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Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The 'Mexican Beverly Hills' reels from Trump immigration raids, forcing some to carry passports
With its stately homes and bustling business districts, Downey has long been known to some as the 'Mexican Beverly Hills.' But the Southeast L.A. County city of more than 110,000 people has been roiled this week by Trump immigration raids in Southern California, sparking both fear and outrage. Downey Councilman Mario Trujillo said the raids are 'creating a culture of fear' that's prompting people, even with documents, to stay home out of concern they could be targeted by federal agents simply for being Latino. The downtown Downey area, which had already been hurting amid a tenuous economy, is now a ghost town, Trujillo said. While he understands that immigration agents have a job to do, Trujillo questions the necessity of grabbing workers trying to support their families and people just trying to go about their daily lives. Read more: Arellano: Sen. Alex Padilla's crime? Being Mexican in MAGA America 'We're supposed to be made to feel safe by this agency because they're removing bad people,' he said. 'That's what they're supposed to be doing." On Wednesday, masked federal agents detained at least 12 people from businesses in Downey, but community members were able to discourage them from taking one man without proper documents. Downey has long been a landing spot for upwardly mobile Latinos, who make up 75% of the population. The median income is $97,000, above the California average. The Times reported in December that support for Donald Trump increased during the last election. While Democrats still dominated, The Times found Trump gained 18.8 percentage points in November compared with the 2020 presidential election. Paula Mejia, a Downey resident in her 50s who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. more than 45 years ago, said that fewer people have been going to restaurants and to other businesses in Downey ever since the ICE raids began. "I've been scared and I have to carry my passport," she said. "I have never done before and we are out of words. Even my kids, they were born here. Now, they're carrying their passports." Mejia, who was wearing a green jacket with a "Mexico" badge sewn to the front Thursday afternoon, said she's a U.S. citizen and has been disappointed by the way Mexicans have been treated under the Trump administration. "They just look at our colors, our nationalities, and they're just profiling people," she said. "Colombians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians. They're just calling them Mexicans. They're denigrating us and want to use the term 'Mexicans' and we're not backing up. We work very hard in this country and for them to be treating us like criminals, we're not criminals. We're hardworking people." In a video of the encounter, the unidentified man can be seen sitting on the ground surrounded by masked agents who had chased him down. The man spotted Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his job and rode away on his bicycle, but one of the masked men grabbed his tire, causing him to fall, ABC7 reported. Read more: How the flags of Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala symbolize defiance against Trump's L.A. raids Melyssa Rivas recorded community members peppering federal agents with questions about why they were chasing the man. It's unclear what prompted the agents to leave the scene. 'It looked like a full-on kidnapping scene out of a movie; it was scary,' Rivas told the outlet. Jose, 26, who declined to provide his last name because of safety concerns, is the son of the owner of Galaxy Auto Detail in Downey, which was targeted by federal agents on Wednesday. Two agents arrived shortly after 9 a.m. and attempted to quickly surround an employee in an apparent attempt to keep him from running away. But the worker saw what was happening and sprinted toward nearby train tracks. He was later detained along with another man. Only one of the individuals was undocumented, Jose told The Times. Jose said he tried to ask the agents if they had a warrant but was told he was going to be arrested for interfering if he kept asking questions. With only five workers remaining, the car wash was closed on Thursday and Jose said he doesn't know when it'll reopen. Jose's mother, an immigrant from Mexico, has owned the car wash for 12 years. She and her son said they believe federal agents are targeting businesses owned by Mexicans. 'I have my citizenship,' said Jose, who was born in the U.S. 'I feel unsafe, even if I have papers. I just saw them targeting brown people.' 'We're starting to feel that we're the only race that's being targeted because it's easy pickings because of the color of our skin,' Trujillo said. 'That's what it's starting to feel like — racial profiling.' Downey Memorial Church, the site of where a group of armed men wearing face coverings detained and drove off with a Latino man on Wednesday, was completely empty Thursday afternoon. All of the doors were locked and lights shut off. Estevan Phillipy, 22, works at the Around the World Learning Center, a preschool right next to the church. Phillipy is a teacher and was with the kids when the man was detained Wednesday, but his father, who owns the preschool, saw the entire incident unfold. 'All of a sudden, a bunch of vans and cars pulled up into the parking lot, and they just jumped on him,' he said. 'Some people from the church tried to stop it or were saying stuff, but the guy got detained and taken away.' Phillipy is half white, half Mexican and was born in the U.S., but said his Mexican relatives have been afraid to go outside since the raids began. 'My family's scared right now,' he said. 'We are all documented, but we just look the part. I know there's a lot of racial profiling going on.' Alex Cruz, a 43-year-old Downey resident who has worked at Papa John Car Wash for the past year, said the raids have been so unsettling that many have stopped coming to work. Cruz said the seven or eight undocumented workers who were employed at the car wash stopped showing up two weeks ago. 'Everybody is intimidated,' he said. 'Everybody is afraid to get out of their house. Everybody is afraid to go to work.' Cruz, the son of an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who came to the U.S. in the 1970s, said he's angered by the federal government's portrayal that anyone without documents living in the United States is a criminal. 'That's how they're categorizing every Hispanic or Latino,' he said. 'The president should have a little more humanity. If it wasn't for immigrants washing their dishes, nobody would do it.' Read more: All of L.A. is not a 'war zone.' We separate facts from spin and disinformation amid immigration raids 'This is not right,' he added. 'Everyone deserves the opportunity to work and support their families. A lot of these guys are missing out on a paycheck or a salary because of what's going on right now.' Some are continuing to work despite the uncertainty they feel leaving their homes each day. A man who identified himself only as Francisco, because he was undocumented and feared deportation, said he has been working as a taquero on the outskirts of downtown for over a year. He said he has never felt as worried as he does now, in the shadow of this week's ICE raids. 'We can't go out to work as much on the streets now,' the 23-year-old said in Spanish. 'We've heard from some colleagues who work in other positions, and they've even arrested a couple of them. We go to work afraid they might arrest us.' To stay safe, Francisco said he has limited his movement, turning to Uber Delivery for necessities such as groceries and medicine. But he continues to come to work. 'If we don't go out to work, how do we cover our expenses?' he asked. Staff writer Karla Marie Sanford contributed to this article. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Sky News
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Brian Glenn: The right-wing reporter and trusted Trump ally who quizzed Zelenskyy on his clothing
Until last week, the name Brian Glenn was relatively unknown. The US reporter went viral on social media after questioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about his choice of outfit at last week's heated Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump. His question seemed to set the meeting, which ended with vice president JD Vance claiming Mr Zelenskyy had been "disrespectful" to the US, off on a bad footing. Since then, Glenn has continued to be viewed favourably by the president, with Real America's Voice, the right-wing streaming channel he works for, being granted access to the White House press pool alongside CNN. It comes as reporters from Reuters, the Associated Press, HuffPost and German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel were denied access to cover Mr Trump's first cabinet meeting. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced the White House would determine which media outlets would cover the president in smaller spaces such as the Oval Office. The White House Correspondents' Association has traditionally coordinated the rotation of the presidential press pool. But who is Mr Glenn, what has his career looked like so far, and what has the reaction to that question been like? 3:45 A trusted Trump ally Glenn is currently the chief White House correspondent for Real America's Voice. The right-wing streaming channel has supported numerous conspiracy theories in the past and helps distribute former Trump adviser Stephen K Bannon's War Room podcast, after he was barred from YouTube, Spotify and other mainstream platforms. Before joining Real America's Voice, Glenn was programme director of the Right Wing Broadcasting Network - a media company founded by Joe Seales in 2015. It was here that he became one of Mr Trump's trusted reporters, gaining one-on-one interviews with the president during the election and Christina Bobb, one of Mr Trump's attorneys, regularly appeared on Glenn's show during last year's hush money trial. The channel became the primary source for MAGA supporters to watch all Trump rallies, with Glenn at the forefront. "No one gets to interview Trump any more. Brian has done the most Trump interviews of anyone over the last four years," Ron Filipkowski, a Florida defence attorney and anti-Trump online influencer, told Politico last year. "He [Mr Trump] always goes to Brian - he'll find him in any gaggle." MAGA America's favourite couple Away from reporting, Glenn is in a relationship with Republican US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is often referred to by just her initials, MTG. Ms Taylor Greene, who was elected to Congress in 2020 and quickly became a powerful - and vocal - player in the Republican Party, confirmed she and Glenn were romantically linked during a CBS interview in 2023, where she said he had been a "great resource" with dealing with the media. Similarly to Glenn, she is a staunch ally of Mr Trump, whose political style she emulates. He even referred to himself as the other half of "MAGA America's favourite couple" during an interview with Politico. 'Why don't you wear a suit?' Before meeting Mr Trump in the Oval Office, Mr Zelenskyy was advised to wear a suit, according to reports, advice that he did not take. Deciding instead to wear an all black military-style uniform instead, Mr Trump became irritated, according to two sources who spoke to Axios. Mr Trump even greeted Mr Zelenskyy at the entrance to the West Wing, saying with a handshake: "You're all dressed up today." 👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈 But it was Glenn asking the Ukrainian leader why he does not wear a suit and if he even owns one that appeared to cause an initial awkwardness during the meeting. Responding to criticism over the question, Glenn wrote on X later the same day that he has "extreme empathy for the people of Ukraine" - but that dressing as Mr Zelenskyy did "reflects his inner disrespect for not only our country, the president and the US citizens". He wrote: "Moments after my exchange with President Zelenskyy, we began to hear a slightly different tone/mood from him when engaging with President Trump and VP JD Vance as his attire in-fact did begin to reflect his overall attitude towards the negotiations. "So yes, you can judge a book by its cover. With that said, I pray for an ending to this war and peace in that region." 6:05 Mr Zelenskyy has said his choice of clothing is a show of solidarity with soldiers fighting on Ukraine's frontlines. In a statement on Tuesday, he said the meeting in Washington "did not go the way it was supposed", adding that it was "time to make things right". Glenn's girlfriend, Ms Taylor Greene also posted a video of the interaction, saying she was "proud" of him. She added: "Zelenskyy has so much disrespect for America that he can't even wear a suit in the Oval Office when he comes to beg for money from our President!!" Death threats and phone calls After the incident in the Oval Office, Glenn said he received thousands of comments on social media. "I know by the thousands and tens of thousands of comments I have got on social media, death threats, phone calls. I don't know how they got my number," he told BBC's Newsnight on Monday. "I think the world took it as a snarky comment, that wasn't really my intention. My intention was to really see if he understood the level of respect that people have when they go into the Oval Office." Many social media users were quick to point out that Elon Musk did not wear a suit during his recent visit to the Oval Office, but Glenn said Mr Zelenskyy's wardrobe choices mattered more than those of the tech mogul - now part of the Trump administration - because Ukraine has taken billions of dollars worth of aid to help the war effort. "The war is not in the West Wing, in the Oval Office or in Washington, the war is back in Ukraine," Glenn added.
