In Los Angeles, Asian-Americans call for solidarity with Latinos against ICE raids

South China Morning Post

5 hours ago

The Asian immigrants being targeted were generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the US, 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 US long enough that their home countries no longer recognised them as citizens.
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 would now be enforced.
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 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigration lawyers and advocacy groups.
Organisers say many Asian immigrants have already been affected by the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants working in the country without documentation.
As federal immigration raids continue to upend life in Los Angeles, Asian-American leaders were rallying their communities to raise their voices in support of Latinos, who have been the primary targets of the enforcement sweeps, warning that neighbourhoods frequented by Asian immigrants could be next.
'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 Donald 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 labourers, many of whom have been working in the country for decades.
While an estimated 79 per cent of undocumented residents in LA County were natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16 per cent of people in the county without legal authorisation, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Across the US, Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadoreans.
A sign on a boarded-up restaurant in the Little Tokyo neighbourhood on June 19. Photo: AFP
According to the Pew Research Centre, the LA metropolitan area was home to the largest populations of Cambodian, Korean, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese people in the US.
So far, the highest-profile raids in Southern California have centred on Latino neighbourhoods, targeting car washes, restaurants, home improvement stores, churches and other locales where undocumented residents gather and work.
But Asian businesses have not been immune. A raid outside a Home Depot in Hollywood happened near Thai Town, where organisers 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 authorisation.
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 organisations.
'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 couple visits Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California. Photo: AFP
A Los Angeles Times analysis found that 69 per cent of those arrested during that period had no criminal convictions. Nearly 48 per cent were Mexican, 16 per cent were from Guatemala and 8 per cent from El Salvador.
Forty-seven of the 722 individuals detained – or about 6 per cent – 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 Council members 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 sizeable portion of the region's carers, tending to elderly people and young children.
'Their work reflects the deepest values of our communities: compassion, service and interdependence,' Jurado said. 'Their labour is essential, and their humanity must be honoured.'
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.'
Advertisement