Harassing ICE: How the L.A. protesters are reinventing themselves

The massive protests in downtown Los Angeles have died down, but they haven’t completely disappeared. Demonstrations have been taking place for days in less conspicuous locations on the outskirts of L.A., where Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the feared ICE, is waging its war on undocumented immigrants. Immigration police are facing increasing resistance as they carry out Trump’s orders to achieve the largest deportation in U.S. history. Activists and ordinary citizens have become a diverse resistance movement willing to serve as a counterforce to the federal agents. The group has a mission to never give ICE a break.

Adrian Martinez, a 20-year-old American citizen, was arrested Tuesday in Pico Rivera, south of Los Angeles, after pushing a trash can in front of a Border Patrol vehicle to block its passage. Border Patrol agents were coming to this location, which has a 90% Latino population, to make arrests. In the parking lot of a Lowe’s store, they arrested a worker who was sweeping the floor. “What are you doing? He’s just working hard,” yelled Martinez, an employee at a nearby Walmart who got out of his car when he saw the scene. Several witnesses quickly showed up and recorded the incident on their cell phones. Other drivers blocked the path of the ICE vehicles. Tensions quickly escalated.

The scene went viral on social media, especially when an unmarked van full of heavily armed police officers arrived at the scene to support colleagues trying to take away the street sweeper. A video shows an officer cutting a cartridge from his high-powered rifle and shouting at the people around him to move away. The group forcibly detained Martinez, while those present shouted, “He’s an American citizen!”

Bil Essayli, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has filed charges against Martinez for resisting the work of federal employees. Essayli accuses the detainee of punching one of the Border Patrol officers in the face, something that is not shown on video and is not included in the indictment.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported Thursday that it has detected a 500% increase in cases of harassment of police officers in charge of carrying out operations against undocumented immigrants. “Just this week, an ICE officer was dragged 50 yards by a car while arresting an illegal alien sex offender,” said Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS.

The official accused Democratic politicians, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, of inciting hatred against the officers. “From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi Gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is despicable. This violence against ICE must end,” she said.

The complaints from Washington have not stemmed the resistance within migrant communities, where dozens of people who have been in the United States for decades and have no criminal record are being arrested and disappeared every day. Between June 6 and 11, 330 people were detained on the streets, according to official figures.

Images like those of Pico Rivera have been amplified by groups with a strong presence on social media. One of the most popular is Unión del Barrio, an independent political organization born in San Diego’s legendary Logan neighborhood, which has a strong Latino presence. Volunteers in this network serve as sentient monitors throughout Southern California, warning of the presence of ICE authorities in malls, stores, and public spaces. Videos of their operations are then posted on Facebook, serving to document government abuses and corporate racial profiling.

The organization on Thursday reported a hostile exchange between police and citizens outside a Home Depot in Hollywood. The officers arrived at the scene, not far from the tourist area of Los Angeles, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying semi-automatic rifles. In the operation, just minutes after 7 a.m., a dozen people were arrested in front of a crowd filming the raid. “I hope you die, son of a bitch!” an American shouted at an ICE officer.

The recent work of Unión del Barrio has not gone unnoticed by Trump-backed authorities. Republican Senator Josh Hawley, one of the party’s most populist right-wingers, accused the group of providing “logistical support and financial resources” for the protests that took place in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. The Union has denied the allegations and accuses the Missouri legislator of trying to intimidate them with the goal of “stopping community self-defense and silencing them in order to rewrite history about who the real violent criminals are behind these events.”

Similar initiatives have emerged in the heat of the L.A. street protests. Social media has served to organize a movement without faces or leaders. One of them, called No Sleep for ICE, organizes daily calls for protests outside the hotels where agents carrying out the raids are housed. “Our mission is very simple: to remove ICE from our cities through coordinated actions carried out by the people,” say the organizers, who ask their nearly 8,000 followers to share information and videos of law enforcement activities.

One of the group’s most recent actions took place outside a Hilton hotel in Pomona, a city east of Los Angeles. About 30 people gathered outside the premises at 1 a.m. Thursday morning to bang pots and wave Mexican and American flags. It was just one of five protests scheduled for that day in the metropolitan region. Protesters are encouraged to make enough noise to force business owners to have no choice but to remove the police from the establishment. “If we can’t sleep, nor should they,” is the slogan that is keeping the Trumpist deportation machine awake at night.

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