Here Is How What Is Happening in Los Angeles Impacts Us All
On Friday, June 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agents armed with military-style weapons began conducting raids in Los Angeles targeting immigrants. ICE muscled people into vans, ripping them from their communities and families. Their efforts in Los Angeles—which are part of President Trump and his administration's immigration sweeps happening across the country—sparked people to protest, thus prompting the administration to deploy National Guard troops, as well as active-duty Marines, to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, ICE raids continue.
There have been various news reports on the ongoing developments. What is critical to know is that people and families are hurting and being treated unjustifiably.
Lindsay Toczylowski has been seeing this firsthand. Toczylowski is the president, CEO, and co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), a social justice law firm that defends immigrant communities against injustices in the immigration system. She and her fellow ImmDef attorneys, along with countless partners in various human rights organizations, have been responding to ICE raids in Los Angeles, as well as throughout the Inland Empire and Southern California, helping those impacted by the raids.
The Sunday Paper spoke with Toczylowski on the morning of Friday, June 13, about what she and her attorneys are witnessing, how what is happening to immigrant families impacts everyone, and what we all can do.
A CONVERSATION WITH LINDSAY TOCZYLOWSKI
What are the efforts you and your fellow attorney have been making, and what you've been seeing?
We're in close connection with community organizations that work directly with families after someone is detained. We're seeing a lot of kids whose parents are being detained while they're at school and people being detained at work. So, obviously, their families don't know where they are. We're working arm in arm with dozens and dozens of community-based grassroots organizations and volunteers across the city to provide immediate support. Then, for our part as lawyers, we're gathering that information and consolidating it. We've had attorneys at the local detention centers basically around the clock since last Friday.
Who have been some of the people you've met with so far who have been detained?
It's really heartbreaking. The vast majority have been in the US for more than 10 years, and most of them more than 20 years. This has targeted long-term residents, almost none of them with a criminal history, and many of them parents of US citizen children. Many of them are from mixed-status families. One case is a woman who has been here for more than 20 years, has a US citizen husband, and was in the process of trying to regularize her own status. We've also seen entire families detained, and we're following their cases, trying to continue to represent them as they're now in Dilley, Texas, at the ICE prison for families. We know that people are continuing to be held at the Federal Building downtown, but we have not had access to that building because of the National Guard.
Speaking of the National Guard, the words "chaos" and "unrest" have been used a lot. Tell us about what you have been seeing in Los Angeles.
There is no unrest in LA right now. There have been isolated incidents of vandalism and clashes with police instigated by President Trump sending the National Guard to our city that was peaceful last Thursday. It is really centered around the Federal Building downtown. I live less than a mile away, and as you can hear, birds are chirping around me and my son's playing in the front yard. So, LA is by no means the way that Secretary Noem described it. I didn't recognize the place that she was talking about. What I recognized as Los Angeles was when I stood with Mayor Bass at a press conference and saw dozens of organizations, partners, and city officials standing together in support of Senator Alex Padilla and what happened to him also in support of our city. We are really saying don't try to define who we are. We know who we are. LA is a city built by immigrants. We're a city that loves all of our communities.
[Editor's note: At the time of reporting this story Saturday evening, reports of large droves of people protesting across Los Angeles and the United States have stated the gatherings to be peaceful.]
The federal officers are wearing tactical gear, in some cases, and have their faces covered as they raid businesses and homes. There are reports that the detention centers are at capacity. What is important to know about how these measures have been taken?
ICE officers have brought in agents from every law enforcement agency, including the DEA and FBI, in the country for these operations. These operations are not for the DEA because these are not drug operations. And these are not for the FBI because these are not criminal investigations. In most cases, it's just immigration enforcement. So, a couple of things on this begs the question for people: Where are we now less safe because agents are being pulled from important law enforcement actions across the country to focus on detaining moms and dads in LA? And they are doing it in a manner that I have never seen in my entire career and life. Agents in plain clothes, often jeans and flannel shirts with masks over their faces and sunglasses on, pull up two people on the street and push them into cars. Inside a federal building, I saw people in plain clothes detaining people who had shown up to their court hearings by saying their names once and then pushing them inside a service elevator that was not public.
The tactics being used really beg the question of why they feel the need to hide their identities if what they are doing is legally and morally okay. And the answer is: it's not. They argue that they feel it would somehow put the officers and their families in danger. That is not something that has happened on any kind of a large scale. There's a reason why our local law enforcement and law enforcement across the country have never done this. It is because it mimics authoritarian states the United States has never resembled. At this moment, with the actions of ICE across LA County and across all of Southern California, it is mimicking the hallmarks of an authoritarian state. That is something that should never happen in the land of liberty, in a country that is built on the Constitution.
You and your ImmDef attorneys represent men currently being detained in El Salvador whose due process rights have been violated. Tell us more about this.
That is a really important part of this. When all of this started happening here in Los Angeles last Friday, some of my team and I were flying back from DC where we were advocating for Andry Hernandez Romero and other clients who were disappeared without due process. As we watched all this unfold in Los Angeles, we saw how this represents an escalation of these due process violations. It's an indication that the Trump administration finds protections that we have as people in the United States under the Constitution inconvenient to his plans to expel millions of people from the United States. He knows that if we follow the Constitution, he can't take the actions that he is taking on the streets of Los Angeles and in our courthouses. That is why, in the case of all the men in El Salvador and now what's happening in Los Angeles, [the administration] is really testing to see how much the citizens—the US population—will let them trample on the Constitution before we say, enough is enough. How far will our courts and our judges allow them to push the bounds of lawfulness for the Executive Branch?
All of what is happening with our immigrant communities right now is heartbreaking, and it is also a sign of things to come if we don't stand up against what's happening. If it can happen to immigrant communities, it can happen to any community in the United States.
[Editor's note: Andry Hernandez Romero is a Venezuelan makeup artist who was deported to El Salvador, where he is being detained without due process. Romero came to the US seeking asylum.]
For those of us who want to stand up for immigrants, their rights, and American democracy, what is your advice for how we can do this?
People can peacefully protest in the streets. People can go out there and show that the vast majority of Americans are against any sort of vandalism or violence. People can go out and say peacefully, 'This is not okay.'
It is also crucial for people to call their elected officials. Here in Los Angeles, virtually every single elected official, from our Governor to our Mayor to our Congress members and Senators, is in lockstep. And if you are outside of Los Angeles, outside of California, or anywhere in the country, call your elected representatives and show up to town halls. Tell elected officials the stories that you're hearing from Los Angeles because if it doesn't stop here in Los Angeles, it will happen in your city next.
Our immigrant communities are the people our country is built on the backs of, and they deserve to be protected. These are the people who build our houses, work in our restaurants, work in our hospitals, take care of our children, and work on rebuilding after hurricanes and natural disasters. Their families deserve to be protected. So people can go and speak to their elected representatives and let them know they care. We were on Capitol Hill [recently] where we heard from staffer after staffer that they tally who calls. They take note when people come to those town halls. If people are showing up for immigrant communities all across the United States, it will make a difference in what this administration does next.
Lindsay Toczylowski is a social justice attorney and the President, CEO & Co-Founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) where she leads a team of over 200 fierce advocates for immigrant rights. You can learn more about ImmDef and support their work here and follow them @immdef_lawcenter
The Sunday Paper would like to thank This Is About Humanity, a partner of ImmDef, for putting us in touch with Toczylowski.
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