Pasadena Mayor: Trump's Immigration Raids Hurt Communities Like Mine

Time​ Magazine

18-06-2025

Twice this year I have seen armored National Guard vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles County. The first time, we welcomed them with open arms. They were here in January to help us mobilize a rapid response to two enormous fires that devastated our city: the Eaton Fire here in my community and the Palisades Fire across town. They worked alongside all of us—police officers, firefighters, community leaders, day laborers, neighbors—to manage immediate needs for people who lost everything. It was a beautiful showing of solidarity and a demonstration of how a healthy democracy can respond to a crisis.
What I see today is a stark and deeply troubling contrast to that time. While our city is still struggling to pick up the pieces and we begin to recover, President Donald Trump decided to turn the National Guard and other federal officers against the people of Los Angeles County, including people who live and work in Pasadena.
The National Guard came to our region twice in six months. The circumstances couldn't have been more different.
Every day that immigration raids continue and federal troops are brought in to police our community, we suffer tremendously. Already in Pasadena we've seen a huge drop in attendance at local community programs. The streets of our vibrant neighborhoods are eerily quiet. Business owners are calling me, concerned that their workers and customers alike are too afraid to show up, compounding the already hugely detrimental impacts of the fire. These business owners are simply sitting in brick-and-mortar shells of their once-bustling businesses mourning for their loyal employees and friends.
My own father, who has been a citizen for decades now, is too afraid to make his weekly trip to Placita Olvera to listen to the Mariachis. Even I, the Mayor of Pasadena, am carrying my passport with me wherever I go in case I am racially profiled by ICE agents. My heart hurts for our city and all of our people. The cruelty and fear being inflicted by one man who did not even take the time to visit Pasadena and Altadena during, or after, the fires is palpable in our community.
But at the same time, I don't know that I've ever been prouder of our leadership as a city and how we continue to prove that we are capable of banding together to weather any hardship. That is the spirit of Pasadena, and what I believe should be the spirit of our country. So even as we continue to face an onslaught of attacks from the federal government, I know that we have all the tools we need to care for each other and keep each other safe.
I also empathize deeply with the immigrant community in Pasadena, the greater Los Angeles area, and across our great nation who are living in fear right now. I know how they are feeling because I once stood in their shoes.
My family came to Pasadena when I was five years old from Zacatecas, Mexico. My parents and five siblings lived together in a two-car garage. My mother was a seamstress at a sweatshop and my father was a dishwasher and cook at a popular Mexican restaurant where he ended up working seven days a week for 50 years. I was sent to school. At first this was a terrifying experience for me. I didn't know the language and no one could communicate with me. I was teased and bullied for being Mexican.
Even as I settled more into my life as an American teen, my family lived with a nagging fear in the back of my mind that it could all combust. Under my parents' bed in the middle of that two-car garage we called home was a large tin of Folgers coffee. I'm sure you can picture the kind I'm talking about. In that tin were all of our documents—birth certificates, phone numbers of friends and family, photos, identification cards—everything I would need in case my parents didn't come home one day. Starting at age five, I knew that if my parents didn't come home, I was to take that coffee tin and knock on my neighbor's door and ask for help.
As I grew older, I worked multiple jobs to help my parents make ends meet. I sold flowers on the streets of Pasadena, delivered the local newspaper before school in the mornings, mowed lawns, helped out at the restaurant with my dad. And during that time I kept going to school, got involved in sports, and started listening to American music, immersing myself in the culture of the city. I became the San Gabriel Valley co-athlete of the year at Pasadena High School. I was living the American Dream.
But even then, the fear that millions of immigrants and their loved ones live with every single day lingered with me and my family. But a key difference back then is that there was actually a process for citizenship. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter enacted a common sense and humane policy that allowed for a pathway to citizenship if you were living without documentation in the U.S. So that's what my parents did. It took two years, but during the time when we awaited approval we were safe from the immigration raids that were rocking our city at the time.
That was a process consistent with our democracy and our founding values as a nation. It was still a time when America cheered for the underdog, and when the spirit of our nation promised opportunity and a better life for all who sought freedom on our shores.
Now, there are a decreasing number of pathways for people to seek lawful status—even if they've lived in the U.S. for decades and built their lives here and contributed positively to our community. In fact, Trump is actively stripping people of their legal status, creating a larger class of our neighbors who are vulnerable to deportation.
My family—and millions of immigrant families across the country—remain committed to building a better future for ourselves and all in our communities. Today, I am tremendously proud to serve as Mayor of Pasadena, the city I have called home for most of my life. I am proud of the contributions my family and my neighbors have made to the city. We are an example of what makes this country great.
And I am proud of Pasadena for sending a clear message that we stand by our immigrant neighbors in the face of these unjust attacks, but doing so respectfully and peacefully. We do not want the federal government to circumvent city leaders and tear families apart, and tens of thousands of us across the city have come together to peacefully protest the cruelty we're seeing in our community, especially as we continue to come together to help each other recover from the fires. I would hope that our president would share that compassion for a community that has suffered so much, a community he is supposed to serve as our nation's leader.
I feel for the National Guard troops and our law enforcement community in general, many of whom share my same experience and have now been forced into a tense and completely unnecessary situation. I believe that at their core, they too think this is wrong. Back in January, I spent a lot of time with these troops and officers. I spoke with them every day, I saw firsthand their drive to serve and aid our community in a time of great need. I saw the real humanity of them. That's what the National Guard and law enforcement is for—not to be directed to come in and work against the very people they signed up to serve and protect—and against the will of our state and city leaders.
Pasadena and our great nation must remain united and resolute in our view that children, families, and people from every walk of life are welcome and make our community great. And we should continue to make that view known in a peaceful but resolute manner as we have been every day since these raids began.
I hope that Pasadena's leadership can be a model for how cities can respond to a government that is increasingly infringing upon our individual rights and sovereignty as a city and state. Because this overreach will not stop with us, and it will take all of us to defend the core principles of our democracy.
We know what a peaceful, thriving, diverse, democratic city looks like—and we will not let anyone take that away from us.