a day ago
This Is How the Protests Could Break Trump's Deportation Machine
On June 6 in downtown Los Angeles, the day that sparked citywide protests that have captured the nation's attention, a woman watched federal agents lead her handcuffed father away from a fast-fashion warehouse amid an ICE raid. In a TikTok video viewed more than nine million times, she sobs from behind a camera lens. 'Papa, I love you,' she cries.
Her father struggles to remain composed, telling her he loves her, too. He assures her it's going to be OK. In a final gesture of love, he folds his hands in prayer and blows her a kiss as he's placed in an unmarked van. The TikTok video, which his daughter uploaded the next day to the song 'Fantasmas' by the Mexican singer Humbe, has been re-uploaded and shared by countless other accounts across social media platforms.
As videos like this reach millions, Los Angeles is becoming the epicenter of a counternarrative to President Trump's propaganda about immigrants. Mr. Trump's decisions to deploy the National Guard and now the Marines appear calculated to provoke chaos that will distract people from the damning optics of his immigration enforcement operations. The protesters shouldn't give him what he wants. Although their rage is understandable, burning vehicles and hurtling rocks divert attention from the fact that ICE is destroying families. It's those families' stories that threaten Mr. Trump's grip on the public imagination.
A recent CBS News survey found that most Americans believe the president's crackdown is prioritizing 'dangerous criminals.' But videos out of Los Angeles and across the country paint a different picture. They show ICE arresting mothers, fathers, co-workers and friends of U.S. citizens. Not hardened criminals, but valued community members. The videos show ICE snatching workers outside of a Home Depot, at a local carwash, on the street. They show parents on lockdown at a school graduation because ICE was nearby. These videos, which are going viral, have the power to destabilize Mr. Trump's narrative that his immigration operations are about law and order.
As The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, the highly visible raids in Los Angeles resulted from a directive from Mr. Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who urged agents to 'just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,' including at 7-Elevens and Home Depots. It was never going to be possible for Mr. Trump to keep his campaign promise of mass deportations without rounding up innocent people, because the world he and Mr. Miller created in which millions of undocumented gang members are running wild doesn't exist. Mr. Miller's insatiability means that arrests that once happened mostly in the shadows are now happening in broad daylight, and that people are capturing evidence.
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