What began as banter between fans during a contentious playoff game took a darker turn when a woman threatened to call ICE on a Southern California man during Tuesday’s National League Championship game between the Dodgers and the Milwaukee Brewers.
The exchange began when Dodgers fan Ricardo Fosado trash-talked nearby Brewers fans moments after third baseman Max Muncy clobbered a solo home run in the top of the sixth inning to give visiting Los Angeles a 3-1 lead.
One fan, identified by Milwaukee media as an attorney named Shannon Kobylarczyk, responded by threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Fosado.
“You know what?” she asked a nearby fan. “Let’s call ICE.”
“ICE is not going to do anything to me,” said Fosado, who noted he was a war veteran and a U.S. citizen. “Good luck.”
On the video, the woman then uses a derogatory term to question Fosado’s masculinity, remarking, “real men drink beer.” Fosado was instead enjoying a fruity alcoholic beverage.
Fosado then told Kobylarczyk one last time to call ICE before calling her an idiot, punctuating the remark with an expletive.
An email to Fosado was not immediately returned Thursday.
Fosado told Milwaukee television station WISN 12 News that the incident “just shows the level where a person’s heart is and how she really feels as a human being.”
The station also confirmed that Kobylarczyk’s employment with the Milwaukee-based staffing firm Manpower had ended.
Kobylarczyk also reportedly stepped down from the board of Wisconsin’s Make-a-Wish chapter.
Fosado did not escape unscathed, however. He said he and a friend were ejected from the game shortly after the exchange.
The Dodgers ended up winning the game 5-1 and led the best-of-seven series, 2-0. The series now shifts to Dodger Stadium, with the first pitch of Game 3 is scheduled for 3:08 p.m. Thursday.
Remember when snack choices fueled the most contentious debates around Super Bowl halftime? Cheetos versus Doritos. Hot wings versus garlic knots. And who the hell brought carrot sticks?!
Now Turning Point USA, the far-right organization founded by slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, has presented its followers with more tough choices: Who should play at Super Bowl LX’s halftime show?
Never mind that the NFL already announced earlier this month that Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny had landed the spot. Turning Point USA announced Thursday that it would be staging its own counterprogramming in protest of the league’s choice. It’ll be called “The All American Halftime Show” — and it most certainly won’t be in Spanish.
Ever since the NFL announced that Bad Bunny (whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio) would play the Big Game on Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, critics have been decrying the decision as an assault on Americanism.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said booking Bad Bunny was “a terrible decision.”
President Trump, who admitted he’d never heard of Bad Bunny before the late September Super Bowl announcement, said the NFL’s booking of the performer was “absolutely ridiculous.”
White House advisor Corey Lewandowski said it was “shameful they’ve decided to pick somebody who seems to hate America so much.”
Yet in comparison with other artists and celebrities who’ve widely criticized the president and his policies, Bad Bunny is not all that political or outspoken. He has, however, expressed concerns about the potential of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detaining fans at his concerts. The artist said last month that he would not book any U.S. dates for his tour over fears that fans would be swept up by ICE. “There was the issue of — like, f— ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about,” he told i-D magazine.
That was enough to deem Bad Bunny an enemy of the MAGA state and to characterize his Super Bowl show as part of a larger, hostile Latino invasion.
But let’s call it what it is: politicians and their pundits leveraging Hispanophobia for votes, influence and donations. The performer represents a population that’s been targeted by the current administration via unconstitutional sweeps of brown people in American cities, regardless of their immigration status. Bad Bunny is a U.S. citizen, like many of the folks with no criminal records who’ve been detained and even deported. Vilifying the artist and those who look and speak like him has generated votes for the right and deflected from concerns about the fragile economy and skyrocketing cost of living under Trump.
Turning Point advertises its planned counterprogramming as a show “Celebrating Faith, Family, & Freedom” and asking followers to weigh in on music genres they would like to hear at the alternative halftime show. The first option on the ballot? “Anything in English.”
The survey is situated right under a donate button, and another option to click “yes” to approve receiving “recurring automated promotional & fundraising texts from Turning Point.”
Despite the fact that the 79-year-old president had never heard of the wildly popular artist before, Bad Bunny is a three-time Grammy Award winner, a global superstar and has bested Taylor Swift’s Billboard chart numbers in the U.S.
So who does MAGA think it can get to upstage Bad Bunny at its unofficial Super Bowl side show? House Speaker Johnson suggested that “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood would attract a “broader audience.” But as Variety pointed out, the 1980s country icon boasts fewer than 500,000 Spotify listeners, compared with Bad Bunny’s 80 million.
Turning Point USA appears to be working on that problem. “Performers and event details coming soon,” said a statement on its site.
During his “Saturday Night Live” guest appearance last weekend, Bad Bunny derided the MAGA freakout around his forthcoming Super Bowl show, delivering his monologue in Spanish. He earnestly thanked his fans for acknowledging the contributions of Latinos in the U.S. Then in closing, he switched to English: “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”
No word yet if chips, salsa and guacamole will become the next target of performative, fundraising outrage on the right. Make Pretzels Great Again.
ROME — Pope Leo XIV urged labor union leaders from Chicago on Thursday to advocate for immigrants and welcome minorities into their ranks, weighing in as the Trump administration crackdown on immigrants intensifies in the pontiff’s hometown.
“While recognizing that appropriate policies are necessary to keep communities safe, I encourage you to continue to advocate for society to respect the human dignity of the most vulnerable,” Leo said.
The audience was scheduled before the deployment of National Guard troops to protect federal property in the Chicago area, including a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building that has been the site of occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents.
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, who accompanied the labor leaders, said that Leo was well aware of the situation on the ground. In an interview with the Associated Press, Cupich said Leo has made clear, including in recent comments, that migrants and the poor must be treated in ways that respect their human dignity.
“I really didn’t have to tell him much at all, because he seemed to have a handle on what was going on,” Cupich told the AP afterward.
He said that Leo had urged U.S. bishops in particular to “speak with one voice” on the issue. Cupich said he expected the November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would make immigration a top agenda item.
“This has to be front and center right now. This is the issue of the day. And we can’t dance around it,” Cupich said.
Catholic leaders in the U.S. have denounced the Trump administration’s crackdown, which has split up families and incited fears that people could be rounded up and deported any time. The administration has defended the crackdown as safeguarding public safety and national security.
Leo “wants us to make sure, as bishops, that we speak out on behalf of the undocumented or anybody who’s vulnerable to preserve their dignity,” Cupich said. “We all have to remember that we all share a common dignity as human beings.”
Cupich said he was heartened by Leo’s remarks last week, in which the pope defended the cardinal’s decision to honor Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin for his work helping immigrants. The plans drew objection from some conservative U.S. bishops given the powerful Democratic senator’s support for abortion rights, and he ultimately declined the award.
It was the second meeting in as many days that history’s first American pope has heard firsthand from a U.S. bishop on the front lines of the migration crackdown. On Wednesday, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz brought Leo letters from desperate immigrant families.
Cupich was in Rome for Vatican meetings and to also accompany a group of Chicago schoolchildren who got a special greeting from Leo during his Wednesday general audience. The kids had staged their own “mock conclave” in school this past spring, and footage of their deliberations went viral online as the real conclave unfolded in Rome. They arrived at the audience Wednesday dressed as cardinals, Swiss Guards and the pope himself.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.
The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.
ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.
The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.
The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.
“All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made early Saturday, just after midnight.
Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.
But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.
The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.
U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.
Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.
The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.
OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine — A Maine police officer arrested by immigration authorities has agreed to voluntarily leave the country, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Monday.
ICE arrested Old Orchard Beach Police Department reserve Officer Jon Luke Evans, of Jamaica, on July 25, as part of the agency’s effort to step up immigration enforcement. Officials with the town and police department have said federal authorities previously told them Evans was legally authorized to work in the U.S.
An ICE representative reached by telephone told the Associated Press on Monday that a judge has granted voluntary departure for Evans and that he could leave as soon as that day. The representative did not provide other details about Evans’ case.
Evans’ arrest touched off a dispute between Old Orchard Beach officials and ICE. Police Chief Elise Chard has said the department was notified by federal officials that Evans was legally permitted to work in the country, and that the town submitted information via the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program prior to Evans’ employment. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin then accused the town of “reckless reliance” on the department’s E-Verify program.
E-Verify is an online system that allows employers to check if potential employees can work legally in the U.S.
The town is aware of reports that Evans plans to leave the country voluntarily, Chard said Monday.
“The town reiterates its ongoing commitment to meeting all state and federal laws regarding employment,” Chard said in a statement. “We will continue to rely on the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification form and the E-Verify database to confirm employment eligibility.”
ICE’s detainee lookup website said Monday that Evans was being held at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island. However, a representative for Wyatt said Evans had been transferred to an ICE facility in Burlington, Massachusetts. ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment on the discrepancy. It was unclear if Evans was represented by an attorney, and a message left for him at the detention facility was not returned.
ICE officials said in July that Evans overstayed his visa and unlawfully attempted to purchase a firearm. WMTW-TV reported Monday that Evans’ agreement to a voluntary departure means he will be allowed to leave the U.S. at his own expense to avoid being deported.
Despite the continuous presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in cities around California, organizers in Riverside have decided to forge ahead with the third edition of the Mucho Gusto Music Festival, an event held in the downtown area that’s billed as “a celebration of music without borders.”
The announcement comes as other events catering to Latinx audiences across Southern California have been forced to implement extra security measures because of potential ICE raids, or have been postponed altogether. Levitt LA, which organizes an annual summer concert series at the Levitt Pavilion in MacArthur Park, announced earlier this month that it was prepared to change venues if needed. Festival Chapín de Los Angeles, a popular two-day celebration of Guatemalan culture held in the Westlake neighborhood, has been postponed from late August to mid October.
Authorities have arrested more than 2,700 individuals since the raids began in June, according to Homeland Security. Many of the immigration enforcement operations have been carried out in predominantly Latinx neighborhoods and cities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 54% of Riverside’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latinx.
“It’s important right now that we put our money within our local economy to support each other,” said Eduardo Valencia, Mucho Gusto’s artistic director and one of the founders of the festival.
“We [needed] a place to celebrate ourselves … to be in a space that really celebrates the fact that we are [a diaspora of] people, that we are people from other countries who immigrated [to the U.S.],” he added.
É Arenas headlined Mucho Gusto on Sept. 23, 2023.
(Veronica Lechuga)
This year’s all-ages festival will be headlined by two bands that blend cumbia rhythms with psychedelic melodies, Tropa Magica and Combo Chimbita, as well as jazz band Brainstory.
Cosme Cordova, owner of art gallery Division 9 and co-organizer of the festival, said that he believes the ICE raids are bringing people together.
“People are gathering and becoming stronger and more educated about the laws and the rules,” he said.
Mucho Gusto organizers are hiring private security and will have two officers on site to ensure a safe space for the community.
Quitapenas performed at Mucho Gusto on Sept. 23, 2023.
(Edgar Robles)
“2025 is the year of arts and culture in Riverside,” Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson told The Times.
“Riverside loves its festivals; they represent the heart of our community, bring people together, and celebrate the cultures that make our city unique. Our focus is, and will always be, on ensuring that all public events in Riverside, including Mucho Gusto, are safe, welcoming, and inclusive for everyone.”
In a Facebook post from June 12, the chief of police, Larry Gonzalez, said the department will not enforce immigration laws and is dedicated to “protect the members of [the Riverside] community.”
“The trust we’ve built with our residents and businesses matters deeply to us, and we remain firmly committed to your safety and well-being,” he added.
As federal immigration raids continue to upend life in Los Angeles, Asian American leaders are rallying their communities to raise their voices in support of Latinos, who have been the primary targets of the enforcement sweeps, warning that neighborhoods frequented by Asian immigrants could be next.
Organizers say many Asian immigrants have already been affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants working in the country without documentation. Dozens of Southeast Asian immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange counties whose deportation orders had been on indefinite hold have been detained after showing up for routine check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigration attorneys and advocacy groups.
In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants whose deportation orders had been stayed — in some cases for decades — have been told that those orders will now be enforced.
The Asian immigrants being targeted are generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the U.S., making them subject to deportation after their release from jail or prison. In most cases, ICE never followed through because the immigrants had lived in the U.S. long enough that their home countries no longer recognized them as citizens.
“Our community is much more silent, but we are being detained in really high numbers,” said Connie Chung Joe, chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California. “There’s such a stigma and fear that, unlike the Latinx community that wants to fight and speak out about the injustices, our community’s first reaction is to go down and get more and more hidden.”
On Thursday, more than a half-dozen leaders representing Thai, Japanese and South Asian communities held a news conference in Little Tokyo urging community members to stand together and denounce the federal action as an overreach.
President Trump came into office in January vowing to target violent criminals for deportation. But amid pressure to raise deportation numbers, administration officials in recent months have shifted their focus to farmworkers, landscapers, street vendors and other day laborers, many of whom have been working in the country for decades.
While an estimated 79% of undocumented residents in L.A. County are natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16% of people in the county without legal authorization, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Across the U.S., Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadorans.
According to the Pew Research Center, the L.A. metropolitan area is home to the largest populations of Cambodian, Korean, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese people in the U.S.
So far, the highest-profile raids in Southern California have centered on Latino neighborhoods, targeting car washes, restaurants, home improvement stores, churches and other locales where undocumented residents gather and work.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and Peter Gee of the Little Tokyo Service Center were among the speakers who denounced ICE raids during a news conference Thursday.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
But Asian businesses have not been immune. A raid outside a Home Depot in Hollywood happened near Thai Town, where organizers have seen ICE agents patrolling the streets. In late May, Department of Homeland Security agents raided a Los Angeles-area nightclub, arresting 36 people they said were Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants in the country without authorization.
In Little Bangladesh, immigration agents recently detained 16 people outside a grocery store, said Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 community-based organizations.
“They will come for us even more in the coming days and weeks,” Kulkarni said. “So we are only protected when we’re in solidarity with our fellow Angelenos.”
From June 1 to 10, at the start of the federal sweeps, ICE data show that 722 people were arrested in the Los Angeles region. The figures were obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a repository of enforcement data at UC Berkeley Law.
A Times analysis found that 69% of those arrested during that period had no criminal convictions. Nearly 48% were Mexican, 16% were from Guatemala and 8% from El Salvador.
Forty-seven of the 722 individuals detained — or about 6% — were from Asian countries.
“We know the fear is widespread and it is deep,” said Assemblymember Mike Fong, a Democrat whose district takes in Monterey Park and west San Gabriel Valley, areas with large Asian immigrant populations.
Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Ysabel Jurado spoke of the repercussions the raids were having on immigrant communities. Raman is Indian American, and Jurado is Filipino American.
Jurado said undocumented Filipinos make up a sizable portion of the region’s caregivers, tending to elderly people and young children.
“Their work reflects the deepest values of our communities: compassion, service and interdependence,” Jurado said. “Their labor is essential, and their humanity must be honored.”
Jurado and Raman called on the federal government to end the raids.
“This is such an important moment to speak out and to ensure that the Latino community does not feel alone,” Raman said. “I also want to make it clear to every single person who is Asian American, these aren’t just raids on others. They’re raids on us.”
Staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative,funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to addressCalifornia’s economic divide.
California Democrats plan to question Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday about the immigration raids that have roiled Los Angeles, the federal commandeering of the state’s National Guard and the deployment of Marines in the region when he testifies before the House Armed Services Committee.
Several committee members said they received no advance notice about the federal immigration sweeps at workplaces and other locations that started Friday and that prompted large and at times fiery protests in downtown Los Angeles.
“That’s going to change,” said Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange), when the committee questions Hegseth on Thursday morning.
“We need to de-escalate the situation,” Tran said in an interview. President Trump and his administration’s moves, most recently deploying hundreds of Marines in Southern California, “escalates the situation, sending in troops that shouldn’t be there, that are trained to shoot and kill.”
Though largely peaceful, protests about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions have been punctuated by incidents of violence and lawlessness. As of Tuesday evening, several hundred people had been detained on suspicion of crimes or because of their immigration status.
After dissenters blocked the 101 Freeway, vandalized buildings in downtown Los Angeles and stole from businesses, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday imposed a curfew in the city’s civic core from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Thursday’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee will be Hegseth’s third appearance on Capitol Hill this week. He was questioned Tuesday by the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense and the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
Both appearances were testy. On Wednesday, Hegseth insisted the deployment of Marines in Los Angeles was lawful but couldn’t name the law under which it is allowed. On Tuesday, he was buffeted with questions about the “chaos” in his tenure, his discussion of national secrets on a Signal group chat and the lack of information provided to elected leaders about Defense Department operations and budgets, including the cost of the federal deployment in Los Angeles.
“I want your plan!” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) demanded. “What is your plan for the future? Can we get that in writing and on paper so that we know where you’re going? Because we don’t have anything today. We have zip! Nada!”
Hegseth responded that the agency has the details and would provide them to members of Congress. The Pentagon posted a video clip of the back-and-forth on X that tagged the congresswoman and was titled “WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING!”
Thursday’s hearing is especially notable because the committee oversees the Pentagon budget. None of the Republican members of the committee are from California. More than a dozen who were asked to weigh in on the hearing didn’t respond.
Republicans are expected to reflect the sentiments expressed by Trump, most recently on Wednesday when he took questions from reporters on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center shortly before attending a performance of “Les Miserables” with First Lady Melania Trump.
“We are going to have law and order in our country,” he said. “If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now.”
“These are radical left lunatics that you’re dealing with, and they’re tough, they’re smart, they’re probably paid, many of them, as you know, they’re professionals,” he added. “When you see them chopping up concrete because the bricks got captured, they’re chopping up concrete and they’re using that as a weapon. That’s pretty bad.”
Seven of the committee’s members are Democrats from California, and they are expected to press Hegseth on the legal underpinnings of the deployment of federal forces in the state, the lack of notification or coordination with state and local officials and the conditions and future of residents swept up in the raids.
“The president’s decision to deploy the National Guard and the U.S. Marines over the objections of California officials has escalated the situation, creating unnecessary chaos and putting public safety at risk,” said Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce). “As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I’m deeply concerned with the precedent this sets, and the apparent lack of protocol followed, and I will be seeking answers.”
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), a Mexican immigrant who served in the Marine Corps Reserve and is also a member of the committee, said Trump is doing what he does best.
“He likes to play arsonist and firefighter,” Carbajal said in an interview.
He argued Trump is using the raids to deflect attention from legislation that will harm the most vulnerable Americans while enriching the wealthy.
“There’s a question of whether what he’s doing is legal, regarding him and Hegseth sending in Marines. The governor and the mayor did not request the National Guard, let alone the Marines,” Carbajal said. “This is likely a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. forces in the U.S.”
Carbajal also said he expects what has unfolded in Los Angeles in recent days to be replicated in communities nationwide, a concern raised by Bass and other Democrats on Wednesday.
As a former Marine, Carbajal added that he and his fellow veterans had no role to play domestically, barring crisis.
“We’re not trained for this. There is no role for Marines on American soil unless rebellion is happening,” he said. “This is so ridiculous. It says a lot about the administration and what it’s willing to do to distract and create a more stressful, volatile environment.”
“Let’s make it clear,” he added. “We Democrats don’t support any violent protests. But as a Marine, there is no place for the U.S. military on domestic soil under the guise and reasoning he’s provided.”
Hundreds of eighth-graders in freshly ironed button-down shirts and flowing dresses filed into Andrew Carnegie Middle School with their families Tuesday morning in high spirits.
But the graduation festivities at the school in Carson had an ominous undertone, as word had spread ahead of the event that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might make an unwanted appearance.
Nervous parents and educators browsed apps dedicated to tracking ICE activity, refreshed their social media feeds and conferred with one another about the latest rumors. Some students who had been expected to attend the event did not come to the stage when their names were called. They had chosen to stay home out of fear that they or their loved ones would be detained.
Similar scenes have played out repeatedly across Los Angeles County in recent days, with the Trump administration deploying swarms of federal agents to detain immigrants.
Jacob Johnson, left, walks with his family after graduating as valedictorian from Andrew Carnegie Middle School in Carson on Tuesday. The arrival time for graduates and their family was moved up at the school to avoid potential confrontations with ICE.
In neighborhoods with large populations of foreign-born people across the region, every commute, trip to the grocery store or school drop-off has come to represent another potential final moment in lives built in this country.
In the span of just a few hours Tuesday, unverified messages posted online rapidly spread warnings about ICE agents being spotted near schools, hotels and hardware stores, leading to panic and disruption.
At Carnegie, the prospect of a raid was all anyone could talk about.
The school had sent out a message ahead of the event informing parents and students that “all guests will be admitted onto campus immediately — no waiting outside — due to ongoing concerns in our community related to the Department of Homeland Security (ICE).”
Mekeisha Madden Toby, 48, was there Tuesday morning to celebrate the graduation of her 14-year-old daughter, Zoe.
“It’s bittersweet because it’s supposed to be a celebration moment and it kind of got overshadowed by fear,” the mother said. “Your friend or your friend’s abuela could get snatched. You have to be aware, and you can’t even fully celebrate a graduation without thinking about it.”
“It’s not fair for these kids to put all this time and effort into school only to have to be concerned about their safety,” said Gardena High School junior Chris Alvarez, left, next to his cousin, Gardena High School graduate Anthony Garcia, 18, in Gardena on Tuesday.
Federal agents — often in plainclothes and unmarked vehicles — have raided L.A. County businesses, homes and even an underground nightclub in recent weeks, detaining scores of people in the process, including children.
Earlier this month, ICE detained a Torrance Elementary School fourth-grader, who was transferred to an immigration facility in Texas. Federal officials have since deported the 9-year-old and his father to Honduras.
Multiple recent incidents captured on video showed ICE agents in L.A. County confronting people on the streets — seemingly at random in some cases — and quickly whisking them away, offering no explanation to shocked loved ones and onlookers. Footage reviewed by The Times showed a Sunday raid in which unidentified law enforcement agents detained a fruit vendor in Westchester.
“They had him pressed down on the ground, they had weapons drawn so no one could get near to help him. It just looked like he had been kidnapped,” said witness Yuliza Barraza, 45. “Everyone was in shock and awe.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing Wednesday that 330 people had been arrested since Friday in the immigration sweeps in ICE’s Los Angeles Area of Responsibility, which stretches from San Luis Obispo to San Diego.
ICE shared photos on social media Tuesday showing armed members of the military accompanying immigration agents on L.A. raids. In recent days, Trump announced that he was sending a total of 700 U.S. Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to L.A. to respond to protests and support federal operations.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have demanded a detente, but to no avail. Bass called on Trump to “stop the raids” during a news conference Tuesday.
“We never know when, we never know how long” they will be, she said. “But that very notion creates such a terrible sense of fear in our city, and it’s just not right to do that to a population who’s trying to survive.”
Two Times journalists spent most of the day criss-crossing L.A. County’s southern reaches to document the disruption and trauma caused by the omnipresent specter of ICE. Following alerts shared on an assortment of online platforms, the journalists visited communities with significant foreign-born populations, such as Carson, Torrance, Gardena, Compton, Bell Gardens, and Long Beach, and nearby neighborhoods in the city of L.A.
Many people were on edge, even U.S. citizens not at risk of being deported. At a care facility for disabled adults in Torrance, one staffer — who declined to give her name out of fear of retaliation — said she had not seen an alert about a reported ICE sighting outside the facility that had been posted on Ice Block, one of the apps that circulates user-generated reports of federal actions.
But she said in a half-whisper that a friend had spotted U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on a residential street a few blocks away. It was unclear whether anyone had been detained in the area.
“It’s so scary what they’re doing,” she said.
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Human Rights of Los Angeles characterized the sweeps as an unprecedented “enforcement blitz” in which people are being “indiscriminately” targeted. Her organization, she said, has received 3,000 calls for service since Thursday.
In Signal Hill, the mood among a handful of day laborers who were posted up on a patch of grass near a Home Depot on Tuesday afternoon was jovial and almost defiant.
“I’m not worried,” one of the men said as pickup trucks laden with heavy lumber rumbled past. But he declined to give his name, not wanting to risk immigration agents tracking him down.
Andrew Carnegie Middle’s graduation in Carson ultimately went off without any interruptions by law enforcement. But attendees said they were asked at the last minute to show up at 7:30 a.m. instead of the previously planned 8:00 a.m. in an effort to avoid confrontations with ICE outside the school.
“They changed the graduation time because they were worried about people getting snatched up and taken,” said Zoe Toby, who wore a black Class of 2025 sash and blue lei over her gray-blue dress to celebrate her final day at Carnegie. “It’s scary because you never know when it’s going to happen.”
During the ceremony, some parents received notifications via the Ice Block app and social media warning that immigration enforcement officers were seen near the school. There was no confirmation of anyone being detained.
Zoe said some of her friends worry every day about being taken away by federal agents. Many of them have received red cards from the school explaining their rights, she added, pulling a picture up on her phone of one of the many posters emblazoned with the words “This classroom is a safe space for immigrants” that she said have been posted on the middle school’s walls.
“I’m on the Nextdoor app,” Zoe’s mother added, “and every day there’s neighbors warning each other” about ICE activity.
Gardena police officers keep a watchful eye out as Gardena High School graduates mingle with family and friends on Tuesday.
Later Tuesday, hundreds of teenagers in caps and gowns spilled out onto the street next to Gardena High School to revel in their first moments as high school graduates. Like in Carson, people were smiling and embracing one another as roadside vendors sold snacks and flower bouquets.
Chris Alvarez, a junior, was there to celebrate his 18-year-old cousin Anthony Garcia’s graduation. In between jokes with his friends and relatives, Chris, 17, said he’s “not really worried” about ICE, but he was dismayed by online warnings that agents had been spotted near his school earlier Tuesday.
“It’s not fair for these kids to put all this time and effort into school only to have to be concerned about their safety and the safety of their family and their friends,” he said. “This should be a celebration.”
For Orlando Johnson, principal of Susan Miller Dorsey Senior High School in South Los Angeles, safety is paramount amid the ongoing threat posed by the immigration crackdown.
“The focus is just on protecting our families and protecting our students. We don’t know what information’s real and not real,” he said Tuesday. “I think everybody’s concerned.”
Times staff writers Andrea Castillo and Rachel Uranga and L.A. Times Studio senior producer Karen Foshay contributed to this report.
Across Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley, one community health center is extending its services to immigrant patients in their homes after realizing that people were skipping critical medical appointments because they’ve become too afraid to venture out.
St. John’s Community Health, one of the largest nonprofit community healthcare providers in Los Angeles County that caters to low-income and working-class residents, launched a home visitation program in March after learning that patients were missing routine and urgent care appointments because they feared being taken in by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
St. John’s, which offers services through a network of clinics and mobile units across the region, estimates that at least 25,000 of its patients are undocumented, and about a third of them suffer from chronic conditions, including diabetes and hypertension, which require routine checkups. But these patients were missing tests to monitor their blood sugar and blood pressure, as well as appointments to pick up prescription refills.
Earlier this year, the health center began surveying patients and found that hundreds were canceling appointments “solely due to fear of being apprehended by ICE.”
President Trump came into his second term promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, initially focusing his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes. But shortly after he took office, his administration said they considered anyone in the country without authorization to be a criminal.
In the months since, the new administration has used a variety of tactics to sow fear in immigrant communities. The Department of Homeland Security has launched an ad campaign urging people in the country without authorization to leave or risk being rounded up and deported. Immigration agents are showing up at Home Depots and inside courtrooms, in search of people in the U.S. without authorization. Increasingly, immigrants who are detained are being whisked away and deported to their home countries — or, in some cases, nations where they have no ties — without time for packing or family goodbyes.
The Trump administration in January rescinded a policy that once shielded sensitive locations such as hospitals, churches and schools from immigration-related arrests.
In response to the survey results, St. John’s launched the Health Care Without Fear program in an effort to reach patients who are afraid to leave their homes. Jim Mangia, chief executive and president of St. John’s, said in a statement that healthcare providers should implement policies to ensure all patients, regardless of immigration status, have access to care.
“Healthcare is a human right — we will not allow fear to stand in the way of that,” he said.
Bukola Olusanya, a nurse practitioner and the regional medical director at St. John’s, said one woman reported not having left her home in three months. She said she knows of other patients with chronic conditions who aren’t leaving their house to exercise, which could exacerbate their illness. Even some immigrants in the U.S. legally are expressing reservations, given news stories about the government accusing people of crimes and deporting them without due process.
Olusanya said waiting for people to come back in for medical care on their own felt like too great a risk, given how quickly their conditions could deteriorate. “It could be a complication that’s going to make them get a disability that’s going to last a lifetime, and they become so much more dependent, or they have to use more resources,” she said. “So why not prevent that?”
On a recent Thursday at St. John’s Avalon Clinic in South L.A., Olusanya prepared to head to the home of a patient who lived about 30 minutes away. The Avalon Clinic serves a large population of homeless patients and has a street team that frequently uses a van filled with medical equipment. The van is proving useful for home visits.
Olusanya spent about 30 minutes preparing for the 3 p.m. appointment, assembling equipment to draw blood, collect a urine sample and check the patient’s vitals and glucose levels. She said she has conducted physical exams in bedrooms and living rooms, depending on the patient’s housing situation and privacy.
She recalled a similar drop in patient visits during Trump’s first administration when he also vowed mass deportations. Back then, she said, the staff at St. John’s held drills to prepare for potential federal raids, linking arms in a human chain to block the clinic entrance.
But this time around, she said, the fear is more palpable. “You feel it; it’s very thick,” she said.
While telehealth is an option for some patients, many need in-person care. St. John’s sends a team of three or four staff members to make the house calls, she said, and are generally welcomed with a mix of relief and gratitude that makes it worthwhile.
“They’re very happy like, ‘Oh, my God, St. John’s can do this. I’m so grateful,’ ” she said. “So it means a lot.”
