July 23, 2025 • 40 mins
Mia and James are joined by journalists Mel Buer and Sean Beckner Carmitchel to discuss two months of ICE raids in LA and how the community has come together to resist them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Old Zone Media it.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It could happen here with the podcast about I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
How am I supposed to do the pivot from like
it the Stephen King novel, which could at any point
happen in a place where you are.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I was trying to get to the podcast coming to
you not quite live from a place where a bunch
of just masked guys are drabbing people off the street.
But that works too, Stephen King could pivot. Haven't done
that one yet. I'm your host, Miya Wong. With me
is James Stout, and we're also joined by the wonderful
freelance journalists melbuer At A fucking holy shit. Yeah, so
(00:41):
that happened simultaneously as I inhaled and like apparently a
piece of popcorn just like fucking rail guned into the
back of my throat relief for this song.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
A professionals here, shit, this is going great. Is journalist
John Vector Carpentum. Good lord, I'm so.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Good at my job.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
So what we're gonna be talking about is the continued
resistance to ice and ice actions in LA and in
sort of broader parts of California as stuff has shifted
and intensified so both of you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Glad to be here, happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So I think the place I want to start is,
could you give people just kind of a brief reminder
of what happened during that sort of big flare up
several weeks ago of protests and ice actions in LA I.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
Can probably speak a little bit more to that.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
So, as part of the federal immigration raids that Donald
Trump promised, Los Angeles was one of the first targets
of pretty large scale and pretty frankly random immigration raids.
So it started in early June where you started to see,
you know, massed agents without oftentimes badges or names on
(02:05):
their badges or sometimes even serial numbers. First they started
in home depots areas like that, just sort of running
around parking lots, tackling people and throwing them into buses.
Pretty understandably, Los Angelinos started to protest, and they started
to protest pretty hard, and that happened for a few weeks.
(02:26):
Eventually the Marines in the National Guard were both deployed
to federal buildings more large scale protests, and that sort
of brings us to the last few weeks, which I
think mel can probably speak to Yeah, so.
Speaker 7 (02:41):
You know, the National Guard and the Marines were deployed
like mid June, right, Yeah, and we kind of saw
a little bit of petering out of like the mass
protests that we saw at.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
The beginning of June.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
But still there were a number of organizations and groups
that were trying to keep tabs on the sort of
roving patrols that were happening in Los Angeles throughout the
month of June and early July. So these groups were
taking in tips and trying to maintain a sort of
(03:16):
map of rapid response locations to the ice detainments, kidnappings,
suspension of constitutional rights, if you will.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And so what.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
We saw was you know, a good number of weeks
of social media sort of proliferating these posts about where
ice patrols had gone. And because the you know, and
this is something that organizations have spoken to in the
last couple of weeks, but because their pounder surveillance, I
suppose you could say by these organizations was pretty successful,
(03:50):
the sort of ice patrols began to not happen throughout
the later half of the day.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
They would happen early in the morning.
Speaker 7 (03:57):
They would you know, hit a location, grab as many
people as possible, pull them into the van and take
them away. And they had gotten it down to something
like less than ten minutes that they were on scene,
and it made it a little bit difficult for folks
to be able to respond forcefully to those events. And
they kept it to parking lots, car washes, you know, businesses,
(04:22):
random street vendors, places that they could enter quickly and
leave quickly. We saw in the middle of June and
in the later half of the month that if they
were trying to execute Warrens, for example, in a neighborhood,
they would be blocked in almost immediately by neighbors. So
you can see that there was a pretty consistent response
(04:42):
by Angelino's across the board as much as they could.
And while this was happening, there was also a pretty
dedicated group of individuals who were spending a lot of
time outside the Mentro Detention Center downtown and downtown LA
which is where many of these vans were going in
and out of.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Before they were taking detainees elsewhere.
Speaker 7 (05:03):
Yeah, so you know, across the board, what we've seen
is quite a bit of organizing. Much of this organizing
is decades in the making, especially in Los Angeles, but
also in places like Ventura County and a little bit
up north where you see the same kind of work
that's being done. In the later half of the month,
(05:23):
early July, I should say, we began to see some
pretty intense movements by Border Patrol, most notably in MacArthur
Park on July eighth, I believe, and in the cama
Rio Oxynard area, which is right on the border of
Venture County and other county's name. Escapes me at two
(05:47):
cannabis farms that next week, and those were large scale operations.
A lot of militarized Border Patrol National Guard I believe
helped with both of those operations as well, and also
saw some pretty intense community response to those.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So, Sean, you'd mentioned you wanted to talk a little
more about the organizing, right, Like the way people are
organized to try and kind of resist this or at
least like do what they could.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
One of the things that I think is interesting this
isn't unique to Los Angeles. We're seeing groups organize what
I've been hearing called megri patrols here in Los Angeles.
There's also pretty heavy touch of this from San Diego.
One of the things that I thought was really really
interesting was in Los Angeles has been preparing for a
(06:36):
moment like this since the late sixties. Frankly, you know,
you have groups that have a pretty solid through line
since the mid sixties at the dawn of the Chicano movement,
and these are groups that already have experience with large
scale attainments. Not throughout the city like we were seeing
the last few weeks, but there's this really impressive level
(07:00):
of organization. Where I saw a detainment in Boyle Heights
of a gentleman who was accused of getting a police officer.
Within I think three minutes of them arriving. Not only
was there one or two people, but there was like
fifteen people already onseen. Boyle Heights is pretty singular in
its preparation. However, it was not uncommon. I mean in
(07:23):
MacArthur Park there was a detainment of a few people
who were walking down the street. I was maybe eight
minutes away when I heard about the raid. There was
already like ten people there, including a college professor, including
members of Union Del Borro and at Tennis Union. I
have a bit of a theory that I don't know
if Los Angeles was chosen because they wanted to prove
(07:45):
a point. And there is a part of me that
wonders seeing how quickly people are responding to these raids,
There's a part of me that wonders at that point
was even made.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I think the government's actions can be understood in like
owning the libs and like if your Facebook uncle got
to make government policy, it wouldn't look that different from this.
So I think that was certainly like the point early on,
and they'd have detained a lot of people in La Like,
but yeah, they're organizing. You have very entrenched work in
clouds communities, even going back way before the sixties, right,
(08:17):
like if we look at the zoot suit, right, if
we look at the Brassero program and the attempts to
expel people after that, Like if we look at United
farm Workers like across LA County, we have a long
history of organizing, so like it's a hard target for
them for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And I think it's really interesting listening to YouTube talk
about this matches a lot of what I was hearing
about the way that it all kind of decentralized in
between sort of May and June. And the thing that
it reminds me of really interestingly is what was happening
to sort of other protest movements but reversed. You know,
if you look at like the Power Side encampments right
(08:54):
where it's okay you put a bunch of people in
one spot and then they all get crushed because the
police can bring overwhelming numbers, And it feels like the
raid response has almost been the reverse of that, where
ices had to adopt, at least in that period, had
to adopt the sort of hyper bulbile in and out
like rapid strike kind of thing like because they were
suddenly faced with a scenario where like if they tried
(09:15):
to like stay in mass in an area, it went
really badly for them. And that's absolutely fascinating to me.
Speaker 6 (09:21):
One of the things that I think is interesting is
the first few days you saw a pretty heavy amount
of raids sort of in the central courrior near downtown
or you know, near East Hollywood things like that, and
those were extremely heavily protested. You know, there was a
protest sort of the first day of when the raids
(09:41):
really really started in the garment districts or in the
fashion district excuse me, within minutes there was like seventy
five people there and you know, they were shouting. You know,
they were there before all of the vehicles for federal
agents were actually there. That's the one where you know,
you saw quite a bit of new and folks who
(10:01):
arrive extremely quickly, you know. And one of the other
things that I think is really interesting about this organizing
is you're also seeing regular people who I don't know
if they normally would organize something where they're sort of
facing off with federal agents. You're starting to see them
mobilize in a way that I don't know if you
(10:22):
would normally see them.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
You know.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
One of the ladies that I spoke to as part
of the Rapid Response sort of network is a teacher,
and I talked to her and I was like, hey, like,
why do you do this? And she told me, She's like,
look like, I teach in a heavily immigrant community. My
job is to take care of these kids, and unfortunately,
(10:44):
now part of that is driving around the neighborhood and
looking for white vans filled with people wearing masks.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
That's both incredibly moving and beautiful and also one of
the most hideous things I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
There were quite a few teachers at the SEIU rally
which was on the ninth of June, which was with
David Wuerta, the president of the SCIU, was detained, I
guess allegedly for obstructing federal agents are correctly.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I met a lot of people who were older who
I think were like solidly liberal in their politics, but
not particularly radical, And it was a really interesting combination
of these older people who were outraged and somewhat inexperienced
in street politics and younger people who were outraged and
somewhat inexperienced in street politics. Like it wasn't the same
(11:37):
crowd that you see the people who I'd seen in
twenty twenty when I covered stuff in La. Haven't really
covered much of the Palestine stuff in LA. But a
lot of the people who I interviewed in June were
citizen children of non citizen parents, and they felt like
an obligation on behalf of their community and their family
(11:58):
to show up, and like it was really moving to
see people who were clearly very afraid by the third
night of like unhinged state violence right like as Sean
was there too, but the amount of the les lethal's
that were just being discharged by the third night, like
the protest was split up and so was the policing.
Like there wasn't really ever a point where all the
(12:20):
protesters were able to get together because the police had
so many roads bucked off, and like you would just
turned down the street and they'd be firing leslithought you'd
turned down.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
The street and there's tear gas.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
You turned down the street and there's pepper balls, like
all over downtown LA. And these people were very afraid,
but they still kept coming out, And that was quite
like inspiring to me.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, And I mean, I think that's the situation that
we're in right where you know, the sort of the
fear and the horror has to is being forced to
give way to action because the only alternative to that
is just watching them take your family and take your
neighbors and taking the people you love and caraboll until
one day they take you and it doesn't have to
(12:58):
get to there.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, maybe you know what else is going to take you,
God specifically take money from your wallet. It's these incredible
products and services which we're lucky enough to be.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Able to share with our listeners. We are back.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I notably did not want to do an actual pivot there, but.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
We're back, I think, you know, speaking on sort of
the climate of Los Angeles and at the same time
this sort of insistent joy that Los Angeles has.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
There's a very famous.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Song most of your listeners may have heard it, Lachona,
which is basically just a song about a woman who
won't listen to her husband and gets drunk, and you
see it at every single protest in Los Angeles involving
immigrant rights. And one of the interesting things about it
is multiple times at the protests I would see this
(13:56):
beginning of dancing to La Chona, and then multiple times
it would be broken up. I think this was the thirteenth,
mid June, And eventually it got to a point where
I remember saying, you know, these protesters seem to really
want to listen to this song, and I have a
feeling it's going to end up being played in a
(14:17):
weird spot. What ended up happening is by the end
of it, I saw a bunch of people with like
these gnarly bruises all over their body, you know, welts
from less Lethal's fire, in the middle of the street,
dancing to La Schona. They finally got their chance and
you know, it's whenever the Dodgers win. This speaks to
sort of the specific culture of Los Angeles. I have
(14:39):
seen more fires and people dancing around them to that
song than any other song, including protest songs, throughout the
last five years.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
But there's also you know, I live.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
In Boyle Heights and one of the really interesting and
kind of horrific things is I had sort of been
queued up and trained to listen for the ice cream Man,
both the actual van and there's a guy that does Rospatos,
who just walks down the street honks a bicycle horn.
And I am an actual child, and every time I
(15:12):
heard that bicycle horn, just like I'm sick. It would
just like run out with a lot of cash and
by Rospatos. And for about a week, you didn't hear him.
You didn't a lot of businesses were closed. And then
after about a week he started to see younger people
that looked kind of like the guy that used to
do it, you know, usually the son or the daughter
(15:32):
sort of working for their parents. Now we're starting to
see you know a little bit of a more of
a return to regularity. But you know, one of the
things that was really interesting about all this organizing is
you know, you have unions, you also have like former
politicians and things like that. You know, I got an
email from a former city councilman with the subject line
that just said it is happening here, and I remember
(15:57):
thinking that's that's probably not good.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Yeah, that's not great talking of it is happening. I
think both the NML you were there, you went up
to Camerio right the raid on the cannabis grow operation
and subsequent stand up that was just a different scene
from like DTLA. Can you explain if people aren't familiar,
maybe very briefly explain the operation and the consequences.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
So Sean and I just sat in federal court for
five hours prior to that in downtown LA, where federal
judge was listening to arguments being made in the hopes
of getting a temporary restraining owner on the grounds that
these roving patrols in Los Angeles were unconstitutional. And we
left court and you know, one of our sources who
(16:48):
was also there at the federal courthouse was talking about
how they had heard about this raid happening in cam
Mario and Carpenteria, two different cannabis grow houses, and by
the timing left, it had been happening for five hours
at that point, so they, under a warrant, had rated
both of these cannabis co operations, which are quite large.
(17:12):
We're talking hundreds of workers who work in these processing
centers and greenhouses and such. And local organizers, particularly organizers
with VC Defensa, which is in Ventura County, who has
been doing really successful organizing following ice vehicles wherever they
go to try and head off these roving patrols.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
They've really thrown a wrench in things up there.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
One of the organizers was following one of these border
patrol vehicles and watched as the border patrol vehicle drove
past the gates of a military base out there, and
then kind of got an idea that, Okay, something big
is happening. This is not normal, like this is not
usually what happens when we follow these cars. Usually they're
going into neighborhoods or things of that nature. And so
(17:54):
almost immediately these groups were organizing to try and see
where these cars armored vehicles were going, and they hit
two different locations. One of the locations the one in
came Rio, just outside of is kind of in the
middle of nowhere. It's flanked on all sides with farm fields.
You know, there's dirt highways and you know, two lane
highways that kind of bisect everything. And what they did
(18:18):
when they started this raid is they blocked off the
roads leading into and out of this particular greenhouse, right
and so they had checkpoints, like roadblocks, barricades at like
four or five different locations at these intersections around the greenhouse,
and at every single barricade there were people, so you know,
(18:42):
there were these sort of like face offs between heavily
militarized Border Patrol agents kitted out in the nines. You know,
everything that you could possibly think of. They had, you know,
these massive vehicles. National Guard helped them, you know, block
off these roads. The local police them block off these roads,
which you know, if you know about the sheriff in
(19:04):
Venta County, he's one of the only guys who doesn't
care about sanctuary state ordinances. So it was a standoff essentially,
And when Shawn and I arrived, it was right around dusk,
so you know, it had been many hours since these
raids began. And essentially what Border Patrol found is that
they couldn't leave because these roads were being blocked off.
(19:27):
They got some fans through, but the vast majority of
those vehicles were still there and they weren't prepared to
be there that long. They had to air drop supplies, water,
food in order to you know, shore up these folks,
and you know, as word got out of the sort
of community response to this event, more people showed up.
(19:49):
So by the time Shawn and I got there, we
were driving up lis Posas and suddenly there's cars just
parked on either side of the road, and we ended
up parking, I think like three quarters of a mile
away from the nearest blockade.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
All have to hike in because.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
There was no space for cars, you know, I mean,
we get up there and it's just about dusk and
you can hear the chanting in the distance, and you know,
it was a really horrible and also moving experience to
walk up on, you know, community response to this, and
you know, the standoff continued for another couple of hours,
(20:27):
but it was you know, half of the folks there
are concerned community members, folks of mixed status families who
understand the absolute terror of what happens when the government
is chasing after your dad, you know, and also individuals
who are looking for parents, uncles, you know, they had
no idea where their family members were. I think the
(20:48):
total number of people who were detained and are probably
going to be deported ended up somewhere around three hundred
and sixty one across two farms. Yeah, it's significant, really insane,
you know, and the standoff lasting for a couple extra
hours into the night. People turned on their car headlights
so that we had light out there. There was, you know,
(21:11):
a pretty solid group of individuals who were in communication
with other blockades, asking for folks to shift to other locations,
sharing supplies and water, you know, and then water patrols
started getting anty. You could see them playing with their guns,
you know, their riot munition's weapons. They were shifting, they
(21:33):
were forming and reforming, and you know, organizers kind of
understood that something was about to happen, so they backed off,
strategically retreated because there were marches planned for the next day.
They were leaving. I could see off in the distance.
It witnesses directly until we drove up on it, but
you could see off in the distance that all of
these cars, this line of cars was going around the
(21:55):
back end of the factory on a side road and
then ending up little bit farther down last Posos and
there was flashing lights everywhere. Turns out that they were
trying to make their getaway and they hit what I
think was probably a traffic jam because.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Folks were ready to go.
Speaker 7 (22:12):
They had packed up their cars and they were leaving
when they tear gassed everybody so they could make their getaway.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
So, like Sean and I by the time we drove
up on.
Speaker 7 (22:20):
It, because we saw in the distance it was like
that cloud is not normal, this is a dust. Like
that's tear gas. Let's get in the car and go
see what's going on. We drove up just as the
last canisters were being spent on the road and it
was just a fog, you know, and cars people were panicking.
You know, you get tear gas in your freaking car, man,
(22:40):
You know. It was pretty pretty intense. Not a great experience.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah. I saw some videos from downtown LA on the
first day of protests, and as Sean was there covering it,
they had agents in gas masks in their vehicles and
they would tear gasing in front. And then that seems
to have been like their protocol, right, they will just
tear as the fuck out of the block and then
we'll wear our gas masks inside our vehicles and leave.
But I wanted to explain people I've seen this a
(23:05):
lot will be wondering why Border patrol with in Ventura, so, like,
just to clarify, or Oxnard or wherever they were at
the United States border isn't just a land border, like
the United States has four edges, just like well, there's
lots of edges, but you know, just like anything that's
a big square, right, the ocean is a border too,
and Border patrol has this somewhat arbitrary hundred mile enforcement
(23:26):
zone in which they operate. So when you see border
patrol operating a long way from a land border, that's
because they are still within one hundred miles of a border,
you know, to include the Great Lakes up north. Most
of the United States population lives inside a border patrol
enforcement zone, right.
Speaker 7 (23:44):
So you know you won't see as many unless there
are warrants to be served. For example, in Omaha, Nebraska,
where there was a raid on a factory there that
was a warrant investigation. Generally speaking, Now, yeah, that's why
you see it in Boston, in Chicago, in Florida and
in most of California it lives, you know, withinside that border.
(24:07):
And so, you know, the thing that I can say
is that that next day when we went up and
spoke to organizers, kind of got the skinny on how
they were able to mobilize so quickly. As we were
leaving that march, you know, a federal judge issued a
temporary restraining order in Los Angeles County. Seven cities I
(24:27):
think that were a party to the suit.
Speaker 6 (24:30):
It's not just Los Angeles County. It's the entire district
of the CBD, thank you. Yes, yeah, it was quite
a few cities filed suit as well as the ACLU
farm workers several individual plaintiffs, which blocks them essentially from
having a large scale rate with no warrant. So a
(24:51):
judge basically told them, hey, you have to have a
reason to be stopping entertaining people.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
The judge.
Speaker 6 (24:58):
I don't want to read too much into a judge's
personal thoughts, but it became pretty clear even when they
were having the hearing that the judge had pretty much
had her own concerns that I don't think we're even
in the filings. And it also bat is essentially the
basement in a federal building, which is where a significant
amount of the people are being held, and it forced
(25:21):
them to allow lawyers access as well as a lot
of them were essentially in these rooms that were like
fifty to sixty people and there was one phone in
the middle of it, so they were not getting private counsel.
And with the restraining order, which I believe ends time
next week, now they actually have to provide access to lawyers,
(25:44):
you know, basic constitutional stuff.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (25:48):
Man, let me tell you it was really, really bizarre
to sit in a federal hearing. Now. Look, I've read
transcripts from other reporters who listen in on these federal
immigration issue hearings that you've had over the last six months.
It is a whole other experience to be sitting in
a courtroom with your little notepad, listening to the government's
(26:09):
lawyers try and make the case that no, we're not
actually racially profiling people here, we are just stopping them
based on their appearance, facial expressions, what they're wearing, potentially
the language that they choose to speak. And all of
us sitting in the gallery are like, okay, you actually
made that argument in an open court.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Cool you know.
Speaker 7 (26:29):
What I mean, like absolutely insane to hear that come
out of a DOJ lawyer's mouth, where they're like, we
take umbrage with the fact that you're saying that we're
racial profiling. By the way, here's all the things that
we are doing, which is essentially profiling people.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
You know.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
So the tro is essentially just enforcing the Fourth Amendment,
which is saying, you know, you cannot conduct these roving
patrols and stop people without probable cause or weren't you
just can't do it, you know. And what that's done
is we have seen much less of the immigration enforcement
activity that was a feature of June and early July,
(27:08):
and it's kind of moving to the periphericly. I know
that there are things happening in San Diego, James, and
we've seen some potential reports out of Sacramento. We've seen
reports up north in San Francisco, you know, in terms
of the enforcement zone in California. We're also seeing ramping
up immigration activities in places like Chicago and other.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Cities Utah, for example.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
And now in the last week and a half we've
seen half of the federalized National Guard be taken off
deployment and sent home and as of today, the twenty
first of July, they're sending home the Marines, you know,
which good right, But it's very clear that whatever they
(27:51):
were trying to accomplish in Los Angeles to make a
point to be a battering ram to set Los Angeles,
which is always kind of been known as the sanctuary
city and the surrounding area as like the example of
what immigration enforcement activity in this new era of Trump
(28:11):
two point zero what have you will look like? And
ultimately I don't think they were successful. I mean, you
look at the raid in MacArthur Park for example, or
it was meant to be this you know, big operation
essensibly to try and crack down on fake ID processing.
Sean can talk to more of the context around MacArthur
Park than I can. But they showed up and organizers
(28:33):
had already cleared the park. You know, we were there
for two and a half hours before they even showed up,
and we watched as organizers put up signs. They were
sitting at the home depot up the street making sure
the folks knew that there might be a raid today.
Like organizers had called through the entire park and said
this might happen today. If you're a mixed status or
(28:53):
you know, your status is not one with papers, you
might want to go home. You know, they cleared the
soccer fe which had forty five people playing soccer on it,
you know, and so by the time these armored vehicles
are running down the street and doing all of their theater,
there's no one there at all. You know, there's journalists,
(29:13):
there's us. You know, there's a couple of unhoused folks
who said, you know, screw that, I don't want to leave,
but the vast majority of people had already gone, and
so all that they got out of it was a
really shitty hype video and a mayor and a governor
who were like really really pissed off, and you know,
a city that's just not going to just roll over
(29:37):
and let this kind of crap happen, you know. And
I think that's really emblematic of like what's been going
on in Los Angeles for the last six weeks is
they did not get the response that they were expecting,
and they weren't prepared for that response and for the
you know, for that to be a continuous response to unconstitutional, oppressive,
(29:58):
violent actions by ICE and by the agencies that are
enabling ICE.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
So yeah, you know, I think when we say city,
we should like be clear that we're referring to like
the city kua like community, not city like as government entity. Right, Like,
there really hasn't been any certainly here in San Diego.
At San Diego Police Department technically don't assist ICE, but
they do show up to like form a cordon around them, right,
like to prevent any confrontation between them and protesters. And
(30:29):
we saw like every police agency, like literally every police
agency in La County and also Ventura County sheriffs were
there for the biggest protest days. The city hasn't used
its resources in that sense to stop this, right, They've
made rhetorical statements, but they haven't done anything with their police.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, and I think this speaks to a kind of
larger thing, which is like these people thought they could
just come into cities around the country and just shocking
all everyone in ROLLI went over because like they think
they're the Nazis. But the thing about the Nazis is
that like people supported them, right, Like all the shit
the Nazis were able to do happened because people wanted it.
To happen, and in a country where people don't want
that shit to happen, where everyone looks at this and goes,
(31:08):
what the fuck is going on? We're like, it's like
seventy nine percent support for like the effects of immigration
on the US right now, where everyone's looking at this
and just being like.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
No, they can't do it.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
There aren't enough of them. I don't know, Like it's
just so stunning to me watching them like have to
do the tactical adaptations that like normally like protest groups
have to do because the cops have tuned more resources
than them. But they're having to do it because they's
just like every single person walking down the street is
like fuck you eat shit, and so they're just like
outnumbered everywhere they go. It's and that's not to say
(31:42):
it's not like fucking horrible, because yeah, resisting fascism fucking
sucks a lot of the time and a lot of
people get hurt, and it's hideous, and also it's what
has to be done. The last thing that I wanted
to ask is, so, with the injunction kind of like
(32:02):
coming to an end soon, what do you think is
the future of sort of what ice is going to
be doing, and what the response is going to be,
and what border patrol are doing in this sort of
month to come.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
One of the things that I'm curious about is we
won't really know what the federal government's plan is until
I think it's the We'll just say late July when
the next hearing is. So the temporar restraining order ends
in late July. Generally speaking, with temporary restraining orders on
law enforcement, what you see is they either continue while
(32:39):
the hearings commence, or you see a pretty large mountain
of evidence that says, hey, we did this, this, this, this,
and this. That's changed it. So we're now sort of
in cooperation with the order. That is likely one of
the reasons why we've seen fewer raids here.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
In Los Angeles.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
Ultimately, a temporary restraining order is I don't want to
call it a wilder extreme action at all, but those
are generally signed when a judge agrees that it is
extremely likely that, given the current situation, the plaintiffs have
a case.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
So unless the federal.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
Government comes by with like this gigantic mountain of new
training and all these new plans and things like that,
My guess is we'll probably see at least some of
the things in that temporary restraining order continue. I also
think it's possible if the federal government is just going
to say, you know what, this temporary restraining order only
applies to this specific area, We'll just go somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
It's the Central District of California, right, so like San Luis, Obispo,
Santa Barbara, Venture La, Riverside County as well.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
I think yep, Riverside.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, it doesn't include San Diego, doesn't include the Northern District,
which is most of the rest coast of California, or
the Eastern District, which is to the Valley and further
northeastern California. So yeah, it's perfectly possible they could go
somewhere else and still do that shit within California.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Or like you say, like.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
There are so many targets, right because immigrants are part
of the fabric of our society. They are everywhere, and
that's you know, they can just go for wherever they
think a soft target is.
Speaker 7 (34:20):
And there's also work noting that you know, these organizers
are going to continue to organize, right, So these groups
Central Coso and Union of barrio, and you know the
various other groups. Again, I've been around for decades. VC
Defense that has been around since twenty sixteen. Right, this
is only a portion of the organizing that they do.
You know, they didn't start with or they will not
(34:44):
end with, just these patrols. Right. So they've built out
infrastructure and mutual aid group networks that are buying groceries
for folks and mixed status families that are covering the
sort of bills that are not being paid because people
are too afraid to go to work. They're doing wildcare,
they're getting kids to school, they're trying to provide legal defense.
You know, like these are you know, coalitions of individuals
(35:06):
who live in these areas who are doing long term
organizing to shore up the community whether or not there
is an onslaught of immigration enforcement activity in a certain
geographical area.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
So in terms of organizing, it's just going to keep happening.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
And that's good, right, And you know, I think that
what's hardening to see after the last you know, seven
weeks of really intense, really scary, really horrifying kidnappings and
detainments on the streets in southern California, is you know,
(35:42):
an equal and often more you know, stronger response to
it from the community that you know reminds you that
this is not the end and folks are prepared for
picking up the slack when things fall through.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
You know, people are not falling through the cracks.
Speaker 7 (35:59):
People are not having their lives shattered without someone watching
and trying to help. So that's an important piece there,
you know. So I would say that in terms of
the response and what happens next, like it's a multi
front thing. You have these legal cases finding their way
through the courts, you have from all levels, right, and
you have individuals who are trying to keep track of
(36:20):
folks who have been detained and deported and sending money
back to Mexico or whatever, you know, other country that
these folks are being sent back to making sure that
things are as much as they can. You know, there
aren't any rips in the safety net. And I think
that's the main lesson of the last seven weeks is
like that sort of response is incredible and you can.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Replicate it anywhere that you are.
Speaker 7 (36:44):
You know a lot of folks like to, you know,
kind of roll their eyes at the idea of like
organizing starts with talking to your neighbor. No, actually it does, right,
And you know there's these models, especially in southern and
central California, where this organizing works.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Right.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
It's not particularly ideological in many ways, sometimes it is,
but the basic function of it is to make sure
that your neighbor doesn't fall into a hole, right, and
they'll do the same for you, so you don't fall
into a hole should something happen to you. So you know,
start there and take a look at these models that
these absolute fucking heroes pardon my language, are doing in
(37:22):
this area, and know that you can also do that.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
So, yeah, these people in every facet of this are
just you somewhere else or help.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Maybe they are literally you. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
I keep up the good work, Suan.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Do you want to explain to us very briefly the
FBI arrests and the case against at least one of
the Centro CSO members.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
Well, right now, there's only one criminal complaint, and that's
for Alejandro Oriana, who is accused of conspiracy to commit
to the disorder as well as hating and embedding a
conspiracy to commit civil disorder. The criminal complaint, all it
really says is that he gave a dispense with face
(38:11):
shields to protesters who were dressed like they might do
something bad. At no point during a criminal complaint does
it even say, hey, he handed it to a guy
and then that guy made.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
It a crime. Doesn't even go that far. It just
goes those.
Speaker 6 (38:25):
Guys look kind of I don't know, they look like
they're about to do something, and says that, you know,
these people were dressed in such a way where it
might interfere with law enforcement activities, like you know, it
would deaden the impact of left leeple weapons.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yeah, I mean the impact of leslie for weapons on
your face is potentially fatal.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
Yeah, and you know beyond that, you know, there was
a search warrant for another member of Central CSO who
was roughly handled by FBI agents on a walk through
the park and was given a search warrant and her
phone was taken. I asked the US Attorney's office if
they were related, and first was sold I don't know
(39:07):
what you're talking about, which I thought was a little interesting.
Never gotten that response from any official, and then a
few hours later got an official response that said, no,
it is another case. So what that means, time will
tell but I think it's likely that there will be
more to come on top of that. I think it's
interesting to note that the first arraignment for Oreana was
(39:30):
an absolutely packed court.
Speaker 5 (39:31):
And support of them.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Where can people find youtubo's work and where can people
support you as you do a whole bunch of incredibly
critical journalism on the continuing resistance to the fascist deportation campaign.
Speaker 7 (39:44):
A lot of my reporting goes to Blue Sky, so
you can find me at melbu or Blueskuy dot social
I have a newsletter, the Words about Work dot blog,
and you can also find me on my Instagram. My
link trees linked in all sorts of places, so you
can find all of those links in inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Place, including the description of this episode.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Hey yeah, those are the places where you can find me.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
You can find me on a cat with news on
all social media platforms, although most of my sort of
breaking stories come on Blue Sky first, and I'm a
freelance journalist, so usually you can just google my name
and you'll see some stories there. On my Blue Sky
and Instagram, there's a link tree if you want to support.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Hell Yeah, and to everyone listening to the show, always
remember you are many, they are few.
Speaker 8 (40:40):
It could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone
Media from one podcast from pool Zone Media. Visit our
website Poolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it could Happen Here.
Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Old Zone Media it.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It could happen here with the podcast about I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
How am I supposed to do the pivot from like
it the Stephen King novel, which could at any point
happen in a place where you are.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I was trying to get to the podcast coming to
you not quite live from a place where a bunch
of just masked guys are drabbing people off the street.
But that works too, Stephen King could pivot. Haven't done
that one yet. I'm your host, Miya Wong. With me
is James Stout, and we're also joined by the wonderful
freelance journalists melbuer At A fucking holy shit. Yeah, so
(00:41):
that happened simultaneously as I inhaled and like apparently a
piece of popcorn just like fucking rail guned into the
back of my throat relief for this song.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
A professionals here, shit, this is going great. Is journalist
John Vector Carpentum. Good lord, I'm so.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Good at my job.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
So what we're gonna be talking about is the continued
resistance to ice and ice actions in LA and in
sort of broader parts of California as stuff has shifted
and intensified so both of you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Glad to be here, happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So I think the place I want to start is,
could you give people just kind of a brief reminder
of what happened during that sort of big flare up
several weeks ago of protests and ice actions in LA I.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
Can probably speak a little bit more to that.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
So, as part of the federal immigration raids that Donald
Trump promised, Los Angeles was one of the first targets
of pretty large scale and pretty frankly random immigration raids.
So it started in early June where you started to see,
you know, massed agents without oftentimes badges or names on
(02:05):
their badges or sometimes even serial numbers. First they started
in home depots areas like that, just sort of running
around parking lots, tackling people and throwing them into buses.
Pretty understandably, Los Angelinos started to protest, and they started
to protest pretty hard, and that happened for a few weeks.
(02:26):
Eventually the Marines in the National Guard were both deployed
to federal buildings more large scale protests, and that sort
of brings us to the last few weeks, which I
think mel can probably speak to Yeah, so.
Speaker 7 (02:41):
You know, the National Guard and the Marines were deployed
like mid June, right, Yeah, and we kind of saw
a little bit of petering out of like the mass
protests that we saw at.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
The beginning of June.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
But still there were a number of organizations and groups
that were trying to keep tabs on the sort of
roving patrols that were happening in Los Angeles throughout the
month of June and early July. So these groups were
taking in tips and trying to maintain a sort of
(03:16):
map of rapid response locations to the ice detainments, kidnappings,
suspension of constitutional rights, if you will.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And so what.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
We saw was you know, a good number of weeks
of social media sort of proliferating these posts about where
ice patrols had gone. And because the you know, and
this is something that organizations have spoken to in the
last couple of weeks, but because their pounder surveillance, I
suppose you could say by these organizations was pretty successful,
(03:50):
the sort of ice patrols began to not happen throughout
the later half of the day.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
They would happen early in the morning.
Speaker 7 (03:57):
They would you know, hit a location, grab as many
people as possible, pull them into the van and take
them away. And they had gotten it down to something
like less than ten minutes that they were on scene,
and it made it a little bit difficult for folks
to be able to respond forcefully to those events. And
they kept it to parking lots, car washes, you know, businesses,
(04:22):
random street vendors, places that they could enter quickly and
leave quickly. We saw in the middle of June and
in the later half of the month that if they
were trying to execute Warrens, for example, in a neighborhood,
they would be blocked in almost immediately by neighbors. So
you can see that there was a pretty consistent response
(04:42):
by Angelino's across the board as much as they could.
And while this was happening, there was also a pretty
dedicated group of individuals who were spending a lot of
time outside the Mentro Detention Center downtown and downtown LA
which is where many of these vans were going in
and out of.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Before they were taking detainees elsewhere.
Speaker 7 (05:03):
Yeah, so you know, across the board, what we've seen
is quite a bit of organizing. Much of this organizing
is decades in the making, especially in Los Angeles, but
also in places like Ventura County and a little bit
up north where you see the same kind of work
that's being done. In the later half of the month,
(05:23):
early July, I should say, we began to see some
pretty intense movements by Border Patrol, most notably in MacArthur
Park on July eighth, I believe, and in the cama
Rio Oxynard area, which is right on the border of
Venture County and other county's name. Escapes me at two
(05:47):
cannabis farms that next week, and those were large scale operations.
A lot of militarized Border Patrol National Guard I believe
helped with both of those operations as well, and also
saw some pretty intense community response to those.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So, Sean, you'd mentioned you wanted to talk a little
more about the organizing, right, Like the way people are
organized to try and kind of resist this or at
least like do what they could.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
One of the things that I think is interesting this
isn't unique to Los Angeles. We're seeing groups organize what
I've been hearing called megri patrols here in Los Angeles.
There's also pretty heavy touch of this from San Diego.
One of the things that I thought was really really
interesting was in Los Angeles has been preparing for a
(06:36):
moment like this since the late sixties. Frankly, you know,
you have groups that have a pretty solid through line
since the mid sixties at the dawn of the Chicano movement,
and these are groups that already have experience with large
scale attainments. Not throughout the city like we were seeing
the last few weeks, but there's this really impressive level
(07:00):
of organization. Where I saw a detainment in Boyle Heights
of a gentleman who was accused of getting a police officer.
Within I think three minutes of them arriving. Not only
was there one or two people, but there was like
fifteen people already onseen. Boyle Heights is pretty singular in
its preparation. However, it was not uncommon. I mean in
(07:23):
MacArthur Park there was a detainment of a few people
who were walking down the street. I was maybe eight
minutes away when I heard about the raid. There was
already like ten people there, including a college professor, including
members of Union Del Borro and at Tennis Union. I
have a bit of a theory that I don't know
if Los Angeles was chosen because they wanted to prove
(07:45):
a point. And there is a part of me that
wonders seeing how quickly people are responding to these raids,
There's a part of me that wonders at that point
was even made.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I think the government's actions can be understood in like
owning the libs and like if your Facebook uncle got
to make government policy, it wouldn't look that different from this.
So I think that was certainly like the point early on,
and they'd have detained a lot of people in La Like,
but yeah, they're organizing. You have very entrenched work in
clouds communities, even going back way before the sixties, right,
(08:17):
like if we look at the zoot suit, right, if
we look at the Brassero program and the attempts to
expel people after that, Like if we look at United
farm Workers like across LA County, we have a long
history of organizing, so like it's a hard target for
them for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And I think it's really interesting listening to YouTube talk
about this matches a lot of what I was hearing
about the way that it all kind of decentralized in
between sort of May and June. And the thing that
it reminds me of really interestingly is what was happening
to sort of other protest movements but reversed. You know,
if you look at like the Power Side encampments right
(08:54):
where it's okay you put a bunch of people in
one spot and then they all get crushed because the
police can bring overwhelming numbers, And it feels like the
raid response has almost been the reverse of that, where
ices had to adopt, at least in that period, had
to adopt the sort of hyper bulbile in and out
like rapid strike kind of thing like because they were
suddenly faced with a scenario where like if they tried
(09:15):
to like stay in mass in an area, it went
really badly for them. And that's absolutely fascinating to me.
Speaker 6 (09:21):
One of the things that I think is interesting is
the first few days you saw a pretty heavy amount
of raids sort of in the central courrior near downtown
or you know, near East Hollywood things like that, and
those were extremely heavily protested. You know, there was a
protest sort of the first day of when the raids
(09:41):
really really started in the garment districts or in the
fashion district excuse me, within minutes there was like seventy
five people there and you know, they were shouting. You know,
they were there before all of the vehicles for federal
agents were actually there. That's the one where you know,
you saw quite a bit of new and folks who
(10:01):
arrive extremely quickly, you know. And one of the other
things that I think is really interesting about this organizing
is you're also seeing regular people who I don't know
if they normally would organize something where they're sort of
facing off with federal agents. You're starting to see them
mobilize in a way that I don't know if you
(10:22):
would normally see them.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
You know.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
One of the ladies that I spoke to as part
of the Rapid Response sort of network is a teacher,
and I talked to her and I was like, hey, like,
why do you do this? And she told me, She's like,
look like, I teach in a heavily immigrant community. My
job is to take care of these kids, and unfortunately,
(10:44):
now part of that is driving around the neighborhood and
looking for white vans filled with people wearing masks.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
That's both incredibly moving and beautiful and also one of
the most hideous things I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
There were quite a few teachers at the SEIU rally
which was on the ninth of June, which was with
David Wuerta, the president of the SCIU, was detained, I
guess allegedly for obstructing federal agents are correctly.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I met a lot of people who were older who
I think were like solidly liberal in their politics, but
not particularly radical, And it was a really interesting combination
of these older people who were outraged and somewhat inexperienced
in street politics and younger people who were outraged and
somewhat inexperienced in street politics. Like it wasn't the same
(11:37):
crowd that you see the people who I'd seen in
twenty twenty when I covered stuff in La. Haven't really
covered much of the Palestine stuff in LA. But a
lot of the people who I interviewed in June were
citizen children of non citizen parents, and they felt like
an obligation on behalf of their community and their family
(11:58):
to show up, and like it was really moving to
see people who were clearly very afraid by the third
night of like unhinged state violence right like as Sean
was there too, but the amount of the les lethal's
that were just being discharged by the third night, like
the protest was split up and so was the policing.
Like there wasn't really ever a point where all the
(12:20):
protesters were able to get together because the police had
so many roads bucked off, and like you would just
turned down the street and they'd be firing leslithought you'd
turned down.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
The street and there's tear gas.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
You turned down the street and there's pepper balls, like
all over downtown LA. And these people were very afraid,
but they still kept coming out, And that was quite
like inspiring to me.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, And I mean, I think that's the situation that
we're in right where you know, the sort of the
fear and the horror has to is being forced to
give way to action because the only alternative to that
is just watching them take your family and take your
neighbors and taking the people you love and caraboll until
one day they take you and it doesn't have to
(12:58):
get to there.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, maybe you know what else is going to take you,
God specifically take money from your wallet. It's these incredible
products and services which we're lucky enough to be.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Able to share with our listeners. We are back.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I notably did not want to do an actual pivot there, but.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
We're back, I think, you know, speaking on sort of
the climate of Los Angeles and at the same time
this sort of insistent joy that Los Angeles has.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
There's a very famous.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Song most of your listeners may have heard it, Lachona,
which is basically just a song about a woman who
won't listen to her husband and gets drunk, and you
see it at every single protest in Los Angeles involving
immigrant rights. And one of the interesting things about it
is multiple times at the protests I would see this
(13:56):
beginning of dancing to La Chona, and then multiple times
it would be broken up. I think this was the thirteenth,
mid June, And eventually it got to a point where
I remember saying, you know, these protesters seem to really
want to listen to this song, and I have a
feeling it's going to end up being played in a
(14:17):
weird spot. What ended up happening is by the end
of it, I saw a bunch of people with like
these gnarly bruises all over their body, you know, welts
from less Lethal's fire, in the middle of the street,
dancing to La Schona. They finally got their chance and
you know, it's whenever the Dodgers win. This speaks to
sort of the specific culture of Los Angeles. I have
(14:39):
seen more fires and people dancing around them to that
song than any other song, including protest songs, throughout the
last five years.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
But there's also you know, I live.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
In Boyle Heights and one of the really interesting and
kind of horrific things is I had sort of been
queued up and trained to listen for the ice cream Man,
both the actual van and there's a guy that does Rospatos,
who just walks down the street honks a bicycle horn.
And I am an actual child, and every time I
(15:12):
heard that bicycle horn, just like I'm sick. It would
just like run out with a lot of cash and
by Rospatos. And for about a week, you didn't hear him.
You didn't a lot of businesses were closed. And then
after about a week he started to see younger people
that looked kind of like the guy that used to
do it, you know, usually the son or the daughter
(15:32):
sort of working for their parents. Now we're starting to
see you know a little bit of a more of
a return to regularity. But you know, one of the
things that was really interesting about all this organizing is
you know, you have unions, you also have like former
politicians and things like that. You know, I got an
email from a former city councilman with the subject line
that just said it is happening here, and I remember
(15:57):
thinking that's that's probably not good.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Yeah, that's not great talking of it is happening. I
think both the NML you were there, you went up
to Camerio right the raid on the cannabis grow operation
and subsequent stand up that was just a different scene
from like DTLA. Can you explain if people aren't familiar,
maybe very briefly explain the operation and the consequences.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
So Sean and I just sat in federal court for
five hours prior to that in downtown LA, where federal
judge was listening to arguments being made in the hopes
of getting a temporary restraining owner on the grounds that
these roving patrols in Los Angeles were unconstitutional. And we
left court and you know, one of our sources who
(16:48):
was also there at the federal courthouse was talking about
how they had heard about this raid happening in cam
Mario and Carpenteria, two different cannabis grow houses, and by
the timing left, it had been happening for five hours
at that point, so they, under a warrant, had rated
both of these cannabis co operations, which are quite large.
(17:12):
We're talking hundreds of workers who work in these processing
centers and greenhouses and such. And local organizers, particularly organizers
with VC Defensa, which is in Ventura County, who has
been doing really successful organizing following ice vehicles wherever they
go to try and head off these roving patrols.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
They've really thrown a wrench in things up there.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
One of the organizers was following one of these border
patrol vehicles and watched as the border patrol vehicle drove
past the gates of a military base out there, and
then kind of got an idea that, Okay, something big
is happening. This is not normal, like this is not
usually what happens when we follow these cars. Usually they're
going into neighborhoods or things of that nature. And so
(17:54):
almost immediately these groups were organizing to try and see
where these cars armored vehicles were going, and they hit
two different locations. One of the locations the one in
came Rio, just outside of is kind of in the
middle of nowhere. It's flanked on all sides with farm fields.
You know, there's dirt highways and you know, two lane
highways that kind of bisect everything. And what they did
(18:18):
when they started this raid is they blocked off the
roads leading into and out of this particular greenhouse, right
and so they had checkpoints, like roadblocks, barricades at like
four or five different locations at these intersections around the greenhouse,
and at every single barricade there were people, so you know,
(18:42):
there were these sort of like face offs between heavily
militarized Border Patrol agents kitted out in the nines. You know,
everything that you could possibly think of. They had, you know,
these massive vehicles. National Guard helped them, you know, block
off these roads. The local police them block off these roads,
which you know, if you know about the sheriff in
(19:04):
Venta County, he's one of the only guys who doesn't
care about sanctuary state ordinances. So it was a standoff essentially,
And when Shawn and I arrived, it was right around dusk,
so you know, it had been many hours since these
raids began. And essentially what Border Patrol found is that
they couldn't leave because these roads were being blocked off.
(19:27):
They got some fans through, but the vast majority of
those vehicles were still there and they weren't prepared to
be there that long. They had to air drop supplies, water,
food in order to you know, shore up these folks,
and you know, as word got out of the sort
of community response to this event, more people showed up.
(19:49):
So by the time Shawn and I got there, we
were driving up lis Posas and suddenly there's cars just
parked on either side of the road, and we ended
up parking, I think like three quarters of a mile
away from the nearest blockade.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
All have to hike in because.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
There was no space for cars, you know, I mean,
we get up there and it's just about dusk and
you can hear the chanting in the distance, and you know,
it was a really horrible and also moving experience to
walk up on, you know, community response to this, and
you know, the standoff continued for another couple of hours,
(20:27):
but it was you know, half of the folks there
are concerned community members, folks of mixed status families who
understand the absolute terror of what happens when the government
is chasing after your dad, you know, and also individuals
who are looking for parents, uncles, you know, they had
no idea where their family members were. I think the
(20:48):
total number of people who were detained and are probably
going to be deported ended up somewhere around three hundred
and sixty one across two farms. Yeah, it's significant, really insane,
you know, and the standoff lasting for a couple extra
hours into the night. People turned on their car headlights
so that we had light out there. There was, you know,
(21:11):
a pretty solid group of individuals who were in communication
with other blockades, asking for folks to shift to other locations,
sharing supplies and water, you know, and then water patrols
started getting anty. You could see them playing with their guns,
you know, their riot munition's weapons. They were shifting, they
(21:33):
were forming and reforming, and you know, organizers kind of
understood that something was about to happen, so they backed off,
strategically retreated because there were marches planned for the next day.
They were leaving. I could see off in the distance.
It witnesses directly until we drove up on it, but
you could see off in the distance that all of
these cars, this line of cars was going around the
(21:55):
back end of the factory on a side road and
then ending up little bit farther down last Posos and
there was flashing lights everywhere. Turns out that they were
trying to make their getaway and they hit what I
think was probably a traffic jam because.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Folks were ready to go.
Speaker 7 (22:12):
They had packed up their cars and they were leaving
when they tear gassed everybody so they could make their getaway.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
So, like Sean and I by the time we drove
up on.
Speaker 7 (22:20):
It, because we saw in the distance it was like
that cloud is not normal, this is a dust. Like
that's tear gas. Let's get in the car and go
see what's going on. We drove up just as the
last canisters were being spent on the road and it
was just a fog, you know, and cars people were panicking.
You know, you get tear gas in your freaking car, man,
(22:40):
You know. It was pretty pretty intense. Not a great experience.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah. I saw some videos from downtown LA on the
first day of protests, and as Sean was there covering it,
they had agents in gas masks in their vehicles and
they would tear gasing in front. And then that seems
to have been like their protocol, right, they will just
tear as the fuck out of the block and then
we'll wear our gas masks inside our vehicles and leave.
But I wanted to explain people I've seen this a
(23:05):
lot will be wondering why Border patrol with in Ventura, so, like,
just to clarify, or Oxnard or wherever they were at
the United States border isn't just a land border, like
the United States has four edges, just like well, there's
lots of edges, but you know, just like anything that's
a big square, right, the ocean is a border too,
and Border patrol has this somewhat arbitrary hundred mile enforcement
(23:26):
zone in which they operate. So when you see border
patrol operating a long way from a land border, that's
because they are still within one hundred miles of a border,
you know, to include the Great Lakes up north. Most
of the United States population lives inside a border patrol
enforcement zone, right.
Speaker 7 (23:44):
So you know you won't see as many unless there
are warrants to be served. For example, in Omaha, Nebraska,
where there was a raid on a factory there that
was a warrant investigation. Generally speaking, Now, yeah, that's why
you see it in Boston, in Chicago, in Florida and
in most of California it lives, you know, withinside that border.
(24:07):
And so, you know, the thing that I can say
is that that next day when we went up and
spoke to organizers, kind of got the skinny on how
they were able to mobilize so quickly. As we were
leaving that march, you know, a federal judge issued a
temporary restraining order in Los Angeles County. Seven cities I
(24:27):
think that were a party to the suit.
Speaker 6 (24:30):
It's not just Los Angeles County. It's the entire district
of the CBD, thank you. Yes, yeah, it was quite
a few cities filed suit as well as the ACLU
farm workers several individual plaintiffs, which blocks them essentially from
having a large scale rate with no warrant. So a
(24:51):
judge basically told them, hey, you have to have a
reason to be stopping entertaining people.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
The judge.
Speaker 6 (24:58):
I don't want to read too much into a judge's
personal thoughts, but it became pretty clear even when they
were having the hearing that the judge had pretty much
had her own concerns that I don't think we're even
in the filings. And it also bat is essentially the
basement in a federal building, which is where a significant
amount of the people are being held, and it forced
(25:21):
them to allow lawyers access as well as a lot
of them were essentially in these rooms that were like
fifty to sixty people and there was one phone in
the middle of it, so they were not getting private counsel.
And with the restraining order, which I believe ends time
next week, now they actually have to provide access to lawyers,
(25:44):
you know, basic constitutional stuff.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (25:48):
Man, let me tell you it was really, really bizarre
to sit in a federal hearing. Now. Look, I've read
transcripts from other reporters who listen in on these federal
immigration issue hearings that you've had over the last six months.
It is a whole other experience to be sitting in
a courtroom with your little notepad, listening to the government's
(26:09):
lawyers try and make the case that no, we're not
actually racially profiling people here, we are just stopping them
based on their appearance, facial expressions, what they're wearing, potentially
the language that they choose to speak. And all of
us sitting in the gallery are like, okay, you actually
made that argument in an open court.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Cool you know.
Speaker 7 (26:29):
What I mean, like absolutely insane to hear that come
out of a DOJ lawyer's mouth, where they're like, we
take umbrage with the fact that you're saying that we're
racial profiling. By the way, here's all the things that
we are doing, which is essentially profiling people.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
You know.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
So the tro is essentially just enforcing the Fourth Amendment,
which is saying, you know, you cannot conduct these roving
patrols and stop people without probable cause or weren't you
just can't do it, you know. And what that's done
is we have seen much less of the immigration enforcement
activity that was a feature of June and early July,
(27:08):
and it's kind of moving to the periphericly. I know
that there are things happening in San Diego, James, and
we've seen some potential reports out of Sacramento. We've seen
reports up north in San Francisco, you know, in terms
of the enforcement zone in California. We're also seeing ramping
up immigration activities in places like Chicago and other.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Cities Utah, for example.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
And now in the last week and a half we've
seen half of the federalized National Guard be taken off
deployment and sent home and as of today, the twenty
first of July, they're sending home the Marines, you know,
which good right, But it's very clear that whatever they
(27:51):
were trying to accomplish in Los Angeles to make a
point to be a battering ram to set Los Angeles,
which is always kind of been known as the sanctuary
city and the surrounding area as like the example of
what immigration enforcement activity in this new era of Trump
(28:11):
two point zero what have you will look like? And
ultimately I don't think they were successful. I mean, you
look at the raid in MacArthur Park for example, or
it was meant to be this you know, big operation
essensibly to try and crack down on fake ID processing.
Sean can talk to more of the context around MacArthur
Park than I can. But they showed up and organizers
(28:33):
had already cleared the park. You know, we were there
for two and a half hours before they even showed up,
and we watched as organizers put up signs. They were
sitting at the home depot up the street making sure
the folks knew that there might be a raid today.
Like organizers had called through the entire park and said
this might happen today. If you're a mixed status or
(28:53):
you know, your status is not one with papers, you
might want to go home. You know, they cleared the
soccer fe which had forty five people playing soccer on it,
you know, and so by the time these armored vehicles
are running down the street and doing all of their theater,
there's no one there at all. You know, there's journalists,
(29:13):
there's us. You know, there's a couple of unhoused folks
who said, you know, screw that, I don't want to leave,
but the vast majority of people had already gone, and
so all that they got out of it was a
really shitty hype video and a mayor and a governor
who were like really really pissed off, and you know,
a city that's just not going to just roll over
(29:37):
and let this kind of crap happen, you know. And
I think that's really emblematic of like what's been going
on in Los Angeles for the last six weeks is
they did not get the response that they were expecting,
and they weren't prepared for that response and for the
you know, for that to be a continuous response to unconstitutional, oppressive,
(29:58):
violent actions by ICE and by the agencies that are
enabling ICE.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
So yeah, you know, I think when we say city,
we should like be clear that we're referring to like
the city kua like community, not city like as government entity. Right, Like,
there really hasn't been any certainly here in San Diego.
At San Diego Police Department technically don't assist ICE, but
they do show up to like form a cordon around them, right,
like to prevent any confrontation between them and protesters. And
(30:29):
we saw like every police agency, like literally every police
agency in La County and also Ventura County sheriffs were
there for the biggest protest days. The city hasn't used
its resources in that sense to stop this, right, They've
made rhetorical statements, but they haven't done anything with their police.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, and I think this speaks to a kind of
larger thing, which is like these people thought they could
just come into cities around the country and just shocking
all everyone in ROLLI went over because like they think
they're the Nazis. But the thing about the Nazis is
that like people supported them, right, Like all the shit
the Nazis were able to do happened because people wanted it.
To happen, and in a country where people don't want
that shit to happen, where everyone looks at this and goes,
(31:08):
what the fuck is going on? We're like, it's like
seventy nine percent support for like the effects of immigration
on the US right now, where everyone's looking at this
and just being like.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
No, they can't do it.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
There aren't enough of them. I don't know, Like it's
just so stunning to me watching them like have to
do the tactical adaptations that like normally like protest groups
have to do because the cops have tuned more resources
than them. But they're having to do it because they's
just like every single person walking down the street is
like fuck you eat shit, and so they're just like
outnumbered everywhere they go. It's and that's not to say
(31:42):
it's not like fucking horrible, because yeah, resisting fascism fucking
sucks a lot of the time and a lot of
people get hurt, and it's hideous, and also it's what
has to be done. The last thing that I wanted
to ask is, so, with the injunction kind of like
(32:02):
coming to an end soon, what do you think is
the future of sort of what ice is going to
be doing, and what the response is going to be,
and what border patrol are doing in this sort of
month to come.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
One of the things that I'm curious about is we
won't really know what the federal government's plan is until
I think it's the We'll just say late July when
the next hearing is. So the temporar restraining order ends
in late July. Generally speaking, with temporary restraining orders on
law enforcement, what you see is they either continue while
(32:39):
the hearings commence, or you see a pretty large mountain
of evidence that says, hey, we did this, this, this, this,
and this. That's changed it. So we're now sort of
in cooperation with the order. That is likely one of
the reasons why we've seen fewer raids here.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
In Los Angeles.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
Ultimately, a temporary restraining order is I don't want to
call it a wilder extreme action at all, but those
are generally signed when a judge agrees that it is
extremely likely that, given the current situation, the plaintiffs have
a case.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
So unless the federal.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
Government comes by with like this gigantic mountain of new
training and all these new plans and things like that,
My guess is we'll probably see at least some of
the things in that temporary restraining order continue. I also
think it's possible if the federal government is just going
to say, you know what, this temporary restraining order only
applies to this specific area, We'll just go somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
It's the Central District of California, right, so like San Luis, Obispo,
Santa Barbara, Venture La, Riverside County as well.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
I think yep, Riverside.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, it doesn't include San Diego, doesn't include the Northern District,
which is most of the rest coast of California, or
the Eastern District, which is to the Valley and further
northeastern California. So yeah, it's perfectly possible they could go
somewhere else and still do that shit within California.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Or like you say, like.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
There are so many targets, right because immigrants are part
of the fabric of our society. They are everywhere, and
that's you know, they can just go for wherever they
think a soft target is.
Speaker 7 (34:20):
And there's also work noting that you know, these organizers
are going to continue to organize, right, So these groups
Central Coso and Union of barrio, and you know the
various other groups. Again, I've been around for decades. VC
Defense that has been around since twenty sixteen. Right, this
is only a portion of the organizing that they do.
You know, they didn't start with or they will not
(34:44):
end with, just these patrols. Right. So they've built out
infrastructure and mutual aid group networks that are buying groceries
for folks and mixed status families that are covering the
sort of bills that are not being paid because people
are too afraid to go to work. They're doing wildcare,
they're getting kids to school, they're trying to provide legal defense.
You know, like these are you know, coalitions of individuals
(35:06):
who live in these areas who are doing long term
organizing to shore up the community whether or not there
is an onslaught of immigration enforcement activity in a certain
geographical area.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
So in terms of organizing, it's just going to keep happening.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
And that's good, right, And you know, I think that
what's hardening to see after the last you know, seven
weeks of really intense, really scary, really horrifying kidnappings and
detainments on the streets in southern California, is you know,
(35:42):
an equal and often more you know, stronger response to
it from the community that you know reminds you that
this is not the end and folks are prepared for
picking up the slack when things fall through.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
You know, people are not falling through the cracks.
Speaker 7 (35:59):
People are not having their lives shattered without someone watching
and trying to help. So that's an important piece there,
you know. So I would say that in terms of
the response and what happens next, like it's a multi
front thing. You have these legal cases finding their way
through the courts, you have from all levels, right, and
you have individuals who are trying to keep track of
(36:20):
folks who have been detained and deported and sending money
back to Mexico or whatever, you know, other country that
these folks are being sent back to making sure that
things are as much as they can. You know, there
aren't any rips in the safety net. And I think
that's the main lesson of the last seven weeks is
like that sort of response is incredible and you can.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Replicate it anywhere that you are.
Speaker 7 (36:44):
You know a lot of folks like to, you know,
kind of roll their eyes at the idea of like
organizing starts with talking to your neighbor. No, actually it does, right,
And you know there's these models, especially in southern and
central California, where this organizing works.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Right.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
It's not particularly ideological in many ways, sometimes it is,
but the basic function of it is to make sure
that your neighbor doesn't fall into a hole, right, and
they'll do the same for you, so you don't fall
into a hole should something happen to you. So you know,
start there and take a look at these models that
these absolute fucking heroes pardon my language, are doing in
(37:22):
this area, and know that you can also do that.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
So, yeah, these people in every facet of this are
just you somewhere else or help.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Maybe they are literally you. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
I keep up the good work, Suan.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Do you want to explain to us very briefly the
FBI arrests and the case against at least one of
the Centro CSO members.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
Well, right now, there's only one criminal complaint, and that's
for Alejandro Oriana, who is accused of conspiracy to commit
to the disorder as well as hating and embedding a
conspiracy to commit civil disorder. The criminal complaint, all it
really says is that he gave a dispense with face
(38:11):
shields to protesters who were dressed like they might do
something bad. At no point during a criminal complaint does
it even say, hey, he handed it to a guy
and then that guy made.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
It a crime. Doesn't even go that far. It just
goes those.
Speaker 6 (38:25):
Guys look kind of I don't know, they look like
they're about to do something, and says that, you know,
these people were dressed in such a way where it
might interfere with law enforcement activities, like you know, it
would deaden the impact of left leeple weapons.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yeah, I mean the impact of leslie for weapons on
your face is potentially fatal.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
Yeah, and you know beyond that, you know, there was
a search warrant for another member of Central CSO who
was roughly handled by FBI agents on a walk through
the park and was given a search warrant and her
phone was taken. I asked the US Attorney's office if
they were related, and first was sold I don't know
(39:07):
what you're talking about, which I thought was a little interesting.
Never gotten that response from any official, and then a
few hours later got an official response that said, no,
it is another case. So what that means, time will
tell but I think it's likely that there will be
more to come on top of that. I think it's
interesting to note that the first arraignment for Oreana was
(39:30):
an absolutely packed court.
Speaker 5 (39:31):
And support of them.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Where can people find youtubo's work and where can people
support you as you do a whole bunch of incredibly
critical journalism on the continuing resistance to the fascist deportation campaign.
Speaker 7 (39:44):
A lot of my reporting goes to Blue Sky, so
you can find me at melbu or Blueskuy dot social
I have a newsletter, the Words about Work dot blog,
and you can also find me on my Instagram. My
link trees linked in all sorts of places, so you
can find all of those links in inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Place, including the description of this episode.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Hey yeah, those are the places where you can find me.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
You can find me on a cat with news on
all social media platforms, although most of my sort of
breaking stories come on Blue Sky first, and I'm a
freelance journalist, so usually you can just google my name
and you'll see some stories there. On my Blue Sky
and Instagram, there's a link tree if you want to support.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Hell Yeah, and to everyone listening to the show, always
remember you are many, they are few.
Speaker 8 (40:40):
It could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone
Media from one podcast from pool Zone Media. Visit our
website Poolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it could Happen Here.
Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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