The LA Uprising Is A Fight For Angelenos' Way Of Life

 Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent the city a message when its agents showed up in full force, and that message was responded to in kind by the people of LA.

By Tina Vásquez, Prism

Every immigration raid is a tragedy in slow motion, unfolding over time and across generations. When the agents arrive in plainclothes or with their faces hidden to pull day laborers out of parking lots, workers out of factories, children out of elementary schools, families from their court hearings—to rip out the bedrock of a place and plunder the community of its beloveds—it has nothing to do with the law or following orders or criminal histories or even the White House. It’s personal, like a hate crime. Unforgivable, like a genocide.

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Los Angeles, an American city unlike any other. To be an immigrant or the child of an immigrant in LA is to be bestowed with a badge of honor. Within city limits, there is an unspoken understanding that you are the lifeblood of this place—and that our place and our people must be defended at all costs.

This is a tidy way to explain why you are watching the children of immigrants run wild and free in the streets of LA, waving a Mexican flag with one hand and willing to throw a rock with the other. In other cities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carries out raids in secret, posing as workers in white vans to nab our fathers or surreptitiously lingering in a hallway to kidnap our primas. ICE sent the city of Los Angeles a message when its agents showed up in full force and in broad daylight, and that message was responded to in kind by the people.

The violence that will likely follow the Trump administration’s decision to deploy the National Guard is, in a way, inevitable. ICE raids anywhere are an affront to the fundamental human rights of migrants; ICE raids in LA are a declaration of war. After all, what city could the Trump administration hate more than LA, and what people could be more willing—or better primed—to go toe to toe with the full force of the federal government? Our communities are composed of people who traversed borderlands with nothing more than a backpack, successfully fleeing civil wars, political persecution, dictatorships, state violence, and their own futures—and we are their children.

When you are an Angeleno and this is your lineage, you are fully aware of what local law enforcement is capable of: the beatings, the killings, the rapes, the cover-ups, the deputy gangs that operate as an open secret in communities of color. There is no end to the depravity, so when the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) attempts to distance itself from the raids, saying in a statement that the agency is “not involved in civil immigration enforcement,” you know better. Footage posted by the LA abolitionist organization People’s City Council appears to show LAPD officers outside an apparel manufacturer in the Fashion District as a raid unfolded. But more than that, you also know the risk when you join a protest, however agitated, impromptu, or peaceful. The same agency that purports not to engage in immigration enforcement is more than happy to show up in riot gear to pummel residents protecting their immigrant neighbors. Welcome to the progressive city of Los Angeles, where the contradictions are only surprising to outsiders.