US immigration officials raid California farms and Los Angeles area

Irish Times

a day ago

US
immigration officials
carried out further 'enforcement activity' in California's agricultural heartland and the
Los Angeles
area as the conflict between the state and Donald Trump's administration intensified on Wednesday.
Immigrant advocacy groups reported multiple actions across the state, where an estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented, and said agents pursued workers through blueberry fields and staged operations at agricultural facilities.
The raids have been sharply criticised by advocacy groups and local officials, who said they were 'outraged and heartbroken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activities targeting immigrant families'.
'When our workforce's lives are in fear, the fields will go unharvested, the impact is felt not only at the local level, but it will also be felt at the national level,' said Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, the mayor of Ventura, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles. 'Everything will be affected and every American who is here and relies on the labour of these individuals will be affected.'
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Immigration activities have continued in the Los Angeles area as well, where officials say people have been detained outside Home Depots and in front of churches.
Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, said the raids have created a deep sense of fear in the region and that the White House has provoked unrest.
The night-time curfew she put in place this week will stay in place as long as needed, including while there are ongoing raids and a military presence in the city, Ms Bass said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Hilda Solis, an LA county supervisor, said on Wednesday evening she was concerned about a 'deeply disturbing incident' in the city's Boyle Heights neighbourhood involving two unmarked vehicles operated by Ice agents crashing in to a civilian car with two children inside and deploying tear gas to apprehend an individual.
She said she had also learned of an incident of Ice attempting to detain a member of the press.
The nearly 5,000 US military personnel in the city now exceeds the number of US troops in both Iraq and Syria.
The increasing raids come as Ice ramps up its efforts to meet a reported quota of 3,000 detentions a day set by Stephen Miller, Mr Trump's White House deputy chief of staff. The city has seen days of protest over Trump's immigration crackdown and the subsequent military deployment.
California governor accuses Trump of escalating unrest with military deployments in Los Angeles. Video: Reuters
Los Angeles police announced they had arrested more than 200 people in the city's downtown area on Tuesday, after crowds gathered in defiance of the overnight curfew in the neighbourhood. The police department said it had carried out more than 400 arrests and detentions of protesters since Saturday.
The crackdown came after California's governor, Gavin Newsom, filed an emergency request to block the Trump administration from using military forces to accompany Ice officers on raids throughout LA.
Mr Trump has ordered the deployment of 4,000 national guard members and 700 marines to LA after days of protests driven by anger over aggressive Ice raids that have targeted garment workers, day labourers, car wash employees and members of immigrant communities.
Across the country, NBC reported that Ice was preparing to deploy tactical units to several more cities run by Democratic leaders, citing two sources, who named four of the cities as Seattle, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.
On Wednesday, dozens of mayors from across the Los Angeles region banded together to demand that the Trump administration stop the stepped-up immigration raids that have spread fear across their cities.
Mr Newsom and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, have alleged in a pair of lawsuits filed on Monday and Tuesday that Mr Trump's takeover of the state's national guard, against the governor's wishes, was unlawful.
On Tuesday, a federal judge declined to immediately rule on California's request for a restraining order and scheduled a hearing for Thursday.
In a speech, Mr Newsom condemned Trump for 'indiscriminately targeting hard-working immigrant families' and militarising the streets of LA, recounting how in recent days Ice agents had grabbed people outside a Home Depot, detained a nine-months-pregnant US citizen, sent unmarked cars to schools, and arrested gardeners and seamstresses.
'That's just weakness masquerading as strength,' the governor said.
Los Angeles police and protesters clash amid protests condemning immigration-enforcement operations. Photograph: Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times
Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said he expected the military would remain in Los Angeles for 60 days at a cost of at least $134m.
Mr Trump defended the military deployment on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday morning, writing: 'If our troops didn't go into Los Angeles, it would be burning to the ground right now, just like so much of their housing burned to the ground. The great people of Los Angeles are very lucky that I made the decision to go in and help!!!'
Meanwhile, officials in Los Angeles have sought to reassure the public that the situation in the city remains largely peaceful and calm.
At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Hochman, the district attorney of Los Angeles county, pointed out how images of unrest on television and social media have misled many Americans about the nature and scale of the mayhem.
'If you only saw the social media and the media reports of what's going on over the last five days, you would think that Los Angeles is on the brink of war,' he said.
'Let me put this in perspective for you', he said, '99.99% of people who live in Los Angeles ... have not committed any illegal acts in connection with this protest whatsoever.' – Guardian