Latino neighborhoods overwhelmingly targeted in immigration raids, rights group says
A heat map produced by the the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights documents 471 immigration enforcement actions reported to its Los Angeles Rapid Response Network between June 6 and July 20 in L.A. County.
"That's only those reports we were able to verify through our responders," said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, CHIRLA's director of communications. "It doesn't mean those are the only number of incidents in that area."
Cabrera suspects CHIRLA caught one-third of the enforcement activity that took place across the county.
During the same period of time, CHIRLA claims to have received 1,677 calls of enforcement activities across the region that it could not confirm, with 1,500 of these reports mentioning armed agents being present, and 389 reports mentioning witnessing random arrests of community members.
Here are the areas with the highest number of enforcement actions reported to CHIRLA:
San Fernando Valley (Panorama City): 22 actions
Pico Rivera: 18 actions
Silver Lake-Echo Park: 15 actions
Bell Gardens: 14 actions
Hollywood: 9 actions
Vernon-South Los Angeles: 8 actions
Pico-Union-Downtown Los Angeles: 8 actions
Little Tokyo-Downtown Los Angeles: 7 actions
Glassell Park: 7 actions
South Gate: 7 actions
Of the five zip codes with the highest immigration enforcement numbers, a combined 76% of the population was Latino, CHIRLA's analysis shows.
Twenty-two enforcement actions were reported from Panorama City, the highest of every zip code analyzed. Its population is 42% Latino, and 38.2% immigrants.
"The blatant racial profiling by the Trump Administration is clearly visible in this map," said Angelica Salas, executive director for CHIRLA, in a press release. "Areas where People of Color live and work, which also include major Latino hubs, were racially profiled and targeted. This military federal immigration enforcement operation was a surgical attack meant to provoke panic and confusion, and unleash terror in our neighborhoods."
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment from The Times. The agency has pushed back against racial profiling claims in the past.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a statement that any such allegations are "disgusting and categorically FALSE." She also said, "These type of smears are designed to demonize and villainize our brave ICE law enforcement."
The CHIRLA analysis is not a full accounting of the raids conducted in Los Angeles. DHS has not released the number of enforcement actions or the locations. It has reported that from the time the operations began in June to early July, ICE and Border Patrol arrested 2,792 illegal aliens in the L.A. area.
"The map shows they didn't go to wealthy, white neighborhoods," said Cabrera. "They went where they could randomly pick up people of color."
This report comes during widespread concern about racial profiling by the Trump administration in its immigration policies.
Reporting from The Times shows L.A. residents, especially darker-skinned Latinos, have expressed fear about being targets for ICE agents, and even American citizens have been swept up in raids.
CHIRLA was one of the groups who sued DHS on July 2, claiming its arrests and detentions in L.A. and the surrounding counties were unlawful and racially targeted.
"The preponderance of individuals stopped and arrested in the raids have not been targeted in any meaningful sense of the word at all, except on the basis of their skin color and occupation," wrote the plaintiffs in their lawsuit.
U.S District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled in their favor, writing that DHS and ICE may not use apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or a person's occupation to justify an arrest or detention.
The Trump administration is attempting to have these restrictions lifted.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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