Harbor Area ICE Watch

By Rosie Knight, Columnist

Since early June, ICE agents have been staging on Terminal Island, escalating raids and testing new tactics — echoing 1942, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt erased the island’s Japanese fishing community and sent residents to internment camps. Today, a federal force again disappearing our neighbors, using our community as its base of operations. This column will track ICE actions, community responses, and upcoming protests to ensure such history is neither forgotten nor repeated.

If you see an ICE operation in progress, call the Rapid Response Hotline at 888-624-4752.

Raids Continue Across LA

ICE raids continued across Los Angeles on Oct. 17, with confirmed activity in Santa Monica, Inglewood, San Pedro, Anaheim, San Bernardino and Fontana, according to LA Taco’s daily tracker. Many cities reported multiple detentions, reflecting a growing pattern of coordinated federal actions throughout the region.

Harbor Area Peace Patrol to Host Costume Protest

The Harbor Area Peace Patrol will host a Terminal Island costume party, Oct. 24 from 4:30 p.m. to dark, to protest ICE’s use of the Coast Guard base for daily operations. Organizers urge participants to wear costumes — but no weapons or props — and to demonstrate peacefully under the banner “ICE Out of LA!”

Nationwide ‘No Kings’ Rallies Denounce Authoritarianism

On Oct. 18, millions joined “No Kings” rallies across all 50 states to protest authoritarian overreach and government abuses. In Los Angeles, thousands rallied at more than a dozen sites, joining a national call for democracy, accountability and community resistance.

Learn more at: https://tinyurl.com/No-Kings-Rally

Blitz of Harbor Area ICE Raids Leads to 20 Confirmed Kidnapped Community Members

San Pedro residents woke up Wednesday morning on Oct. 8 to what at first seemed like more of the same: Heavy Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity at Terminal Island and, therefore, a wariness about safely moving in and around the Harbor Area. And as it has been since the current administration sent ICE into Los Angeles and San Pedro in June, our loved ones, families and neighbors resiliently got up and went about their days. They got dressed and stepped out of their front doors, hoping that today they would get to return home. Sadly, that was not the case for all of our neighbors. 

According to Harbor Area Peace Patrol, 13 people were kidnapped in San Pedro on Oct. 8, including a local tamale vendor, a man walking past Louie’s No. 2 Chinese Cuisine on Pacific Ave., and people snatched from parking lots. Though it is likely that the number is higher because these are only confirmed kidnappings. 

In a segment of an emailed statement to Random Lengths News, Harbor Area Peace Patrol encouraged readers to join their community of volunteers: 

Our communities are under attack. How do we explain to our children the masked figures tackling, handcuffing, and dragging away the tamale vendor, the day laborer, or the car wash employee? Their continued presence in our community brings only fear, damage to the economy, distrust in elected officials, and division in our country. We encourage all of our neighbors to contact Harbor Area Peace Patrols (harborareapeacepatrols@gmail.com) and learn how to protect each other during this ongoing siege.

It was only a few days later that HAPP reported on seven confirmed kidnappings in Wilmington, after another day of raids on our community.