raids

At least 60 people, including four police officers, were killed in large-scale raids targeting drug gangs across Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. The deadly operation comes days before Brazil hosts the UN climate summit COP30, set to begin on November 10.

Like with cigarettes, la migra should come with a warning label: Proximity to ICE could be hazardous for your health.

From Los Angeles to Chicago, Portlandand New York, the evidence is ample enough that wherever Trump sends in the immigration agency, people get hurt. And not just protesters and immigrants.

That includes 13 police officers tear-gassed in Chicago earlier this month. And, now, a U.S. marshal.

Which brings us to what happened in South L.A. on Tuesday.

Federal agents boxed in the Toyota Camry of local TikToker Carlitos Ricardo Parias — better known to his hundreds of thousands of followers as Richard LA. As Parias allegedly tried to rev his way out of the trap, an ICE agent opened fire. One bullet hit the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant — and another ricocheted into the hand of a deputy U.S. marshal.

Neither suffered life-threatening injuries, but it’s easy to imagine that things could have easily turned out worse. Such is the chaos that Trump has caused by unleashing shock troops into U.S. cities.

Rather than take responsibility and apologize for an incident that could’ve easily been lethal, Team Trump went into their default spin mode of blaming everyone but themselves.

Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the shooting was “the consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest.”

Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli chimed in on social media soon after: “I urge California public officials to moderate their rhetoric toward federal law enforcement. Encouraging resistance to federal agents can lead to deadly consequences.” Hours later, he called Times reporter James Queally “an absolute joke, not a journalist” because my colleague noted it’s standard practice by most American law enforcement agencies to not shoot at moving vehicles. One reason is that it increases the chance of so-called friendly fire.

Federal authorities accuse Parias of ramming his car into agents’ vehicles after they boxed him in. He is being charged with assault on a federal officer.

Time, and hopefully, evidence, will show what happened — and very important, what led to what happened.

The Trump administration keeps claiming that the public anger against its immigration actions is making the job more dangerous for la migra and their sister agencies. McLaughlin and her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, keep saying there’s been a 1,000% increase in assaults on immigration agents this year like an incantation. Instead of offering concrete figures, they use the supposed stat as a shield against allegations ICE tactics are going too far and as a weapon to excuse the very brutality ICE claims it doesn’t practice.

Well, even if what they say is true, there’s only one side that’s making the job more dangerous for la migra and others during raids:

La migra.

It turns out that if you send in phalanxes of largely masked federal agents to bully and intimidate people in American cities, Americans tend not to take kindly to it.

Who knew?

Gregory Bovino, center, of U.S. Border Patrol, marches with federal agents to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Aug. 14.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

We’re about to enter the sixth month of Trump’s plan to rid the country of undocumented immigrants. Sycophants are bragging that he’s doing the job, but they’re not caring to look at the mess left in its wake that’s becoming more and more perilous for everyone involved. They insist that those who are executing and planning raids are professionals, but professionals don’t make constant pendejos out of themselves.

Professionals don’t bring squadrons to chase after tamale ladies or day laborers, or stage flashy raids of apartments and parks that accomplish little else than footage for propaganda videos. They don’t go into neighborhoods with intimidation on their mind and ready to rough up anyone who gets in their way.

A ProPublica investigation showed that ICE has detained at least 170 U.S. citizens this year, many whom offered proof that they were in this country legally as la migra cuffed them and hauled them off to detention centers.

Professionals don’t lie like there’s a bonus attached to it — but that’s what Trump’s deportation Leviathan keeps doing. In September, McLaughlin put out a news release arguing that the shooting death of 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González in Chicago by an ICE agent was justified because he was dragged a “significant distance” and suffered serious injuries. Yet body cam footage of local police who showed up to the scene captured the two ICE agents involved in the incident describing their injuries as “nothing major.”

Closer to home, a federal jury in Los Angeles last month acquitted an activist of striking a Border Patrol agent after federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega screened footage that contradicted the government’s case and poked holes in the testimony of Border Patrol staff and supervisors. Last week, ICE agents detained Oxnard activist Leonardo Martinez after a collision between their Jeep and his truck. McLaughlin initially blamed the incident on an “agitator group … engaged in recording and verbal harassment,” but footage first published by L.A. Taco showed that la migra trailed Martinez and then crashed into him twice — not the other way around.

Professionals don’t host social media accounts that regularly spew memes that paint the picture of an American homeland where white makes right and everyone else must be eliminated, like the Department of Homeland Security does. A recent post featured medieval knights wearing chain mail and helmets and wielding longswords as they encircle the slogan “The Enemies are at the Gates” above ICE’s job listing website.

The Trump administration has normalized racism and has turned cruelty into a virtue — then its mouthpieces gasp in mock horror when people resist its officially sanctioned jackbootery.

This evil buffoonery comes straight from a president who reacted to the millions of Americans who protested this weekend at No Kings rallies by posting on social media an AI-generated video of him wearing a crown and dropping feces on his critics from a jet fighter. And yet McLaughlin, Noem and other Trump bobbleheads have the gall to question why politicians decry la migra while regular people follow and film them during raids when not shouting obscenities and taunts at them?

As I’ve written before, there’s never a nice way to conduct an immigration raid but there’s always a better way. Or at least a way that’s not dripping with malevolence.

Meanwhile, ICE is currently on a hiring spree thanks to Trump’s Bloated Beastly Bill and and has cut its training program from six months to 48 days, according to The Atlantic. It’s a desperate and potentially reckless recruitment drive.

And if you think rapidly piling more people into a clown car is going to produce less clown-like behavior by ICE on the streets of American cities, boy do I have news for you.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and congressional Democrats have announced a sweeping investigation into potential misconduct in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown that has ensnared citizens, made use of racial profiling and terrified communities for months.

Bass and the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), announced that Congress will open up “a broad investigation” into arrests of U.S. citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, as well as another investigation into immigration raids overall. The announcement was made Monday at a news conference at L.A. City Hall.

“Donald Trump and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem are terrorizing immigrants, working people, the people of Los Angeles and of our state every single day,” Garcia said. “They violate the law and they violate the constitution.”

Garcia said that his House committee would investigate “every single brutal misconduct” that immigration authorities have committed in Los Angeles as well as across the country.

Simultaneously, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will conduct an investigation into reports of the detention of at least 170 U.S. citizens by immigration authorities, which was reported by ProPublica last week.

“Troublingly, the pattern of U.S. Citizen arrests coincides with an alarming increase in racial profiling — particularly of Latinos — which has been well documented in Los Angeles,” Garcia and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter to Noem. “In a pattern symptomatic of a disregard for civil rights by DHS, U.S. citizens have faced extended periods of detention.”

For months, agents have roamed the streets of Los Angeles toting guns and chasing down immigrants. The scenes that have played out on the streets — protesters being arrested, immigrants dragged out of their cars — have been repeated in Chicago and other cities with largely Democratic leadership.

Mayor Bass said the arrests of American citizens means that no one in the country is safe.

“This can happen to anyone, to all of us, at any period of time,” she said.

Garcia said that the first hearing of the House committee will be held in Los Angeles and that Angelenos should attend and be heard on immigration enforcement issues.

The congressman did not give a date for the hearing, but said he hoped it would be soon.

In the letter that Garcia and Blumenthal sent to Noem on Monday, the legislators called on the Department of Homeland Security to report the total number of U.S. citizens who have been detained by immigration authorities, as well as how long each individual was detained. They also asked for information regarding the training that CE and Customs and Border Protection agents receive on use of force, among other things.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CHICAGO — Since the Trump administration announced its intention to accelerate and forcefully detain and deport thousands of immigrants here, the Chicago area is a split screen between everyday life and a city under siege.

As many people shop, go to work, walk their dogs and stroll with their friends through parks, others are being chased down, tear-gassed, detained and assaulted by federal agents carrying out immigration sweeps.

The situation is similar to what occurred in Los Angeles in summer, as ICE swept through Southern California, grabbing people off the street and raiding car washes and Home Depots in predominantly Latino areas, while leaving large swaths of the region untouched.

Take Sunday, the day of the Chicago Marathon.

Some 50,000 runners hailing from more than 100 countries and 50 states, gathered downtown to dash, jog and slog over 26.3 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and city streets.

The sun was bright, the temperatures hovered in the upper-60s, and leaves of maple, oak, aspen and ginkgo trees colored the city with splashes of yellow, orange and red.

Demonstrators march outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Ill., on Oct. 10.

(Kayana Szymczak/For The Times)

It was one of those rare, glorious Midwestern fall days when everyone comes outside to soak in the sunlight, knowing the gloom and cold of winter is about to take hold.

At 12:30, Ludwig Marchel and Karen Vanherck of Belgium strolled west along East Monroe Street, through Millennium Park. They smiled and proudly wore medals around their necks commemorating their marathon achievement. They said they were not concerned about coming to Chicago, despite news stories depicting violent protests and raids, and the Trump administration’s description of the city as “war torn,” a “hellhole,” a “killing field” and “the most dangerous city in the world.”

“Honestly. I was mostly worried that the government shutdown was somehow going to affect my flight,” said Marchel. He said he hadn’t seen anything during his few days in town that would suggest the city was unsafe.

Another man, who declined to give his name, said he had come from Mexico City to complete the race. He said he wasn’t concerned, either.

“I have my passport, I have a visa, and I have money,” he said. “Why should I be concerned?”

At that same moment, 10 miles northwest, a community was being tear-gassed.

Dozens of residents in the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Albany Park had gathered in the street to shout “traitor” and “Nazi” as federal immigration agents grabbed a man and attempted to detain others.

According to witness accounts, agents in at least three vehicles got out and started shoving people to the ground before throwing tear gas canisters into the street. Videos of the event show masked agents tackling a person in a red shirt, throwing a person in a skeleton costume to the ground, and violently hurling a bicycle out of the street as several plumes of smoke billow into the air. A woman can be heard screaming while neighbors yell at the agents.

Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring agents to issue two warnings before using riot control weapons such as tear gas, chemical sprays, plastic bullets and flash grenades.

Witnesses told the Chicago Sun-Times that no warnings had been given.

Deirdre Anglin, community member from Chicago, takes part in a demonstration near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Ill., on Oct. 10.

(Kayana Szymczak/For The Times)

Since Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” was initiated more than six weeks ago, roughly 1,000 people have been arrested or detained.

At the ICE detention facility, in Broadview — a suburb 12 miles west of downtown — there have been daily protests. While most have been peaceful, some have devolved into physical clashes between federal agents or police and protesters.

In September, federal agents shot pepper balls and tear gas at protesters peacefully gathering outside the facility. On Saturday, local law enforcement forced protesters away from the site with riot sticks and threats of tear gas. Several protesters were knocked to the ground and forcefully handcuffed. By the end of the evening, 15 people had been arrested.

Early Sunday afternoon, roughly two dozen protesters returned to the site. They played music, danced, socialized and heckled ICE vehicles as they entered and exited the fenced-off facility.

In a largely Latino Chicago neighborhood called Little Village, things appeared peaceful Sunday afternoon.

Known affectionately by its residents as the “Midwestern capital of Mexico,” the district of 85,000 is predominantly Latino. Michael Rodriguez, a Chicago city councilman and the neighborhood’s alderman, said 85% of the population is of Mexican descent.

On Sunday afternoon, traditional Mexican music was being broadcast to the street via loudspeakers from the OK Corral VIP, a western wear store.

Demonstrators protest near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Ill., on Oct. 10.

(Kayana Szymczak/For The Times)

Along East 26th Street, where shops and buildings are painted with brightly colored murals depicting Mexican folklore, history and wildlife — such as a golden eagle and jaguar — a family sat at a table eating lunch, while two young women, in their early 20s, laughed and chattered as they strolled west toward Kedzie Avenue.

Rodriguez said that despite appearances, “people are afraid.”

He said he spoke with a teacher who complained that several of her elementary-school aged students have stopped coming to class. Their parents are too afraid to walk them or drive them to school, hearing stories of other parents who have been arrested or detained by ICE agents at other campuses in the city — in front of their terrified children.

Rodriguez’s wife, whom he described as a dark-skinned Latina with degrees from DePaul and Northwestern universities, won’t leave the house without her passport.

At a barber shop called Peluqueria 5 Star Fades Estrellas on 26th, a coiffeur named Juan Garcia sat in a chair near the store entrance. He had a towel draped over the back of his neck. He said his English was limited, but he knew enough to tell a visitor that business was bad.

“People aren’t coming in,” he said. “They are afraid.”

Victor Sanchez, the owner of a taco truck parked on Kedzie Road, about a half-mile south of town, said his clientele — mostly construction workers and landscapers — have largely disappeared.

“Business is down 60%,” he said to a customer. “I don’t know if they have been taken, or if they are too afraid to come out. All I know is they aren’t coming here anymore.”

Rodriguez said that ICE agents have arrested people who live in his neighborhood, but those arrests took place outside the borders of his district.

“I think they know this is a well-organized and aware neighborhood,” he said. “I think they’ve cased it and decided to grab people on the outskirts.”

As Californians start voting on Democrats’ effort to boost their ranks in Congress, former President Barack Obama warned that democracy is in peril as he urged voters to support Proposition 50 in a television ad that started airing Tuesday.

“California, the whole nation is counting on you,” Obama says in the 30-second ad, which the main pro-Proposition 50 campaign began broadcasting Tuesday across the state. The spot is part of a multimillion-dollar ad buy promoting the congressional redistricting ballot measure through the Nov. 4 election.

Proposition 50 was spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democratic leaders this summer after President Trump urged GOP-led states, notably Texas, to redraw their congressional districts to boost the number of Republicans elected to the House in next year’s midterm election, in an effort to continue enacting his agenda during his final years in office.

“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama says in the ad, which includes footage of ICE raids. “With Prop. 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks. Prop. 50 puts our elections back on a level playing field, preserves independent redistricting over the long term, and lets the people decide. Return your ballot today.”

Congressional districts were long drawn in smoke-filled chambers by partisans focused on protecting their parties’ power and incumbents. But good-government groups and elected officials, notably former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have fought to take the drawing of congressional boundaries out of the hands of politicians to end gerrymandering and create more competitive districts.

Obama, long a supporter of ending gerrymandering, had already endorsed the ballot measure.

In California, these districts have been drawn by an independent commission created by voters in 2010, which is why state Democrats have to go to the ballot box to seek a mid-decade partisan redistricting that could improve their party’s chances in five of the state’s 52 congressional districts.

The ad featuring Obama, who spoke Monday on comedian Marc Maron’s final podcast about Trump’s policies testing the nation’s values, appears on Californians’ televisions after mail ballots were sent to the state’s 23 million registered voters last week.

The proposition’s prospects are uncertain — it’s about an obscure topic that few Californians know about, and off-year elections traditionally have low voter turnout. Still, more than $150 million has been contributed to the three main committees supporting and opposing the proposition, in addition to millions more funding other efforts.

Obama is not the only famous person to appear in ads about Proposition 50.

In September, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the independent redistricting commission while in office and has campaigned for similar reforms across the nation since then, was featured in ads opposing the November ballot measure.

He described Proposition 50 as favoring entrenched politicians instead of voters.

“That’s what they want to do, is take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Proposition 50,” the Hollywood celebrity and former governor says in the ad, which was filmed last month when he spoke to USC students. “The Constitution does not start with ‘We, the politicians.’ It starts with ‘We, the people.’ … Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump rocked American politics at the outset of his first campaign when he first labeled his rivals as enemies of the American people. But the rhetoric of his top confidantes has grown more extreme in recent days.

Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, declared over the weekend that “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is fueling a historic national schism, “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”

“The only remedy,” Miller said, “is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

It was a maxim from an unelected presidential advisor who is already unleashing the federal government in unprecedented ways, overseeing the federalization of police forces and a sweeping deportation campaign challenging basic tenets of civil liberty.

Miller’s rhetoric comes amid a federal crackdown on Portland, Ore., where he says the president has unchecked authority to protect federal lives and property — and as another controversial Trump advisor harnesses an ongoing government shutdown as pretext for the mass firing of federal workers.

Russ Vought, the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, plays the grim reaper in an AI video shared by the president, featuring him roving Washington for bureaucrats to cut from the deep state during the shutdown.

His goal, Trump has said, is to specifically target Democrats.

As of Monday afternoon, it was unclear exactly how many federal workers or what federal agencies would be targeted.

“We don’t want to see people laid off, but unfortunately, if this shutdown continues layoffs are going to be an unfortunate consequence of that,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt said during a news briefing.

‘A nation of Constitutional law’

Karin Immergut, a federal judge appointed by Trump, said this weekend that the administration’s justification for deploying California National Guard troops in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts.”

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote, chiding the Trump administration for attempting to circumvent a prior order from her against a federal deployment to the city.

“This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition,” she added: “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

The administration is expected to appeal the judge’s decision, Leavitt said, while calling the judge’s ruling “untethered in reality and in the law.”

“We’re very confident in the president’s legal authority to do this, and we are very confident we will win on the merits of the law,” Leavitt said.

If the courts were to side with the administration, Leavitt said local leaders — most of whom are Democrats — should not be concerned about the possibility of long-term plans to have their cities occupied by the military.

“Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?” Leavitt said. “They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities right now are being gunned down every single night and the president, all he is trying to do, is fix it.”

Moments later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that though he does not believe it is necessary yet, he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act “if courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up.”

“Sure, I’d do that,” Trump said. “We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”

The Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping emergency power to deploy military forces within the United States if the president deems it is needed to quell civil unrest. The last time this occurred was in 1992, when California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send federal troops to help stop the Los Angeles riots that occurred after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.

Subsequent posts from Miller on social media over the weekend escalated the stakes to existential heights, accusing Democrats of allying themselves with “domestic terrorists” seeking to overturn the will of the people reflected in Trump’s election win last year.

On Monday, in an interview with CNN, Miller suggested that the administration would continue working to sidestep Immergut’s orders.

“The administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties,” he said, “but there are also many options the president has to deploy federal resources under the U.S. military to Portland.”

Other Republicans have used similar rhetoric since the slaying of Charlie Kirk, a conservative youth activist, in Utah last month.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) wrote that posts from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office have reached “the threshold of domestic terrorism,” after the Democratic governor referred to Miller on social media as a fascist. And Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Monday that Democrats demanding an extension of healthcare benefits as a condition for reopening the government were equivalent to terrorists.

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Fine told Newsmax, “and what we’ve learned in whether it’s dealing with Muslim terrorists or Democrats, you’ve gotta stand and you’ve gotta do the right thing.”

Investigating donor networks

Republicans’ keenness to label Democrats as terrorists comes two weeks after Trump signed an executive order declaring a left-wing antifascist movement, known as antifa, as a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not exist under U.S. law.

The order, which opened a new front in Trump’s battle against his political foes, also threatened to investigate and prosecute individuals who funded “any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of antifa.”

Leavitt told reporters Monday that the administration is “aggressively” looking into who is financially backing these operations.

Trump has floated the possibility of going after people such as George Soros, a billionaire who has supported many left-leaning causes around the world.

“If you look at Soros, he is at the top of everything,” Trump said during an Oval Office appearance last month.

The White House has not yet made public any details about a formal investigation into donors, but Leavitt said the administration’s efforts are underway.

“We will continue to get to the bottom of who is funding these organizations and this organized anarchy against our country and our government,” Leavitt said. “We are committed to uncovering it.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement held a hiring fair last month in Provo, Utah, that drew hundreds of job seekers — in part with signing bonuses up to $50,000 and salaries of $50,000 to $100,000 a year. This follows recruiting events in Arlington, Texas, in August and Chantilly, Va., in June. Despite polls showing that most Americans do not like how the agency is doing its job, these expos were quite popular. “This is a highly desired career,” an ICE official told reporters at the Texas event. “A lot of people want to do this job.”

That seems to be true, which makes recent changes in ICE’s hiring and recruiting practices all the more troubling. Flush with cash from Congress, the agency is ramping up hiring while lowering standards for employment. ICE is using controversial slogans and imagery to attract new recruits. In its rush to expand, ICE is placing immigrants, citizens and its own agents in harm’s way.

Under the terms of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the president signed into law in July, Congress has given ICE an additional $75 billion in funding. The agency wants to hire at least 10,000 new agents as the administration seeks to fulfill its promise of deporting a million immigrants a year.

To meet this goal, ICE is lowering hiring standards. ICE agents can now be as young as 18, and there is no longer an age cap for new hires. The agency has also cut training time for recruits from 13 to eight weeks, by reducing Spanish lessons, firearms training and classroom hours. Working for ICE does not require a high school diploma, a military background or any law enforcement experience. An aspiring ICE agent only has to pass a background check, meet physical and medical requirements, and complete the abbreviated training course.

In contrast, many local police and sheriff’s departments have stricter hiring requirements. The Los Angeles Police Department requires its applicants to have a high school diploma, to complete six months of training and to be 21 at the time of police academy graduation.

ICE’s lower standards are alarming, given that agents have the power to make decisions with life-altering consequences. A teenager who formerly worked in a retail store or office workers bored with their daily routine could soon be out on the streets of L.A., carrying a gun and chasing anyone they think might be a migrant. New ICE agents might be placed in volatile situations without enough experience or judgment to make sound decisions. Immigrants — or anyone who looks like one — may be at risk of rookie ICE hires violating their constitutional and civil rights.

Unfortunately, we have been here before. Between 2006 and 2009, the Border Patrol scaled up quickly too. Hiring and training requirements were eased, with some agents rushed into training before background checks were completed. This resulted in drug cartel members being hired, corruption and a spike in agents being arrested for misconduct. With its ongoing rapid expansion, ICE is poised to repeat the same kind of mistakes.

ICE’s recruitment campaign is likewise problematic. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out,” is one such appeal, which plays on false notions of “invasion” and immigrant criminality. On its official X account, Homeland Security uses images of Uncle Sam, as though joining ICE were akin to a military mobilization. In one post, the agency asks, “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” In another, it asks, “Which way, American man?” This meme appears to reference, “Which Way Western Man?” — a 1978 book by an avowed white supremacist.

ICE slogans urge job seekers to “Defend Your Country” and “Protect the Homeland.” But such language smacks of propaganda, not professionalism. Former ICE officials are rightfully concerned that such tactics might draw the wrong kind of recruits. Rather than attracting qualified applicants who want to serve in federal law enforcement, ICE may be appealing to people with antipathy toward immigrants, or who see themselves as helping defend the U.S. from demographic changes.

ICE performs a vital function for the government, with agents shouldering great personal risk and responsibility. Yet ICE’s current practices are far from ideal, with well-documented instances of agents using excessive force and engaging in physical and verbal abuse of suspected undocumented immigrants. So this is not the time for ICE to lower standards. The agency’s latest hiring and recruiting efforts will not bolster the agency’s image or effectiveness. Instead they raise serious questions about new agents’ readiness, ability and suitability for this line of work. To put it simply, do we really want teenagers participating in ICE raids?

To remedy the situation, ICE should slow down and properly train incoming agents. The minimum age should be reinstated to 21. More thorough Spanish-language instruction should be restored to curriculums. Otherwise, fast-tracked employees will be sent unprepared into communities that are already angry and fearful, which is potentially dangerous for everyone involved.

ICE’s hiring spree is reckless and irresponsible. As a matter of public safety, immigration enforcement should not be an entry-level job.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. X: @RaulAReyes; Instagram: @raulareyes1

Jerardyn sat quietly on the bus, her mood relaxed as her eyes scanned the fleeting horizon of Southern California one August afternoon.

But as the U.S.-Mexico border wall, a towering barrier of steel pillars, came into view, she began taking big, deep breaths. Her heart began to race as she clutched her immigration documents and tried to hide her anxiety from her two youngest children traveling with her. She caught what she believed would be her last glimpse of the United States for now.

A refugee from Venezuela, Jerardyn, 40, entered the United States last year with her family, hoping to obtain asylum. But this was before President Trump took office and launched immigration raids across Southern California, shattering her sense of safety. She lived in fear that immigration agents would detain her or, worse, send her family back to Venezuela, where they risked facing retribution from the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Jerardyn bathes Milagro in the basement of a church in South Los Angeles, where she found refuge with her four children, daughter-in-law and the family’s dog.

So after eight months of living in the basement of an L.A. church, she made a painful decision. She would migrate again. This time she’d voluntarily move back to Mexico with her two youngest kids, leaving behind her two eldest, who are applying for asylum.

She planned meticulously. She withdrew her asylum application from immigration court. She found an apartment outside Mexico City. She filled two boxes with toys, clothes and shoes to ship to Mexico ahead of her departure. She bought bus tickets to Tijuana and plane tickets to Mexico City.

The bus ride from Los Angeles to Tijuana had been smooth, but as they pulled into the National Institute of Migration, Mexico’s border immigration office, she felt a sense of dread.

Milagro plays with Pelusa, the family’s dog, in the church basement.

Jerardyn, right, prepares for their move to Mexico as her daughter-in-law styles Milagro’s hair.

Jerardyn and son David, 10, say goodbye to his brother Jahir, 18, at the bus station in Huntington Park on Aug. 16, 2025.

Milagro holds onto her eldest brother, Jesus, at the bus station as she prepares to move to Mexico in August.

“I’m panicking,” she said.

She hadn’t expected to face Mexican immigration officials so soon. She tried to self-soothe by telling herself that no matter what, she would figure it out.

“I’m going to make it in any country because I’m the one doing it.”

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Gathering her bags and suitcase, she shepherded Milagro, 7, and David, 10, into the empty line and handed her Venezuelan passport to an immigration officer. He gave her a stern look and pulled Jerardyn and her children away from the counter and into another room.

Would Mexico deport her to Venezuela? Or grant her some mercy? All she knew was that the doors leading to Mexico were, for now, closed.

Jerardyn grew up in a comfortable, middle-class family in a seaport city, the youngest of eight, and was doted upon by her father. She had aspirations of becoming a social worker, but at 15, she became pregnant. Her parents initially disapproved, but her father, a former police officer, came around after she told him she would name her firstborn after him.

Jerardyn asked that her last name not be published, for fear of retribution for fleeing Venezuela, an act viewed as treason by the government. Her children are being identified by their middle names.

With help from her parents, she earned a certification to become a medical technician. But after her second son, Jahir, was born, her father died, upending her life.

When she was 22, Jerardyn said, she was assaulted by a man who had hired her to do some office cleaning, an ordeal that left her scarred. Violence became rife in Venezuela, as family members got caught up in illegal activity. A nephew she helped raise since he was young was shot by a police officer in front of her, she said.

Jerardyn comforts Milagro on the bus bound for the border with Mexico, after they said their goodbyes to family members.

Conditions in Venezuela continued to worsen. The economy collapsed, bankrupting an auto parts shop she had been running with her husband. By the time Milagro was born in 2018, their relationship had become strained, and they were no longer a couple.

As corruption ran rampant in Venezuela, Jerardyn learned that government officials were kidnapping teens. It wasn’t long before her oldest son, Jesus, then 17, became a target.

During a nationwide power outage in 2019, Jesus went out to buy gasoline around 10 a.m. but never returned. Panicked, she went looking for him, but no one knew where he was.

Frantic, she prayed to God for his safe return. At midnight, government officials released him.

Jerardyn and her children David and Milagro wait at Tijuana International Airport for their flight to Mexico City on Aug. 17, 2025.

Jerardyn, who lovingly refers to her children as her pollitos — baby chicks — concluded they were no longer safe in their homeland. So without notifying her family, she fled with the children to neighboring Colombia. Milagro was 4 months old.

“No one knows what you live through in your country,” she said of her decision to escape Venezuela. “If I had stayed there, my kids could have died from hunger, suffered psychological torture, kidnappings, so many things…. I’m just trying to save them.”

Aid workers in Colombia helped the family relocate to Lima, Peru, where Jerardyn worked as a server and in clothing stores.

Jerardyn, center, sleeps on the flight to Mexico City with her two youngest children, David and Milagro.

David and Milagro bundle up while Jerardyn waits for the landlord to let them into their new apartment in Texcoco de Mora, a town northeast of Mexico City

She made one foray back to Venezuela during that time — attempting to obtain passports for her children. But that effort backfired. Government officials detained her and her children in a white room and forced her to pay the equivalent of $3,000 to be released, with no passports for David and Milagro.

Peru did not prove to be a refuge either. The country was growing increasingly hostile to Venezuelan immigrants, and her sons faced bullying in school. So after four years of living abroad, she began researching what it would take to travel through the Darien Gap, the dangerous strip of jungle linking Central and South America.

She made a list of what they needed to pack to survive.

Altogether, there were six on the journey through the Darien Gap — Jerardyn, her four children, her daughter-in-law, and Pelusa, a dog they had found in Peru. She was especially worried about David, who was 8, and Milagro, then 5.

The jungle was “a living hell,” she recalled, a place where people lost their humanity. Migrants robbed other migrants. Travelers were left injured and abandoned by their families. Jerardyn and her kids had to hike past decomposing bodies, an image she cannot shake. They could hear snakes slithering past their tent when it was not raining, which it often did.

It took the family five days to cross the jungle. She was certain that if one of them died, she would have stayed behind too.

After a month traveling through Mexico, they arrived in the capital covered in dirt, their sandals worn down from the miles behind them. Jesus’ feet were bloody. A taxi driver recommended they visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They arrived at 6 a.m., exhausted and penniless.

After the morning Mass, Jerardyn kneeled and prayed for her family’s safety and a pathway to a life in Mexico, while they waited to enter the U.S.

A pathway soon emerged. A friend helped her settle in Texcoco de Mora, a town northeast of Mexico City. Jerardyn began working at a salon and enrolled Milagro and David in school. Jesus and Jahir hawked vegetables at street markets, and her daughter-in-law worked at a restaurant. Every day, they tried to land a CBP One appointment, which would allow them to enter the U.S. legally to seek asylum.

By a stroke of luck and persistence, the family secured a coveted appointment on Dec. 11, 2024. They continued north to Nogales, Mexico, and suddenly Jerardyn was seeing the U.S. southern border for the first time.

Moments later, she heard a U.S. immigration official voice the words she had long awaited: “Welcome to the United States.”

Immigration raids had been roiling Los Angeles for more than a month when Jerardyn went to Mass one Sunday in July. Having just finished her overnight shift cleaning up a stadium after a concert, she smiled tiredly as she joined her children in the front pew at the church in South L.A. She hugged them as Pastor Ivan began preaching about immigrants and how they shape communities.

Before the raids, the pews would be filled with dozens of families. Now, only a handful of people sat scattered around.

Pastor Ivan’s voice boomed as he urged the congregation to pray for families torn apart by the raids. After a prayer, Jerardyn stood, picked up the collection basket and began gathering donations for the church. She had given Milagro and David a few dollars, which they dropped into the basket.

Milagro walks down the aisle at the South L.A. church.

The church became their haven in January after Jerardyn spent a night homeless. Along with her kids, she had originally been staying with the father of her children, who arrived in the U.S. from Venezuela on his own years ago. But after an argument, he kicked her out of the apartment, forcing her to find a new refuge for herself and her kids.

Pastor Ivan, whose church The Times is not naming because Jerardyn’s family members still reside there, said the church has a history of sheltering immigrants, including Afghans, Haitians, Mexicans and Venezuelans. The pastor said he lived in the U.S. for a decade without documents and knows firsthand the plight of migrants.

“They feel that everything is closing up around them,” he said. But the church’s role is to not stay silent, he said, and instead, to offer help and compassion.

That is why Jerardyn and her family began to slowly build a semblance of a normal life in the church’s basement. David and Milagro attended school nearby, where Milagro was praised for picking up English quickly.

But the family found everyday life stifling. In the basement, Jerardyn felt like they were hiding from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Once, when the school notified her that immigration agents were nearby, she panicked, she said, wondering whether they would seize her children.

David sits at the kitchen table as Jerardyn cleans up in the church basement.

In the eight months they lived there, she had taken her children on public transit only six times. Once, on the metro, a homeless woman pulled her pants down in front of them and urinated. Another time, on a bus, a man became visibly irritated while she spoke Spanish to another passenger.

In the most jarring incident, Jerardyn and David watched from a bus window as immigration agents detained a woman. Suffering panic attacks, the boy would wake up crying from nightmares in which Jerardyn was the one arrested. She shed tears thinking of the stress she was placing on her children.

In the church, she spent several nights mulling over whether to leave the U.S. She would lie on the carpet, alone, in tears, and ask God for answers. But the choice became clear, she said, when David told her he wanted to return to Mexico.

In her request to close her asylum case at immigration court, she carefully wrote out a translated version of a plea to the judge.

“I am requesting voluntary departure because my children and I are experiencing a very stressful situation,” she wrote, recounting how she and David watched a woman get detained. Milagro loved going to school but suffered from anxiety too. “For me it is difficult to make that decision, but it is preferable to leave voluntarily and avoid many problems and even so in the future I can get my documents in the best way and return to this country legally. Thank you very much.”

The judge approved her request. Jesus, 23, and Jahir, 18, would continue to seek asylum and live at the church, with support from Pastor Ivan, who assured Jerardyn they would be safe.

When it came time to say goodbye as they boarded the bus for Tijuana, Jerardyn told Jesus to look out for Jahir. She hugged Jahir, caressed his head, and told him to listen to his older brother. Milagro pressed her small face into Jesus’ stomach and held him tightly until it was time to board. She then sobbed quietly in her mother’s arms as the bus pulled away.

There are no clear numbers yet on how many migrants have opted to self-deport this year. In a statement, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app.” The app offers to pay for one-way tickets out of the U.S., along with a $1,000 “exit bonus.”

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the Trump administration has pushed hard to get people to leave on their own, as the White House appears to be falling short of its goal of 1 million deportations a year. The raids, courthouse arrests and threat of third-country removals are compounding a climate of fear.

“Some of the high-profile moves that this administration has taken [have] been aimed at trying to scare people into self-deporting,” she said.

At the immigration office in Tijuana, Jerardyn, Milagro and David were placed in a white room with one window and told they would be deported because Jerardyn did not have a visa to stay in Mexico.

As they waited, Jerardyn started to pace the small room, which was reminiscent of the one Venezuelan officials had placed her in when they extorted money from her. She had no luggage or phone. Mexican officials had taken them.

As the officials questioned her, she said, she maintained that she had committed no crimes and that she knew she had rights to travel into the country. Somehow, Milagro and David remained calm, eating tuna and crackers provided by the officials.

Jerardyn and her children were released by Mexican immigration authorities after being fingerprinted at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border in August.

The family waited for more than three hours before the officials returned with news: They could stay. All were granted temporary status for a month while Jerardyn sought legal status. Officials fingerprinted them, staining their fingers green, took their pictures for documents that would allow them to travel freely and — 12 hours after leaving Los Angeles — let them leave for their flight to Mexico City.

Because of her preparations, Jerardyn had a job lined up at the hair salon where she previously worked. But a big question mark was Gonzalo. She had met him in Texcoco and they had become close. He showered her children with adoration and care. He asked to marry her, and she had said yes. But when she departed for the U.S. just days later, the distance became too difficult, and they broke off their engagement.

When she and the kids returned, Gonzalo met them at the airport in Mexico City, and the children hugged him in greeting.

Now that she was back, Jerardyn hoped that she and Gonzalo would rekindle their romance. At first they did, easily falling back together, holding hands while strolling through the streets.

Jerardyn, Gonzalo, Milagro and David, center, walk through the town after dinner in Texcoco, Mexico, on Aug. 17, 2025.

Jerardyn, left, chats with a neighbor at her family’s new apartment in Texcoco, Mexico.

Jerardyn shares a laugh with Gonzalo during a family dinner in Texcoco, Mexico.

Jerardyn and Gonzalo walk through town after dinner in Texcoco, Mexico.

At her new two-bedroom apartment, Jerardyn unloaded air mattresses that would serve as beds until she could afford real ones. She made a note of what she would need to buy. A fridge. A trash can and bath mat. A couch for the kids to relax on after school.

One Sunday, the family walked through Texcoco’s crowded central plaza, the air warm and scented with cooking meats and sweets. They navigated around the vendors and chatting families sitting on benches and enjoying snacks. Her children were smiling, and Jerardyn was at peace, something she hardly ever felt in the U.S.

She was finally back in “mi Texcoco,” she said. This feeling of tranquility reminded her of the first time she left Venezuela, when she no longer feared that the government would take her children from her.

“I feel free, complete peace of mind, knowing I’m not doing anything wrong, and I won’t be pursued,” she said.

Jerardyn stares out of the bedroom at her new apartment.

During her first week back, Jerardyn and the children made the trek into Mexico City, where she found herself nearly asking for directions in English, only to remember that everyone spoke her language too.

She returned to the Basilica, her family’s first stop in Mexico City, and gave thanks to the Virgin Mary for guiding her safe journey. The three bowed their heads and knelt in prayer. David prayed for the well-being of his brothers.

That first week, she signed her children up for online English classes at a nearby academy. She worked on a client’s hair, her first gig. She also started therapy to begin sorting through everything she has lived through.

Milagro roller-skates outside her family’s new home in Texcoco, Mexico.

One crisp August morning, Jerardyn helped Milagro slip into the in-line skates Jesus had given her as a parting gift. The little girl had carried them in her pink backpack all the way from L.A., and she wanted to show them off.

In the safe, enclosed space of the apartment complex, where the buildings were painted vibrant shades of red, yellow and blue, Milagro went slowly at first, using a pillar to make turns and the wall as a stop. But as she settled into a flow, she began to speed up, making the turns smoothly on her own.

Milagro cuddles up to a new stuffed toy, a gift from her cousin, right, inside her family’s new apartment in Texcoco, Mexico.

A few times, she fell with a huff. But with her mother looking on, she’d pick herself back up and keep going.

In response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that have roiled Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed a package of bills aimed at protecting immigrants in schools, hospitals and other areas targeted by federal agents.

Speaking at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in Los Angeles, Newsom said President Trump had turned the country into a “dystopian sci-fi movie” with scenes of masked agents hustling immigrants without legal status into unmarked cars.

“We’re not North Korea,” Newsom said.

Newsom framed the pieces of legislation as pushback against what he called the “secret police” of Trump and Stephen Miller, the White House advisor who has driven the second Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement in Democrat-led cities.

SB 98, authored by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), will require school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.

Assembly Bill 49, drafted by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates), will bar immigration agents from nonpublic areas of a school without a judicial warrant or court order. It will also prohibit school districts from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant.

Sen. Jesse Arreguín’s (D-Berkeley) Senate Bill 81 will prohibit healthcare officials from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace — or giving access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics — to immigration authorities without a search warrant or court order.

Senate Bill 627 by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley) targets masked federal immigration officers who began detaining migrants at Home Depots and car washes in California earlier this year.

Wiener has said the presence of anonymous, masked officers marks a turn toward authoritarianism and erodes trust between law enforcement and citizens. The law would apply to local and federal officers, but for reasons that Weiner hasn’t publicly explained, it would exempt state police such as California Highway Patrol officers.

Trump’s immigration leaders argue that masks are necessary to protect the identities and safety of immigration officers. The Department of Homeland Security on Monday called on Newsom to veto Wiener’s legislation, which will almost certainly be challenged by the federal government.

“Sen. Scott Wiener’s legislation banning our federal law enforcement from wearing masks and his rhetoric comparing them to ‘secret police’ — likening them to the gestapo — is despicable,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

The package of bills has already caused friction between state and federal officials. Hours before signing the bills, Newsom’s office wrote on X that “Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America.”

Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, fired back on X accusing the governor of threatening Noem.

“We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials,” Essayli wrote in response, adding he’d requested a “full threat assessment” by the U.S. Secret Service.

The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, leading some legal experts to question whether California could enforce legislation aimed at federal immigration officials.

Essayli noted in another statement on X that California has no jurisdiction over the federal government and he’s directed federal agencies not to change their operations.

“If Newsom wants to regulate our agents, he must go through Congress,” he wrote.

California has failed to block federal officers from arresting immigrants based on their appearance, language and location. An appellate court paused the raids, which California officials alleged were clear examples of racial profiling, but the U.S. Supreme Court overrode the decision and allowed the detentions to resume.

During the news conference on Saturday, Newsom pointed to an arrest made last month when immigration officers appeared in Little Tokyo while the governor was announcing a campaign for new congressional districts. Masked agents showed up to intimidate people who attended the event, Newsom said, but they also arrested an undocumented man who happened to be delivering strawberries nearby.

“That’s Trump’s America,” Newsom said.

Other states are also looking at similar measures to unmask federal agents. Connecticut on Tuesday banned law enforcement officers from wearing masks inside state courthouses unless medically necessary, according to news reports.

Newsom on Saturday also signed Senate Bill 805, a measure by Pérez that targets immigration officers who are in plainclothes but don’t identify themselves.

The law requires law enforcement officers in plainclothes to display their agency, as well as either a badge number or name, with some exemptions.

“Ensuring that officers are clearly identified, while providing sensible exceptions, helps protect both the public and law enforcement personnel,” said Jason P. Houser, a former DHS official who supported the bills signed by Newsom.

When I wrote last week about how immigration raids are targeting far more laborers than criminals, and whacking the California economy at a cost to all of us, I was surprised by the number of readers who wrote to say it’s high time for immigration reform.

The cynic in me had an immediate response, which essentially was, yeah, sure.

Bipartisan attempts failed in 2006 and 2014, so there’s a fat chance of getting anywhere in this political climate.

But the more I thought about it, nobody has done more to make clear how badly we need to rewrite federal immigration law than guess who.

President Trump.

Raids, the threat of more raids, and the promise to deport 3,000 people a day, are sabotaging Trump’s economic agenda and eroding his support among Latinos. Restaurants have suffered, construction has slowed and fruit has rotted on vines as the promised crackdown on violent offenders — which would have had much more public support — instead turned into a heartless, destructive and costly eradication.

I wouldn’t bet a nickel on Trump or his congressional lackeys to publicly admit to any of that. But there have been signs that the emperor is beginning to soften hard-line positions on deportations of working immigrants and student visas, sending his MAGA posse into convulsions.

“His heart isn’t in the nativist purge the way the rest of his administration’s heart is into it,” the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies, David J. Bier, told the New York Times. Despite the tough talk, Bier said, Trump has “always had a soft spot for the economic needs from a business perspective.”

So too, apparently, do some California GOP legislators.

In June, six Republican lawmakers led by state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent Trump a letter urging him to ease up on the raids and get to work on immigration reform.

“Focus deportations on criminals,” Martinez Valladares wrote, “and support legal immigration and visa policies that will build a strong economy, secure our borders and protect our communities.”

Then in July, a bipartisan group of California lawmakers led by State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), followed suit.

Ochoa Bogh urged “immediate federal action … to issue expedited work permits to the millions of undocumented immigrants who are considered essential workers, such as farmworkers who provide critical services. These workers support many industries that keep our country afloat and, regardless of immigration status, we must not overlook the value of their economic, academic, and cultural contributions to the United States.”

State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent President Trump a letter urging him to ease up on raids and focus on immigration reform.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Ochoa Bogh told me she heard from constituents in agriculture and hospitality who complained about the impact of raids. She said her aunt, a citizen, “is afraid to go out and carries a passport with her now because she’s afraid they might stop her.”

The senator said she blames both Democrats and Republicans for the failure to deliver sensible immigration reform over the years, and she told me her own family experience guides her thinking on what could be a way forward.

Her grandfather was a Mexican guest worker in the Bracero Program of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, ended up being sponsored for legal status, and eventually moved his entire family north. Since then, children and grandchildren have gone to school, worked, prospered and contributed.

If Trump were to respond to her letter and visit her district, Ochoa Bogh said, “I would absolutely have him visit my family.”

Her relatives include restaurateurs, the owners of a tailoring business, a county employee and a priest.

“We don’t want undocumented people in our country. … But we need a work permit process” that serves the needs of employers and workers, Ochoa Bogh said.

Public opinion polls reflect similar attitudes. Views are mixed, largely along party lines, but a Pew study in June found 42% approval and 47% disapproval of Trump’s overall approach on immigration.

A July Gallup poll found increasing support for immigration in general, with 85% in favor of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors, and 60% support among Republicans for legal status of all undocumented people if certain requirements are met.

State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, shown with Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk in 2022, says constituents in agriculture and hospitality have complained about the impact of raids.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

So it’s not entirely surprising that a bipartisan congressional immigration reform bill, the Dignity Act of 2025, was introduced in July by a Florida Republican and a Texas Democrat. It would allow legal status for those who have lived in the U.S. for five years, are working and paying taxes, and have no criminal record.

Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, isn’t optimistic, given political realities. But he’s been advocating for immigration reform for decades and said “we need to continue the fight because there will be a time of reckoning” in which the U.S. will “have to rely on immigrant workers to assure economic survival.”

“Germany had to resort to guest worker programs when birth rates declined,” said Kevin Johnson, a former UC Davis law school dean. “We may be begging for workers from other nations in the not too distant future.”

“No side wants to give the other a victory, but there have got to be ways to close that gap,” said Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA immigration scholar whose new book, “Borders and Belonging: Toward A Fair Immigration Policy,” examines the history and causes of immigration, as well as the complexities of arguments for and against.

“Practically and politically, there’s potential” for reform, Motomura said, and he sees a better chance for rational conversations at the local level than in the heat of national debate. “You’re more likely to hear stories of mixed families … and that kind of thing humanizes the situation instead of turning it into a lot of abstract statistics.”

Ochoa Bogh told me that when she wrote her letter to Trump, the feedback from constituents included both support and criticism. She said she met with her critics, who told her she should be focused on jobs for citizens rather than for undocumented immigrants.

She said she told them she is all for “American people doing American jobs.” But “we have a workforce shortage in the state in various industries,” and a U.S.-born population that is not stepping up to do certain kinds of work.

“I said to them, ‘You can’t keep your eyes closed and say this is what it should be, when there are certain realities we have to navigate.”

So what are the chances of progress on immigration reform?

Not great at the moment.

But as readers suggested, a better question is this:

Why not?

[email protected]

At the same time that federal immigration enforcement ramped up across the Los Angeles area this summer, calls for help to local police plummeted.

Emergency dispatch data reviewed by The Times show a major decrease in LAPD calls for service in June, during the weeks when sweeps by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies were met by large street protests in downtown Los Angeles.

In a city where roughly a third of the population is foreign-born, the steep decline in calls adds to long-standing concerns from advocates that aggressive immigration enforcement leads to domestic abuse and other crimes going unreported because victims fear triggering deportations.

In the two weeks after June 6, when the immigration raids kicked off, LAPD calls for service fell 28% compared with the same period last year — an average of roughly 1,200 fewer calls per day.

LAPD officers responded to roughly 44,000 calls for service in that two-week span — versus nearly 61,000 calls during the same days in June 2024.

The calls include reports of serious crimes, such as home break-ins and domestic disputes, along with instances when the public has sought help with noisy neighbors, loud parties and other routine matters.

The data analyzed by The Times do not include all 911 calls — only LAPD calls for service, which are typically registered when a squad car is dispatched. Though multiple people may call 911 in connection with a single incident, in most cases only one LAPD call for service is recorded.

The decrease was especially noticeable for LAPD calls responding to suspected domestic violence and other incidents related to family disputes, which fell this year by 7% and 16%, respectively, after the ICE activity increased. Although family-related calls later began to creep back to 2024 levels, those for domestic incidents kept declining.

National experts said the findings reflect a crisis of public confidence that has followed other controversial incidents. Similar downturns in calls to local police occurred during the first Trump administration, after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and following the fatal shooting six years earlier of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Mo.

It’s hardly surprising that the same thing could happen even in a city where the police force is majority Latino and whose leaders have reaffirmed the city as a sanctuary for immigrants, said Vida Johnson, an associate law professor at Georgetown University.

“You’re going to see fear of law enforcement that is going to last generations,” Johnson said. “And that has the biggest impact on women, because women often are more likely to be victimized, and then more afraid to call for help than men.”

At least some of the decline during the initial two-week period can be explained in part by LAPD going on citywide tactical alert, which allowed the department to have more officers and resources at the ready to deploy to the front lines of the protests. During that time, the department prioritized responding to serious crimes such as shootings and robberies, leading to many other less urgent calls going unanswered.

But that doesn’t explain why calls for service remained down after the department returned to its normal operations. While police call levels began to rise again later in June and early July, they still remained down roughly 5% from the same period in 2024.

The decrease in calls was less pronounced in the nine police districts in South L.A., the San Fernando Valley and the Eastside where Latinos make up the majority of residents, but the data show a persistent dip in domestic violence calls in those areas that remained in the weeks after the immigration enforcement campaign began.

Police calls for service have been on a slow decline for years, a phenomenon that has coincided with a drop in overall crime. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and other leaders have tried to emphasize in public remarks that local cops are not allowed to enforce civil immigration laws and only work with federal agents to arrest criminal suspects or quell unrest that threatens public safety.

But Carlos Montes, a longtime organizer with the Boyle Heights-based immigrant advocacy group Centro Community Service Organization, said the sight of LAPD officers standing alongside the feds during recent operations has ensured that even more Angelenos will think twice about calling the police for help.

“In general, in the neighborhood we don’t want to call the cops because they’re not going to solve anything or they’re going to arrest someone, or beat someone or shoot someone,” he said.

LAPD Assistant Chief German Hurtado, the department’s immigration coordinator, acknowledged that it has been a struggle to reassure the public it’s safe to call the police.

“Police are also the most visible form of government, and right now people are not trusting the government,” Hurtado said in an interview last month. “People [are] scared to be deported, and that’s totally understandable. That’s something that we’re going to have to deal with and figure out a way to heal with the community.”

In response to what he called “negative publicity” around the LAPD’s actions in recent weeks, he said the department was stepping up its outreach efforts in various immigrant neighborhoods, with a series of planned listening sessions and other events aimed at educating the public.

The department recently launched a citizens academy for Spanish speakers, and senior lead officers have been out meeting with faith and community leaders trying to get them to reinforce the message that police need victims to cooperate in order to solve crimes.

Marielle Coronel, 24, co-owner of a boxing gym in Sylmar, said she worries about being profiled while being out and about, which has also made her think twice about calling police.

Even though she believes that at least some police officers are trying to help, she said the last few months have been unnerving. She recalled how her parents recently gave her a version of “the talk” that many parents of color have with their children about how to deal with police. Their fears have grown to include unidentified masked men posing as ICE agents, Coronel said.

Her parents insisted that she start carrying her passport with her everywhere she goes and that she not lower her window to anyone unless they clearly identify themselves. Tending to her gym’s front desk one recent afternoon, she said she has taken the advice to heart.

“Even if I am a U.S. citizen, you just don’t know,” she said. “We don’t feel like we have backup from the government.”

For the 79th year, mariachi musicians, waving Mexican flags and shouts of “Viva Mexico,” flooded Cesar Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles on Sunday for the annual Mexican Independence Day parade and celebration.

But this year, in the face of the Trump administration’s relentless immigration crackdown — recently bolstered by the Supreme Court decision that allows federal agents to restart their controversial “roving patrols” across Southern California — there was a renewed sense of defiance, and of pride.

For many, it was even more important to show up. To stand tall.

“We’re here and we’re going to continue fighting for our rights and for others who cannot fight for themselves,” Samantha Robles, 21, said as she watched the parade roll by. “I’m happy that many people are here so they can raise their flags — just not the Mexican flag, but also the American flag, because we’re both Mexican American.”

Members of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles hold a Mexican flag at the East L.A. Mexican Independence Day Parade & Festival on Cesar Chavez Avenue on Sunday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

But the parade was also a bittersweet moment for Robles. This year, her grandmother opted to stay home, given ongoing sweeping immigration raids across the region. A new Supreme Court ruling authorized U.S. immigration agents to stop and detain anyone they might suspect is in the U.S. illegally, even if based on little more than their job at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin. Immigration rights attorneys and local leaders have denounced that as discriminatory and dangerous, and it has stoked fears in Robles, who describes herself as an East L.A. native.

“I have my brown skin, I have my Indigenous features,” Robles said. “I’m afraid not just for myself, [but] for my friends who are also from Mexico and they came here for more opportunities, for a higher education. … I’m afraid for those who are getting taken away from their families.”

The Comité Mexicano Civico Patriotico Inc., which organized Sunday’s parade and celebration, addressed those fears in a press conference on Friday, but decided to move ahead with its celebration of Mexican independence from Spain, as it has done so in September for decades.

That decision seemed to drive a sense of proud resistance on Sunday.

“Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!” (“We are here and we are not leaving!”) yelled Rosario Marín, the former mayor of Huntington Park and the parade’s madrina, or godmother.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass holds TJ’s parrot Pepe Hermon at the East L.A. Mexican Independence Day Parade & Festival on Sunday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

When Mayor Karen Bass rode by the crowd, she read aloud a sign from the sidewalk that said: “Trump Must Go!”

The crowd cheered.

“I was just reading the sign,” she said, with a smile on her face. But Bass reiterated her support for her Latino constituents, and her opposition to the ongoing immigration raids, calling them horrible.

“Our city stands united,” Bass told the crowd. “We are a city of immigrants. We understand that 50% of our city is Latino, and the idea that Latinos would be targeted is abhorrent.”

The Trump administration has insisted its immigration actions are merely an attempt to enforce the law, and has blasted Bass and other city leaders for stoking resistance. But many Latino leaders say the administration’s use of force is an abuse of power, stoking fears that have hurt people and the region’s economy.

Alfonso Fox Orozco wears traditional Mexican dress at the East L.A. Parade & Festival on Sunday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Such concerns may have affected Sunday’s parade, which seemed less attended than prior years. Anti-Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE signs, lined the street. Organizations such as the United Teachers Los Angeles yelled out “La migra no, la escuela si.” (“No immigration enforcement, yes schools!”)

Jenny Hernandez, a fifth-generation East L.A. resident, held up a homemade sign that read “Crush ICE.” The 51-year-old has been disturbed by the recent raids, many of which have targeted individuals in the workplace.

“What they’re doing is wrong,” she said. “We are not criminals. We’re Mexican, Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, whatever you want to call it…. We do not deserve this treatment.… There needs to be a change.”

La Catrina Andante sits atop a car in traditional face paint at the parade Sunday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

But mostly, the day emanated Latino joy, unseen in recent months. Burnt sage filled the air at one intersection, courtesy of a Danza Azteca group, while attendees — some in traditional embroidered dresses and shirts — relished the cumbia song blasting from a nearby radio.

A young girl, no more than 5 years old, belted out a call for “fresas” alongside her mother, a street vendor. A grandmother sat with her lap covered in a blanket, knitted with the colors of the Mexican flag. Politicians, teenagers, dancers and charros, or men riding dancing horses, shouted, “Viva Mexico!”

Girls dressed as vendors from Patzcuaro, Michoacan, balance on pots at the East L.A. Parade & Festival Sunday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Other ethnic groups joined the popular celebration, including waves of Puerto Ricans, Bolivians and Salvadorans. Notable faces included Snow Tha Product and Real 92.3 FM radio host Big Boy, who at one point took the reins as an elotero vendor. Space shuttle astronaut José M. Hernández led the parade as grand marshal. , His journey from migrant farmworker to NASA astronaut was detailed in the Amazon Prime film “A Million Miles Away.”

Giselle Salgado, also an East L.A. native, said it was important to see a good turnout from her community, as well as from public officials, though she noticed a smaller crowd this year.

“We’re not afraid,” she said. “This is our tradition, we’ve always come out here. … I’m sure a lot of people are scared, but they’re still here. We’re not going to let fear and intimidation work against us.”

The crew had just poured a concrete foundation on a vacant lot in Altadena when I pulled up the other day. Two workers were loading equipment onto trucks and a third was hosing the fresh cement that will sit under a new house.

I asked how things were going, and if there were any problems finding enough workers because of ongoing immigration raids.

“Oh, yeah,” said one worker, shaking his head. “Everybody’s worried.”

The other said that when fresh concrete is poured on a job this big, you need a crew of 10 or more, but that’s been hard to come by.

“We’re still working,” he said. “But as you can see, it’s just going very slowly.”

Eight months after thousands of homes were destroyed by wildfires, Altadena is still a ways off from any major rebuilding, and so is Pacific Palisades. But immigration raids have hammered the California economy, including the construction industry. And the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this week that green-lights racial profiling has raised new fears that “deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” as the UCLA Anderson Forecast warned us in March.

There was already a labor shortage in the construction industry, in which 25% to 40% of workers are immigrants, by various estimates. As deportations slow construction, and tariffs and trade wars make supplies scarcer and more expensive, the housing shortage becomes an even deeper crisis.

And it’s not just deportations that matter, but the threat of them, says Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the Anderson Forecast. If undocumented people are afraid to show up to install drywall, Nickelsburg told me, it “means you finish homes much more slowly, and that means fewer people are employed.”

Now look, I’m no economist, but it seems to me that after President Trump promised the entire country we were headed for a “golden age” of American prosperity, it might not have been in his best interest to stifle the state with the largest economy in the nation.

Especially when many national economic indicators aren’t exactly rosy, when we have not seen the promised decrease in the price of groceries and consumer goods, and when the labor statistics were so embarrassing he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and replaced her with another one, only to see more grim jobs numbers a month later.

I had just one economics class in college, but I don’t recall a section on the value of deporting construction workers, car washers, elder-care workers, housekeepers, nannies, gardeners and other people whose only crime — unlike the violent offenders we were allegedly going to round up — is a desire to show up for work.

Now here, let me give you my email address. It’s [email protected].

And why am I telling you that?

Because I know from experience that some of you are frothing, foaming and itching to reach out and tell me that illegal means illegal.

So go ahead and email me if you must, but here’s my response:

We’ve been living a lie for decades.

People come across the border because we want them to. We all but beg them to. And by we, I mean any number of industries — many of them led by conservatives and by Trump supporters — including agribusiness, and hospitality, and construction, and healthcare.

Why do you think so many employers avoid using the federal E-Verify system to weed out undocumented workers? Because they don’t want to admit that many of their employees are undocumented.

In Texas, Republican lawmakers can’t stop demonizing immigrants, and they can’t stop introducing bills by the dozens to mandate wider use of E-Verify. But the most recent one, like all the ones before it, just died.

Why?

Because the tough talk is a lie and there’s no longer any shame in hypocrisy. It’s a climate of corruption in which no one has the integrity to admit what’s clear — that the Texas economy is propped up in part by an undocumented workforce.

At least in California, six Republican lawmakers all but begged Trump in June to ease up on the raids, which were affecting business on farms and construction sites and in restaurants and hotels. Please do some honest work on immigration reform instead, they pleaded, so we can fill our labor needs in a more practical and humane way.

Makes sense, but politically, it doesn’t play as well as TV ads recruiting ICE commandos to storm the streets and arrest tamale vendors, even as the barbarians who ransacked the Capitol and beat up cops enjoy their time as presidentially pardoned patriots.

Small businesses, restaurants and mom and pops are being particularly hard hit, says Maria Salinas, chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those who survived the pandemic were then kneecapped again by the raids.

With the Supreme Court ruling, Salinas told me, “I think there’s a lot of fear that this is going to come back harder than before.”

From a broader economic perspective, the mass deportations make no sense, especially when it’s clear that the vast majority of people targeted are not the violent criminals Trump keeps talking about.

Giovanni Peri, director of the UC Davis Global Migration Center, noted that we’re in the midst of a demographic transformation, much like that of Japan, which is dealing with the challenges of an aging population and restrictive immigration policies.

“We’ll lose almost a million working-age Americans every year in the next decade just because of aging,” Peri told me. “We will have a very large elderly population and that will demand a lot of services in … home healthcare [and other industries], but there will be fewer and fewer workers to do these types of jobs.”

Dowell Myers, a USC demographer, has been studying these trends for years.

“The numbers are simple and easy to read,” Myers said. Each year, the worker-to-retiree ratio decreases, and it will continue to do so. This means we’re headed for a critical shortage of working people who pay into Social Security and Medicare even as the number of retirees balloons.

If we truly wanted to stop immigration, Myers said, we should “send all ICE workers to the border. But if you take people who have been here 10 and 20 years and uproot them, there’s an extreme social cost and also an economic cost.”

At the Pasadena Home Depot, where day laborers still gather despite the risk of raids, three men held out hope for work. Two of them told me they have legal status. “But there’s very little work,” said Gavino Dominguez.

The third one, who said he’s undocumented, left to circle the parking lot and offer his services to contractors.

Umberto Andrade, a general contractor, was loading concrete and other supplies into his truck. He told me he lost one fearful employee for a week, and another for two weeks. They came back because they’re desperate and need to pay their bills.

“The housing shortage in California was already terrible before the fires, and now it’s 10 times worse,” said real estate agent Brock Harris, who represents a developer whose Altadena rebuilding project was temporarily slowed after a visit from ICE agents in June.

With building permits beginning to flow, Harris said, “for these guys to slow down or shut down job sites is more than infuriating. You’re going to see fewer people willing to start a project.”

Most people on a job site have legal status, Harris said, “but if shovels never hit the ground, the costs are being borne by everybody, and it’s slowing the rebuilding of L.A.”

Lots of bumps on the road to the golden age of prosperity.

[email protected]

Military confirms deadly operations in Bajaur and South Waziristan amid rising attacks by the Pakistan Taliban.

Pakistani security forces have raided two hideouts of the Pakistan Taliban armed group near the Afghan border this week, triggering fierce clashes that killed 12 soldiers and 35 fighters, says the military.

The military on Saturday said 22 fighters were killed in the first raid in Bajaur, a district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Thirteen more were killed in a separate operation in South Waziristan district, it added.

The statement said the 12 soldiers, “having fought gallantly, paid the ultimate sacrifice and embraced martyrdom” in South Waziristan, their deaths underscoring the struggles Pakistan faces as it tries to rein in resurging armed groups.

The Pakistan Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message on social media. The group, which Islamabad says is based in Afghanistan, is separate to but closely linked with the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Pakistan Taliban uses Afghan soil to stage attacks in Pakistan, the military said, urging the Taliban government in Kabul “to uphold its responsibilities and deny use of its soil for terrorist activities against Pakistan”.

The military described the killed fighters as “Khwarij”, a term the government uses for the Pakistan Taliban, and alleged they were backed by India, though it offered no evidence for the allegation.

Pakistan has long accused India of supporting the Pakistan Taliban and separatists in Balochistan, charges that New Delhi denies. There was no immediate comment from the Taliban in Kabul or from New Delhi.

From 10-13 September, thirty five Khwarij belonging to Indian Proxy, Fitna al Khwarij were sent to hell in two separate engagements in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

On reported presence of Khwarij, an intelligence based operation was conducted by the Security Forces in Bajaur…

— DG ISPR (@OfficialDGISPR) September 13, 2025

Pakistan has faced a surge in armed attacks in recent years, most claimed by the Pakistan Taliban, which has become emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Kabul in 2021, with many Pakistan Taliban leaders and fighters finding sanctuary across the border.

Saturday’s attack was one of the deadliest in months in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the Pakistan Taliban once controlled swaths of territory until they were pushed back by a military operation that began in 2014.

For several weeks, residents of various districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have reported that graffiti bearing the Pakistan Taliban’s name has appeared on buildings. They say they fear a return to the group’s reign over the region during the peak of the so-called war on terror, led by the United States, which spilled across from Afghanistan.

A local government official recently told the AFP news agency that the number of Pakistan Taliban fighters and attacks had increased.

Nearly 460 people, mostly members of the security forces, have been killed since January 1 in attacks carried out by armed groups fighting the state, both in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southern province of Balochistan, according to an AFP tally.

Last year was Pakistan’s deadliest in nearly a decade, with more than 1,600 deaths, nearly half of them soldiers and police officers, according to the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies.

Sept. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court’s rulings blocking federal immigration officials from conducting raids in California seen by critics as unconstitutional racial profiling.

The high court voted 6-3 in favor of lifting temporary restraining orders preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from carrying out the raids.

“This is a win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement.

“DHS law enforcement will not be slowed down and will continue to arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members and other criminal illegal aliens that Karen Bass continues to give safe harbor.”

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued two restraining orders in July, saying roving patrols “indiscriminately” rounded up people without reasonable suspicion, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. She also said that ICE denied the individuals access to lawyers, a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority on Monday, said it was reasonable to question people gathered in places seeking day work, landscaping, agriculture, construction and other types of jobs that don’t require paperwork and are therefore attractive to undocumented immigrants. He said reasonable suspicion cannot rely alone on ethnicity, but he called it a “relevant factor.”

“Under this court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The three dissenters — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — agreed with civil rights activists who said that ICE’s approach of questioning people who appear to be of Hispanic origin or work in certain jobs would target many U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.

“We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low-wage job,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

The high court’s decision was swiftly rebuked by civil rights organizations, unions and Democrats.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has fought against President Donald Trump‘s raids, described the action as an “attack” that not only targeted her city, but “an attack on every person in every city in this country.”

“Today’s ruling is not only dangerous — it’s un-American and threatens the fabric of personal freedom in the U.S.,” she said in a statement on X.

The federal government raids in Los Angeles began June 6, sparking protests that prompted Trump to deploy thousands of National Guardsmen to the city.

On July 2, several people who were arrested in the operation filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government, calling on the courts to end the stop and arrests and to up hold due process and rights for immigration detainees to access to legal counsel.

Janet Murguia, president and CEO of UnidosUS, a nonpartisan nonprofit Hispanic civil rights organization, lambasted the ruling as opening the door for the federal government to indiscriminately stop and arrest minorities.

“It authorizes targeting by authorities that makes all immigrants, Hispanics and other non-White Americans, suspects simply because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. In doing so, the court has put the civil rights of every person in the United States at risk, Murguia said in a statement emailed to UPI.

“The Supreme Court, without proper review of explanation, has signaled that the administration can, with impunity, use profiling-based tactics nationwide.”

California’s top law enforcement official has weighed in on Monday‘s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immigration enforcement.

Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta condemned the decision, which clears the way for immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally based solely on information such as their perceived race or place of employment.

Speaking at a news conference Monday in downtown L.A., Bonta said he agreed with claims the ACLU made in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. He called indiscriminate tactics used to make immigration arrests a violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Bonta said he thinks it is unconstitutional “for ICE agents, federal immigration officers, to use race, the inability to speak English, location or perceived occupation to … stop and detain, search, seize Californians.”

He also decried what he described as the Supreme Court’s increasing reliance on its emergency docket, which he said often obscures the justices’ decision-making.

“It’s disappointing,” he said. “And the emergency docket has been used more and more. You often don’t know who has voted and how. There’s no argument. There’s no written opinion.”

Bonta called Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s opinion “very disturbing.”

The Trump-appointed justice argued that because many people who do day labor in fields such as construction or farming, engagement in such work could be useful in helping immigrant agents determine which people to stop.

Bonta said the practice enables “the use of race to potentially discriminate,” saying “it is disturbing and it is troubling.”

Seoul demands protection for nationals, investors as Trump’s immigration crackdown sees hundreds detained in ICE raid.

South Korea has complained after United States immigration officials detained hundreds of workers during a raid on a Hyundai-LG battery plant being built in the state of Georgia.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul on Friday demanded the rights of its investors and citizens be respected following the raid the previous day, which forced construction of the factory to be suspended.

The episode highlights the disruptive effect President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is having on his efforts to attract foreign investment. The Hyundai-LG plant is part of the biggest foreign investment in the state of Georgia.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of US law enforcement,” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lee Jaewoong, said in a statement.

Since Trump returned to power in January, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids.

The president has said he wants to deport “the worst of the worst” criminals. But ICE figures show a rise in the detainment of non-criminals.

Lee did not specify exactly how many South Koreans were detained, calling the number “large,” but media reports suggested that 300 or more had been taken into custody.

The Atlanta office of the US Justice Department agency ATF said in a post on X that up to 450 people in total had been detained.

The Korea Economic Daily reported that as many as 560 workers at the Hyundai Motor facility and LG Energy Solution (LGES) had been detained.

Of that number, some 300 are South Korean nationals, according to the Reuters and AFP news agencies, citing South Korean media and unnamed sources.

A South Korean government official told Reuters that the detainees were being held at an ICE detention facility.

Lee said the ministry is taking active measures to address the case, dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and planning to form an on-site response team centred on the local mission.

In July, Seoul pledged $350bn in US investment to ease tariff threats from Trump, who was elected last year on a promise to lead the largest migrant deportation programme in US history.

More settler attacks also take place across the territory, with a Palestinian husband and wife hurt in the violence.

The Israeli army has carried out raids and arrests across the occupied West Bank, with incidents reported in the cities of Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah.

Multiple Palestinians were detained in the territory on Sunday, according to the Wafa news agency, including a child and a young man in the town of Yabad.

Reports suggested that a 37-year-old man was also arrested in the town of Beit Fajjar, while a 25-year-old man was taken into Israeli custody in the town of Nilin near Ramallah.

Several raids took place in the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, just days after Israel launched a prolonged raid in the area that injured at least 58 people.

Israeli soldiers were also present in the towns of Kafr Malek, Nilin and Deir Qaddis, but did not make any arrests.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, intense and continuous gunfire broke out south of Hebron, as shown by online videos verified by Al Jazeera.

Wafa said that five Palestinians, including a girl, were injured by Israeli bullets and taken to hospital for treatment.

Israeli soldiers also allegedly fired live ammunition in the northern village of Sarra and the town of Sebastia, but no injuries were reported.

Meanwhile, a settler attack left a Palestinian man and his wife with injuries in Khallet al-Daba village in Masafer Yatta.

Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian homes in the village of Kisan near Bethlehem.

The Wafa news agency reports that the settlers broke into Palestinian properties and looted them, while receiving protection from the Israeli army.

In the first eight months of the year, more than 1,000 Israeli settler attacks have been recorded in the occupied West Bank that caused injuries, property damage or both, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Settlers rampage on Palestinian land on a daily basis, with impunity and backed by the Israeli military.

Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 671 Palestinians, including 129 children, across the region since October 2023, according to OCHA.

As well as the Israeli raids and the settler attacks, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said that Israeli authorities had engaged in unauthorised excavation and demolition operations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.

“These operations deliberately target Islamic antiquities dating back to the Umayyad period, which stand as living witnesses and irrefutable evidence of Muslims’ rightful claim to the site,” the PA’s Jerusalem governorate said in a statement.

It said that Israel intends to remove the site’s Muslim history to build a Jewish temple there in the future.

President Trump’s border advisor told reporters Thursday that federal authorities planned to increase immigration raids in Los Angeles and other so-called “sanctuary cities,” with Chicago likely the next target.

“You’re going to see a ramp up of operations in New York; you’re going to see a ramp up of operations continue in L.A., Portland, Seattle, all these sanctuary cities that refuse to work with ICE,” Tom Homan said.

Since June, Southern California has been ground zero of thousands of immigration arrests as well as legal battles over whether the raids violate the U.S. Constitution.

There is no agreed-upon definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Homan did not elaborate on specifics about new raids in L.A.

But talking to reporters Thursday morning, he said Immigration and Customs Enforcement is considering using a naval base north of Chicago as its hub when potential enforcement raids take place in that city.

Tom Homan said, “there’s discussions about that, yes,” when asked by reporters outside the White House.

He didn’t provide an exact timeline for the use.

“The planning is still being discussed,” he said. “So, maybe by the end of today.”

Earlier this week, Trump said Chicago would likely be the next city in which he’ll direct a crackdown on crime and, in particular, illegal immigration.

He recently sent 2,000 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. after having dispatched soldiers, ICE and border patrol agents to Los Angeles since early June. The Department of Homeland Security said that as of Aug. 8, ICE and Border Patrol agents had arrested 2,792 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area.

“I think Chicago will be… next,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday.

He also called the City of Broad Shoulders a “mess” and that its residents were “screaming for us to come.” Three days after Trump railed about crime in Chicago, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson released a statement, saying overall crime in the city had dropped by 21.6%, year to date, with homicides falling by 32.3%.

Homan would not commit to how many soldiers and agents would be used in any immigration enforcement.

“We’re not going to tell you how many resources we’re going to send to the city,” he said. “We don’t want the bad guys to know what we’re sending.”

He added, “It will be a large contingent.”

Since a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal agents from targeting people solely based on their race, language, vocation or location, the number of arrests in Southern California declined in July.

But raids are continuing, with Home Depot stores becoming a common target in recent weeks.

On Aug. 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a Trump administration request to lift the restraining order prohibiting roving raids.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States has searched the home of John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump who later became a frequent critic.

News outlets reported on Friday that the raid was part of a national security probe into Bolton’s handling of classified information. Police cars were observed stationed outside Bolton’s home in the Washington, DC, suburb of Bethesda, Maryland.

“NO ONE is above the law,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post on Friday that did not explicitly refer to Bolton but noted that FBI agents were “on mission”.

Trump, meanwhile, denied having any knowledge of the raid on Bolton’s home.

“No, I don’t know about it. I saw it on television this morning,” Trump told reporters, before adding: “I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real sort of a lowlife.”

But the raid on Bolton’s home comes as the Trump administration steps up threats and probes against rivals and critics.

Bolton served as a hawkish foreign policy adviser during several Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term in office. He was also considered a strong advocate for the US invasion of Iraq during the administration of former President George W Bush.

Nowadays, however, he often appears on US news shows to criticise Trump and his policies. In his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton also offered a scathing assessment of his time in the Trump White House.

“He couldn’t tell the difference between his personal interests and the country’s interests,” Bolton wrote of Trump.

Trump, meanwhile, has criticised Bolton for his aggressive foreign policy stance. On Friday, he described Bolton as a menacing presence in meetings with foreign leaders.

“He really doesn’t talk. He’s quiet,” Trump said. “I’d walk into a room with him with a foreign country, and the foreign country would give me everything because they’d say, oh no, they’re going to get blown up because John Bolton’s there.”

The news agency Reuters reported that a spokesperson for the FBI had confirmed “court-authorised activity” on Friday in the area around Bolton’s home.

The Associated Press noted that Bolton was also seen on Friday in the lobby of a building where he works in Washington, DC. He was observed speaking with two people who had the label “FBI” on their vests.

The news agency said agents were then spotted taking bags into the building through the rear entrance.

This is not the first action the Trump administration has taken against Bolton. Trump cancelled Bolton’s security clearance in January, on his first day back in the White House.

Then, several days later, Trump revoked the security detail assigned to protect Bolton.

“I am disappointed but not surprised,” Bolton said at the time. For his part, Trump called Bolton a “very dumb person” and questioned why the former adviser would need government protection for the rest of his life.

This month, in an interview with ABC News, Bolton accused Trump of lashing out at his political rivals and leveraging the power of the government for punishment: “I think it is a retribution presidency.”

But on Friday, Trump repeatedly denied knowledge of the raid and credited his Department of Justice, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, with making such decisions.

“I tell Pam and I tell the group, I don’t want to know about this. You have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it. It’s not necessary,” Trump said. “I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer. But I feel it’s better this way.”

He added that he expected to be briefed on the raid later in the day. He also took some swipes at Bolton.

“He’s not a smart guy. He could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out,” Trump said.

Under Trump, the Department of Justice has also unveiled probes into a number of Trump critics, including Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a civil fraud lawsuit against the president and his company, the Trump Organization.

Meanwhile, prosecutor Jack Smith, who led two federal investigations into Trump, faces a probe from the Office of the Special Counsel, based on Republican allegations that his inquiries amounted to illegal political activity under the Hatch Act.