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NBC News
26-07-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
ICE targets Los Angeles homeless shelter
LOS ANGELES — Immigration officials have been repeatedly spotted outside a Hollywood homeless shelter since May, leading staff to accompany residents from war-torn countries to work, errands and court. An executive at the shelter that serves people ages 18 to 24 said she saw two Venezuelan men handcuffed and arrested by ICE agents after they returned to the shelter from work. 'There was no conversation,' said the employee, Lailanie, who asked that her last name not be used because she feared retribution from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She said about half a dozen immigration officers went up to the residents 'and put their hands behind their backs right away.' Homeless shelters appear to be another target in the Trump administration's ongoing immigration crackdown, which has resulted in nearly 3,000 arrests in the Los Angeles area. They now join Home Depots, 7-Elevens and cannabis farms as locations where the federal government is carrying out its mass deportation effort. In addition to the Hollywood shelter, service providers have reported seeing immigration enforcement at shelters in North Hollywood and San Diego, according to local media. Immigration officials did not respond to an email asking if homeless shelters are being targeted as part of enforcement efforts. With more than than 72,300 unhoused people, Los Angeles County is the epicenter of the nation's homelessness crisis. How many of them are immigrants is unknown because the federally mandated annual count does not include citizenship questions. The encounter at the Hollywood shelter took place a few weeks before President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the region in response to large-scale protests against his deportation efforts. Service providers in Los Angeles said the stepped-up enforcement effort has made their work more difficult because their clients are consumed by fears of deportation. Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said the aggressive operation 'puts a target' on the backs of homeless immigrants. 'It villainizes them,' he said. At another shelter, The People Concern in downtown Los Angeles, fewer clients are stopping by to use showers and other public facilities because they are afraid ICE agents will show up, said CEO John Maceri. He said even U.S. citizens at its permanent housing facility in the San Fernando Valley are hesitant to go outside because they are afraid they will be stopped and questioned by ICE. 'Frankly, anybody who's dark-skinned, Black and brown people, but particularly dark-skinned brown people, don't want to go out,' Maceri said. 'They don't want to go to the grocery store. A few of them are missing work. They're really scared. This fear factor is really taking effect.' The highest concentrations of ICE arrests in Los Angeles have occurred in the predominantly Latino neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley, according to the nonprofit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, who is from the San Fernando Valley and was himself handcuffed by federal agents last month at a news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said the numbers reflect a strategy by the Trump administration to target vulnerable communities, not just the violent criminals he promised to arrest during his campaign. 'This is an administration who proudly changed policy to pursue these enforcement actions in workplaces, in schools, including elementary schools, and houses of worship,' he said. 'If they were only focusing on dangerous, violent criminals, you're not going to find them at schools and churches and homeless camps.' A map released Tuesday by CHIRLA showed that 471 of the 2,800 arrests made by the Department of Homeland Security from June 6 to July 20 occurred in predominantly Latino neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley. It did not specify how many of the arrestees were homeless people. CHIRLA President Angelica Salas said the data highlighted 'racial profiling' by federal officials, who have denied targeting people based on their skin color. 'What makes someone a target of ICE is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity,' DHS said in a recent statement. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that encourages cities to remove homeless people from their streets. Whitehead said the order could trigger more arrests of homeless people and further heighten their fears. At the homeless shelter where the two Venezuelan men were arrested, residents remain on high alert, Lailanie said. Immigrants are now accompanied to work, errands and court appointments by staff in unmarked cars without the organization's logo. Officials at the shelter requested that its name not be used out of fear of retribution by the Trump administration. The Venezuelans, who are 20 and 22 years old, barely speak English and had been living at the shelter for a few weeks before they were arrested, she said. They had not been there long enough to be paired with immigration lawyers, she said. The 22-year-old was deported, and employees have been unable to locate the younger man, she said. Since the arrests, staff members have witnessed at least three immigration stakeouts around the facility, two shelter employees said. On one occasion, a uniformed officer asked to use a bathroom inside the center. A maintenance worker allowed him to enter because he didn't know what else to do, the two employees said. Staffers have also seen unmarked black SUVs parked near the center and in the parking lot. Most recently, an asylum-seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo who had been living at the shelter was arrested after reporting to immigration court, according to two people who work at the shelter. The employees said that before his arrest, he had difficulty applying for jobs because he wore an ankle monitor, which was given to him when he presented himself to immigration officials. Confused, he went to immigration court and asked officials to remove the monitor, the two employees said, but he was arrested instead. He was taken to the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, California, while his lawyer pleaded his asylum case, which is still pending, according to Lailanie. He fears being returned to central Africa, where his father was killed, she said. 'People are scared and people are hurting, but people are also compelled to continue to do the work and do the right thing and try to fight for the right thing,' she said.
Los Angeles Times
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Federal judge orders Trump administration to halt alleged indiscriminate immigration stops
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests that advocates say have terrorized Angelenos, forced some immigrants into hiding and damaged the local sweeping ruling from U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Biden appointee, is a major setback for President Trump 's mass deportation plan. And it was widely hailed by immigrant rights groups and California Democrats frustrated by continuous show of force on the streets of Southern California. If followed, the ruling would stop immigration agents from roving around Home Depots and car washes stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers to arrest on immigration charges, as they have been for the past month.
Mint
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Mint
ICE's big payday makes mass deportation possible
For more than a month Los Angeles has been subject to countless immigration raids. Certain places are regular targets: car washes, Home Depots, bus stops, street markets. One video taken in the Ladera Heights neighbourhood shows federal agents pinning Celina Ramirez to a tree. They are wearing bullet-proof vests, masks, hats and sunglasses to hide their faces, and guns strapped to their sides. Ms Ramirez had been selling tacos near a Home Depot. The agents shove her into a van, deploy tear gas at onlookers who were recording the encounter, and race off. She was probably taken to the basement of the federal detention centre, where troops are still stationed outside. The raids in LA are a prelude to an era of increased immigration enforcement. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB), signed by President Donald Trump on July 4th, will pour roughly $170bn into strengthening border security and ramping up deportations. The biggest beneficiary is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which will receive nearly $75bn over four years for everything from new detention facilities to more agents and better technology. That is more money than the annual budgets for nine federal law-enforcement agencies combined (see chart). Mr Trump's deportation demands and the BBB funding will allow ICE to become the best-resourced, most aggressive version of itself. In an interview with The Economist, Tom Homan, Mr Trump's border czar, calls it 'a game-changer'. Carrying out 1m deportations a year has never looked so achievable. But David Bier of the Cato Institute, a think-tank, reckons that the immigration provisions in the bill will cost $1trn more than the Congressional Budget Office suggests, owing to the need to continue to pay all those new agents and maintain the bigger border wall beyond 2029. Deporting immigrants who paid more in taxes than they received in benefits only adds to the cost. 'This is war-like levels of funding,' he says. Congress's inability or unwillingness to reform America's broken immigration system has meant that its enforcement arm has grown—becoming more visible and more militarised. 'ICE has emerged as one of our main forces for regulating the mobility of people in the developing world,' says Austin Kocher of Syracuse University. How did that happen? For 70 years the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) handled everything from visa processing and asylum to deportations. Doris Meissner, who led the INS under Bill Clinton, reckons that there are two moments integral to understanding what ICE has become. The first was the passage of an immigration law in 1996 that expanded the list of crimes that made someone deportable and created mandatory detention for certain migrants. The agency came to depend on private prisons. Ms Meissner wrote a memo outlining which migrants the INS would pursue (criminals), and which might be left alone (veterans). The second moment Ms Meissner points to is the break-up of the INS after 9/11, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE within it. America increasingly viewed immigration through a national-security lens, rather than a civilian law-enforcement one. ICE's initial struggles were between its immigration and customs officials, who competed for top jobs and prestige. But as illegal border crossings increased in the mid-2000s the agency became synonymous with its immigration mission. ICE, like the INS before it, was 'la migra'. The shift increased tensions within the agency, specifically between ICE's enforcement division (ERO) and its investigative one (HSI), which delves into weapons smuggling and human trafficking. HSI agents see themselves as detectives, notes one former DHS official, and ERO as jailers. ICE officials blame Congress's inaction for its unpopularity. But the American left increasingly viewed the agency itself as toxic. During Mr Trump's first term 'abolish ICE' became a rallying cry for progressives, and the question of whether to restructure the agency was a litmus test in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But when illegal border crossings surged and it became clear that this was in fact a problem, the slogan looked wildly out of touch. The BBB's passage marks another transformative moment for the agency. 'This funding is going to give us thousands more beds, which means we arrest thousands more people,' says Mr Homan, who led ICE during part of Mr Trump's first term. Arrests are already climbing. Stephen Miller, the president's deputy chief of staff and the architect of his immigration policy, wants ICE to arrest 3,000 people a day. In early June the agency was averaging roughly 1,100, according to the Deportation Data Project, a group that collects immigration statistics (see chart). Mr Homan and DHS insist that the administration is prioritising criminals and national-security threats. But the pressure to ramp up arrests is leading to indiscriminate round-ups of day labourers and taco-sellers. An analysis of the Deportation Data Project's figures by Mr Bier suggests that nearly half of the migrants arrested during the first week of June had no criminal record. During Mr Trump's first term, he binned the kind of enforcement priorities that Ms Meissner had first put in place back in the 1990s. But ICE didn't have the resources to go after both criminals and farmworkers, so deportations remained relatively low. The BBB allows ICE to work on finding gang members while also going after grandmas who came to America from Mexico decades ago. When Mr Trump took office, there was a long list of obstacles that made mass deportations unlikely. There weren't enough ICE agents, detention beds or airplanes to arrest people, then house and return them. The courts moved slowly and had a tremendous backlog. Some countries didn't want to take back their citizens. BBB helps with the logistical problems. Stripping migrants of the temporary legal status conferred by the Biden administration makes the pool of potential deportees larger. And closing court cases and sending people to places they did not come from sidesteps the legal and diplomatic roadblocks. Do any barriers remain? Sanctuary states and cities are still blocking ICE from accessing jails and prisons, the easiest places to pick up undocumented migrants who have committed crimes. 'We don't have that problem in Florida because Governor [Ron] DeSantis has passed a law that sheriffs must work with us,' explains Mr Homan. 'So we'll take those available resources from Florida and we'll put them in New York and other sanctuary cities.' Mr Homan suggests that allowing ICE access to jails means fewer agents on the streets, but also promises that no one is 'off the table'. It will also take time for ICE to recruit and train up new agents. 'Mass hiring is like mass deportation,' says Bo Cooper, a former general counsel for the INS. 'It's easier said than done.' Several former ICE and DHS officials reckon it could take anywhere from a few months to up to two years to get more agents on patrol. Mr Homan is making contingency plans. The BBB includes funding to help train local law enforcement agencies to work with ICE, supplementing its staffing levels. Mr Homan also wants to hire contractors to do paperwork, freeing up employees with 'badges and guns' to pound the pavement. As ICE arrives in more communities, the agency will become more controversial. A majority of Americans support deporting violent criminals, but they also back allowing migrants who came to the country as children or who arrived many years ago to stay. The agency has already lost support since the beginning of Mr Trump's term: 42% of Americans polled by The Economist and YouGov viewed ICE favourably in mid-June, an eight percentage-point drop from February (see chart). Meanwhile, support among Republicans increased by nine points. Mr Homan, former ICE officials, pro-immigrant activists and academics all warn that the risk of violence will increase. Mr Homan blames protesters. 'I'm afraid someone is going to get hurt,' he says, if 'an officer feels his life is in danger, he may have to use deadly force'. He takes no responsibility, however, for the administration's fiery rhetoric (last month Mr Homan warned the governor of California that he could be arrested). Protesters blame ICE. At a recent rally at a Home Depot on the south side of LA, one protester declared that 'the raids are going to stop when we kick their asses out of Los Angeles.' Rushing new agents through training won't help; past hiring surges within the Border Patrol have coincided with more allegations of excessive force. ICE agents themselves are not all happy warriors. One former ICE official argues that working for the agency means angering half of the country all of the time. At headquarters, DHS leaders force employees to take polygraph tests if they are suspected of leaking to the media. Several career bureaucrats worry that the laser focus on immigration enforcement is detracting from counterterrorism, drug-smuggling or child-pornography investigations. Some are retiring early. 'It's very funereal most days,' says one former DHS official. 'I think what's happening at the department is making America less safe.'
Hindustan Times
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
ICE's big payday makes mass deportation possible
FOR MORE THAN a month Los Angeles has been subject to countless immigration raids . Certain places are regular targets: car washes, Home Depots, bus stops, street markets. One video taken in the Ladera Heights neighbourhood shows federal agents pinning Celina Ramirez to a tree. They are wearing bullet-proof vests, masks, hats and sunglasses to hide their faces, and guns strapped to their sides. Ms Ramirez had been selling tacos near a Home Depot. The agents shove her into a van, deploy tear gas at onlookers who were recording the encounter, and race off. She was probably taken to the basement of the federal detention centre, where troops are still stationed outside. Chart The raids in LA are a prelude to an era of increased immigration enforcement. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB), signed by President Donald Trump on July 4th, will pour roughly $170bn into strengthening border security and ramping up deportations. The biggest beneficiary is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which will receive nearly $75bn over four years for everything from new detention facilities to more agents and better technology. That is more money than the annual budgets for nine federal law-enforcement agencies combined (see chart). Mr Trump's deportation demands and the BBB funding will allow ICE to become the best-resourced, most aggressive version of itself. In an interview with The Economist, Tom Homan, Mr Trump's border czar, calls it 'a game-changer'. Carrying out 1m deportations a year has never looked so achievable. But David Bier of the Cato Institute, a think-tank, reckons that the immigration provisions in the bill will cost $1trn more than the Congressional Budget Office suggests, owing to the need to continue to pay all those new agents and maintain the bigger border wall beyond 2029. Deporting immigrants who paid more in taxes than they received in benefits only adds to the cost. 'This is war-like levels of funding,' he says. Congress's inability or unwillingness to reform America's broken immigration system has meant that its enforcement arm has grown—becoming more visible and more militarised. 'ICE has emerged as one of our main forces for regulating the mobility of people in the developing world,' says Austin Kocher of Syracuse University. How did that happen? For 70 years the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) handled everything from visa processing and asylum to deportations. Doris Meissner, who led the INS under Bill Clinton, reckons that there are two moments integral to understanding what ICE has become. The first was the passage of an immigration law in 1996 that expanded the list of crimes that made someone deportable and created mandatory detention for certain migrants. The agency came to depend on private prisons. Ms Meissner wrote a memo outlining which migrants the INS would pursue (criminals), and which might be left alone (veterans). The second moment Ms Meissner points to is the break-up of the INS after 9/11, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE within it. America increasingly viewed immigration through a national-security lens, rather than a civilian law-enforcement one. ICE's initial struggles were between its immigration and customs officials, who competed for top jobs and prestige. But as illegal border crossings increased in the mid-2000s the agency became synonymous with its immigration mission. ICE, like the INS before it, was 'la migra'. The shift increased tensions within the agency, specifically between ICE's enforcement division (ERO) and its investigative one (HSI), which delves into weapons smuggling and human trafficking. HSI agents see themselves as detectives, notes one former DHS official, and ERO as jailers. ICE officials blame Congress's inaction for its unpopularity. But the American left increasingly viewed the agency itself as toxic. During Mr Trump's first term 'abolish ICE' became a rallying cry for progressives, and the question of whether to restructure the agency was a litmus test in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But when illegal border crossings surged and it became clear that this was in fact a problem, the slogan looked wildly out of touch. The BBB's passage marks another transformative moment for the agency. 'This funding is going to give us thousands more beds, which means we arrest thousands more people,' says Mr Homan, who led ICE during part of Mr Trump's first term. Arrests are already climbing. Stephen Miller, the president's deputy chief of staff and the architect of his immigration policy, wants ICE to arrest 3,000 people a day. In early June the agency was averaging roughly 1,100, according to the Deportation Data Project, a group that collects immigration statistics (see chart). Mr Homan and DHS insist that the administration is prioritising criminals and national-security threats. But the pressure to ramp up arrests is leading to indiscriminate round-ups of day labourers and taco-sellers. An analysis of the Deportation Data Project's figures by Mr Bier suggests that nearly half of the migrants arrested during the first week of June had no criminal record. During Mr Trump's first term, he binned the kind of enforcement priorities that Ms Meissner had first put in place back in the 1990s. But ICE didn't have the resources to go after both criminals and farmworkers, so deportations remained relatively low. The BBB allows ICE to work on finding gang members while also going after grandmas who came to America from Mexico decades ago. When Mr Trump took office, there was a long list of obstacles that made mass deportations unlikely. There weren't enough ICE agents, detention beds or airplanes to arrest people, then house and return them. The courts moved slowly and had a tremendous backlog. Some countries didn't want to take back their citizens. BBB helps with the logistical problems. Stripping migrants of the temporary legal status conferred by the Biden administration makes the pool of potential deportees larger. And closing court cases and sending people to places they did not come from sidesteps the legal and diplomatic roadblocks. Do any barriers remain? Sanctuary states and cities are still blocking ICE from accessing jails and prisons, the easiest places to pick up undocumented migrants who have committed crimes. 'We don't have that problem in Florida because Governor [Ron] DeSantis has passed a law that sheriffs must work with us,' explains Mr Homan. 'So we'll take those available resources from Florida and we'll put them in New York and other sanctuary cities.' Mr Homan suggests that allowing ICE access to jails means fewer agents on the streets, but also promises that no one is 'off the table'. It will also take time for ICE to recruit and train up new agents. 'Mass hiring is like mass deportation,' says Bo Cooper, a former general counsel for the INS. 'It's easier said than done.' Several former ICE and DHS officials reckon it could take anywhere from a few months to up to two years to get more agents on patrol. Mr Homan is making contingency plans. The BBB includes funding to help train local law enforcement agencies to work with ICE, supplementing its staffing levels. Mr Homan also wants to hire contractors to do paperwork, freeing up employees with 'badges and guns' to pound the pavement. As ICE arrives in more communities, the agency will become more controversial. A majority of Americans support deporting violent criminals, but they also back allowing migrants who came to the country as children or who arrived many years ago to stay. The agency has already lost support since the beginning of Mr Trump's term: 42% of Americans polled by The Economist and YouGov viewed ICE favourably in mid-June, an eight percentage-point drop from February (see chart). Meanwhile, support among Republicans increased by nine points. Mr Homan, former ICE officials, pro-immigrant activists and academics all warn that the risk of violence will increase. Mr Homan blames protesters. 'I'm afraid someone is going to get hurt,' he says, if 'an officer feels his life is in danger, he may have to use deadly force'. He takes no responsibility, however, for the administration's fiery rhetoric (last month Mr Homan warned the governor of California that he could be arrested). Protesters blame ICE. At a recent rally at a Home Depot on the south side of LA, one protester declared that 'the raids are going to stop when we kick their asses out of Los Angeles.' Rushing new agents through training won't help; past hiring surges within the Border Patrol have coincided with more allegations of excessive force. ICE agents themselves are not all happy warriors. One former ICE official argues that working for the agency means angering half of the country all of the time. At headquarters, DHS leaders force employees to take polygraph tests if they are suspected of leaking to the media. Several career bureaucrats worry that the laser focus on immigration enforcement is detracting from counterterrorism, drug-smuggling or child-pornography investigations. Some are retiring early. 'It's very funereal most days,' says one former DHS official. 'I think what's happening at the department is making America less safe.' ICE-s-big-payday-makes-mass-deportation-possible
Los Angeles Times
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
In Pasadena, a community comes together for a 14-year-old street vendor
It was only 8 a.m. and the 500 tamales that Christopher Luna Garcia had hoped to sell were down to just a few dozen. About 17 hungry people lined up at the food cart near Villa Parke in Pasadena, where an immigration sweep had taken place nearly two weeks ago on June 21. Steam flowed from the cart and the scent of masa drifted through the air as Chris, 14, reached down to pull out tamales. 'It's a lot,' he said of the community response. 'But I'm grateful for it.' Chris said he took over his mom's street vending business after the immigration raid. His mother, Carmen Garcia, 44, who is a legal resident, said three of her customers were detained during the sweep at the park. But immigration agents did not take her into custody. 'I was so afraid after that,' she said. 'I have documents, but I'm still scared, very scared.' It wasn't long ago that Chris, a tall teenager, struggled to make sales, sometimes bringing in less than $100 daily — and on a really bad day just $20. But on Friday, the tamales were selling fast. So much so that his aunt joined to help meet the high demand with a second cart. Friday's event was organized by Alex 'Tio Joker' Murillo, an actor and community activist who stumbled upon Chris one afternoon and shared a video of him on social media. 'I want to help out the Latino youth,' Murillo said. 'This ICE stuff is bad, but we've also turned it into something good.' He took the video amid President Trump's immigration crackdown, targeting criminal and immigrant workers suspected of living in the country illegally at Home Depots, car washes and sidewalks. The wave of immigration sweeps over the past month has prompted some American-born children to take over street vending businesses on behalf of their parents. The operation at Villa Parke prompted Pasadena city officials to cancel swimming lessons and other recreation programs at the park and two others. That decision came after a string of recent immigration enforcement actions in Pasadena. In one raid, federal agents detained people at a bus stop at Orange Grove Boulevard and Los Robles Avenue on June 18. And residents demonstrated last month outside of the AC Hotel, where federal immigration agents were staying. Both took place less than a mile from Villa Parke. Murillo said he decided to help the family when he learned that Chris had stepped up to sell tamales for his mom because of the sweep and also because they were falling behind on bills. So Murillo took to Instagram, calling on his followers and others to show up at the stand on Friday to buy out the tamales. He also said he would sell food to raise money to take Chris and the children of a day laborer who was detained during the bus stop operation to Disneyland. Enji Chung, 47, a resident and member of the Pasadena Tenants Union, was one of the first people to show up and purchase tamales. She said it was important to show support for those affected by the federal immigration crackdown. 'I think it's been extremely scary to know there are armed, masked people running around, inciting fear and snatching people off the street,' she said. 'It's not just undocumented people. It's U.S. citizens and anyone they're racially profiling.' Yun Uen Ramos-Vega, 22, and Janette Ramos-Vega, 21, drove from Monrovia to support Chris after learning about his story. They said they related to his situation because they are also helping relatives by running errands on their behalf. The pair said they know at least two people who have been detained by federal immigration agents. At least one has been deported to Mexico while the other remains at a detention center. Laura Ruvalcaba, 40, of Pasadena, showed up with her husband and 8-year-old son. 'We saw Chris' story and we're going to be here,' she said. 'We're all about supporting the community, especially the youth.' She said she was happy to see the long line of customers. 'It's amazing,' she said. 'Anything we can do to help out and come together is good.' An American citizen, Ruvalcaba said the immigration sweeps have left her afraid. 'It's not even about anything else but the color of my skin,' she said. 'I'm scared to come out sometimes.' She said she started carrying a copy of her American citizenship certificate two weeks ago, as well as her son's birth certificate. She tells her 18-year-old daughter to be on alert when she goes out. 'Now, you're not just watching out for bad things,' Ruvalcaba said she told her daughter. 'You're watching out for people in uniforms.' The event Friday morning also brought out lowriders, which bounced as old-school hip-hop blasted from the car's speakers, encouraging people to cheer and take videos with their cellphones. It was nearing 9 a.m. when the tamales from both carts were gone, bringing in more than $1,500 that Chris and his family will use to pay bills and rent. His brother, Erick Garcia, 20, said his mom and aunt had gone to cook more tamales in hopes of selling more throughout the day. Exhausted, Chris sat on a fold-out chair for a moment, letting out a sigh of relief and massaging his eyebrows with his fingers. He had been up since 4 a.m. and though he was tired, he said he wanted to take action because his mother helped raised him and his three siblings alone. 'She doesn't have much support,' he said. 'I just want to help her out.'
