal authorities from seizing, detaining and imprisoning locally elected officials doing their jobs in their official capacity? 

New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was escorting a family out of Immigration Court in lower Manhattan when he was arrested by ICE agents. For context, 

Homeland Security has implemented a change in which the legal status of immigrants is stripped through a process called “dismissing their cases.” This sounds good, except that as soon as it happens, immigrants are expedited for removal. ICE agents meet them at the moment of dismissal for arrest and deportation. 

Lander recounted watching a Yoruba-French speaking immigrant’s case, in which the judge, after ensuring the defendant understood through a French language translator, dismissed the immigration case. The freed defendant walked out of the courtroom and down the hallway before masked ICE agents waiting in the lobby grabbed him and renditioned him out of the United States. Landers had the protection of an NYPD detail. But protection is dubious in a city led by a mayor who agreed to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration priorities after meeting with Trump’s appointed “border czar,” following the dismissal of a corruption case filed against him by the Joe Biden-era Justice Department.

Just five days before, Sen. Alex Padilla was forcefully removed and handcuffed during a Los Angeles press conference featuring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was attempting to question Noem about immigration raids, introduced himself, and was detained by Secret Service agents. 

Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, and one of the primary intellectual architects of the modern abolitionist movement, in a recent Instagram post, noted that we were warned:  

“When black folks were saying, ‘Defund the police… abolish ICE,’ this wasn’t hyperbole. We understood that when we kept law enforcement in power, when we kept ICE in power, when we kept sheriffs in power, it would lead to this … to this moment where we are witnessing the rise of fascism and authoritarianism. This is not a game. This is not hyperbole. If any moment there is to call for abolition, now is the moment,” she said.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the attacks are not just on undocumented immigrants or day laborers at Home Depot. The attacks are on all of us — journalists, students, elected officials, parents, workers. No one is safe from a system that operates without checks, transparency, or regard for the law.

Local police, sheriff’s deputies and National Guard units are instruments of the state designed to protect property, power, and order. Institutionally, they are not intended to protect citizens from government abuses, and too often, they enable it. 

What we have — what we’ve always had — is each other. Our neighborhoods, our classrooms, our labor halls, our sidewalks and our streets are where the resistance lives. 

This is not just about immigration. It’s about who we are as a people. And whether we’re willing to fight for each other while there’s still time to choose what kind of country this will be.