Protests against Trump's migrant deportations expose Los Angeles core

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

June 6 was a typically sunny day in Los Angeles, a day many were marking the end of the school year.
Ruth, a teacher attending a graduation ceremony, was distracted. Earlier, she witnessed what she says were day workers running out of a Home Depot store during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. "I was trying to celebrate with my students, but I was thinking of all the people that were being separated from their families," Ruth, who didn't want to give her surname, told Reuters outside the metropolitan detention centre where she had joined a small crowd of protesters.
Soon, small protests calling for an end to immigration raids would be obscured by a cascade of events. Donald Trump would take the unprecedented step of deploying military troops and California's Democrat leaders would accuse the president of inflaming tensions in the city.
Protests have since spread to other parts of the US. But few are surprised that the fiercest resistance to Trump's immigrant deportation plan started in Los Angeles.
A city mythologised in film, synonymous with the Hollywood sign that looms above it, but whose cultures and histories are rich and complex. A city of immigrants. A city with a long tradition of protest. A sprawling and fractured place with an equally long tradition of police brutality, according to historian Ian Tyrrell. A city characterised in radical history book City of Quartz as a place of "catastrophe and impending doom", bereft of an "American redemption story", as Tyrrell points out.
What is it about Los Angeles? Why does it appear to be refusing to bow to Trump's vision and his election promise to remove millions of undocumented migrants from the US?
In Los Angeles "it's personal", UCLA Associate Professor Chris Zepeda-Millán says. "Los Angeles has the largest undocumented population in the country, it has one of the most established immigrant rights movements, one of the longest histories of Latino activism, and has the most people of Mexican-descent in the US," Zepeda-Millán told the ABC over email.
According to US Census data, 35 per cent of the city's population is foreign born and 56 per cent of residents speak a language other than English at home. The vast majority of those are Spanish speakers. It's believed around one in 10 residents in Los Angeles County is undocumented, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
"It's not surprising that this is not just a policy debate for millions of Angelenos, it's about their families and friends," says Zepeda-Millán, who studies social movements, Latino politics and immigration policy.
Zepeda-Millán, who says he "observed in person" a rally to free union leader David Huerta, says the initial protests were started by "the traditional non-violent immigrant rights activists and unions that have been working to organise immigrants and defend their rights for decades".
Nothing about these protests is novel. He says Angelenos have been protesting immigration raids and deportations for almost a century. "Los Angeles is the birthplace and bedrock of the undocumented immigrant rights movement and, as a result, California and LA have some of the most progressive state and local immigration laws in the country."
The rally cry "sí, se puede" ("yes we can" in Spanish) rung out at the initial protests — the phrase harks back to the Latino labour rights movement of the 1970s.
Los Angeles and California have laws that limit the ability of city and state employees to collaborate with federal immigration officials, something Republicans claim hamper the ability to legitimately enforce migration laws. The laws are intended to ensure undocumented immigrants can live in their communities without fear of deportation.
Former state senator Kevin De Leon, who helped usher in the statewide law, told the ABC: "We respect and we value the diversity of immigrants helping make California the fourth largest economy on planet Earth."
Zepeda-Millán says the demographics of the protests changed after President Trump summoned the National Guard and Marines. "The majority of demonstrators became hundreds of young US-born Americans, including many non-Latinos, taking to the streets because they see Trump's militarisation of Los Angeles as a sign of American fascism," he says.
He says many people in Los Angeles view immigrants – regardless of their immigration status – as the backbone of California's economy and "they know that all the right-wing rhetoric about them being criminals and dangerous is false".
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has called on President Trump to stop immigration raids in the city, including because they're harming the economy: 'We have to look at the impact that the immigrant population makes to the local economy."
Cindy Carcamo, a former immigration reporter with the Los Angeles Times says while ICE raids and workplace enforcement actions aren't uncommon, the scale of recent raids in Los Angeles is "unprecedented". "It seems like they've gone full force this time," she told ABC's Radio National Hour this week.
Carcamo says she doesn't believe the immigration raids are popular with many people in Los Angeles. "As to whether it will be popular with the American people, it may be with a certain segment of the American people until it really hits home," she says. "What does it mean to completely dismantle a system? ... A lot of these people who are in the country without legal status support the economy. Without them, the country cannot run … Who's going to pick the food that you eat? Or in the restaurants, who's going to make your meals?"
Polls suggest more than 50 per cent of Americans support Trump's increasing efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. But opinions differ about how that plan should be carried out.
Carcamo says many who took to streets in the initial protests were "the children of immigrants or the grandchildren of immigrants or family members, people who have citizenship status, who are sticking up for their family members or their friends or their community that is in the country without legal status".
"I think overall the protests have been peaceful, but a lot of what you're seeing a lot of the images are of violence and of graffiti, very few of the images are of people out there protesting peacefully, which is very unfortunate because it skews the narrative."
Ian Tyrell, an emeritus professor of history at the University of NSW who specialises in American history, says the press is "focusing on the area where the rubber is hitting the road" but large parts of the city are not impacted by the protests. Unlike previous riots in Los Angeles history, protests have been mostly peaceful and have been confined to a roughly five-block stretch of downtown LA, a tiny patch of a vast city.
But the protests tap into the city's psyche. "You have to remember that the Latino influence in Los Angeles goes back to the beginning of the foundations of American rule in the area," Tyrell says. "This was an area which was part of Spain, and then it was part of the Independent Republic of Mexico." He says there are past examples of mass deportations of Mexican Americans in US history. "I think all Mexican Americans know that history and they know that attempts have been made to get rid of them before."
The Mexican flag has become a defining symbol of the recent LA protests. While the flags of some other countries, mostly Latin American, have also appeared, the Mexican flag has been ubiquitous. Its appearance has sparked debate and enraged many who call it "un-American".
"What you're witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags," Trump said, adding that his administration would "liberate Los Angeles".
But debate over foreign flags appearing at immigrant rights protests isn't new, Zepeda-Millán says. Some activists, mostly US-born Americans, wave foreign flags "to show they're not ashamed and are actually proud of their roots", he says. "Other activists think it's important to wave these flags to remind Americans of who is doing all the invisible labour that keeps this country running."
Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano (whose biography states "he's the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy") lamented in his column this week that "LA is famously a city that turns on itself when people have had enough". From the Zoot Suit riots, the 1992 uprising, through to George Floyd protests and the present moment. He summons the words of LA's own Tupac Shakur to make his point: "We might fight amongst each other, but I promise you this: we'll burn this bitch down, get us pissed."
Instead of burning LA down, he called on protesting Angelenos to avoid violence and "rebel smarter". When it comes to the Mexican flag, he wrote earlier in the year that he used to fear it harmed the protesters' cause, now it makes him smile. Recalling a young man protesting President Trump's immigration policies in February, Arellano asked him why he was waving the Mexican and not the US flag and the man replied: "Trump is attacking us because we're Mexican … He thinks we're trash. I'm not trash. And I'm not afraid."