‘Tearing families apart': The Californians fighting Trump as his ICE agents terrorise a city
Los Angeles: Sandra Estrada stands in her accessories store in the fashion district of downtown Los Angeles, shelves brimming with handbags, hats and colourful belts wrapped in individual plastic sleeves.
This is far from high-end Rodeo Drive. Here, and in the nearby streets lined with fabric displays, vendors sell mostly to wholesale customers. Shops are mostly independently owned, staffed overwhelmingly by Asian or Hispanic migrants, many of whom are undocumented.
Estrada's store is just metres from Ambiance Apparel, one of four businesses raided by US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last Friday, kicking off a week of protests in central LA that have since spread to other cities around the United States, and occasionally led to violent clashes with police.
Estrada, who was born in the United States, opened Oh Yes Accessories during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the streets were quiet and times were tough. This week was worse.
'Today, this whole week, you could tell. People – documented, undocumented – they're not here,' she said. 'It's empty. There's no foot traffic, there's no car traffic. It's lonely.'
Across Los Angeles and elsewhere, the immigration raids and mass deportations authorised by President Donald Trump have petrified migrant communities, even for some who believe they are legally in the US. In a city where half the population is Hispanic or Latino, people are not showing up to work, and parents are not sending their children to school, for fear of being subject to the next ICE raid.
When this masthead visited the fashion district shortly before 5pm on Wednesday, the streets were near empty. Many properties were shuttered, and most shopkeepers who were open were scared to talk.
'Some stores have not opened up since Friday,' Astrada said. 'Some stores are doing business with their doors closed and locked. You can tell there are employees that have not shown up to work. It's very evident. There's food trucks that [usually] set up around us that haven't set up since last Friday.'
It's in streets like these – and in bars and restaurants, car washes, schools, places that make this sprawling city tick – that the real impact of Trump's deportation agenda can be seen and felt.
While the protests outside federal government buildings in central LA have generated headlines and dramatic photos, in reality, they are small – especially by LA standards and compared with the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Over the week, and as Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass instituted an 8pm curfew, the number of protesters fell, and police shut down demonstrations faster. But authorities were preparing for bigger demonstrations at the weekend, especially with Californian schools and colleges now on summer break.
Daily immigration raids have also continued. Migrants and their families use websites to track the most recent sightings of ICE agents, while rumours abound in group chats. One popular site, People Over Papers, shows a large cluster of reported sightings around Los Angeles County and Anaheim, and across the US.
On Tuesday, ICE agents were filmed chasing farmworkers through fields during a raid in Ventura County, north-west of Los Angeles. The agricultural sector is another that depends enormously on illegal migrant workers to function.
In a potentially significant turnaround, Trump on Thursday (Friday AEST) promised changes to his hard-line immigration regime after lobbying from industry, including farmers.
'Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,' Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
'In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!'
The events in Los Angeles have underscored deep fault lines in the debate over immigration, both lawful and otherwise, in the US. When the White House was boasting about rounding up criminals, convicted or accused, and sending them home or to Salvadorian jails, the loudest outcries came from professional activists, lawyers and Democratic politicians concerned about abuse of due process.
But now that ICE is raiding businesses and farms, or showing up at school pick-ups, the threat to everyday immigrants and their families has become much more real.
California, a state of 40 million people that borders Mexico and is half Hispanic, has an entirely different experience of migration to a state such as Pennsylvania or Kentucky. Unlawful immigration is a part of life here.
When protesters in downtown LA scrawl 'F--K ICE' on walls and chant 'ICE out of LA', they are essentially reflecting California government policy. Local law enforcement does not co-operate with federal immigration authorities. That is why Los Angeles and other cities are commonly called 'sanctuary cities'.
This duality – the extent to which states can duck from pretty significant national laws – can be difficult to appreciate from outside the US. And it is at the heart of the argument against California being levelled most forcefully by Trump's deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, the architect and philosopher behind the administration's aggressive immigration policy.
This week, as the raids continued and the protests raged, Miller conducted full-throated and near-constant commentary on X regarding what he sees as not just a fight to deport people illegally in the country, but an existential battle over the future of the United States and democracy.
'Illegal aliens invaded America,' he said on Monday. 'The government of California aided and abetted that invasion. Violent mobs, incited by California leaders, attacked ICE officers to keep them from removing the invaders. California officials refused to send the police to rescue the ICE officers, hoping the rioters would succeed in shutting down ICE raids. This is an organised insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.'
Miller was born and raised in Los Angeles, and went to Santa Monica High School. But he now sees his former home state, and the political party that controls it, as fundamental threats to the integrity of the union.
'Sometimes issues in life are refined to a point of perfect clarity and utter simplicity,' he said on Tuesday. 'The future the Democrat Party offers America is, to be, in every sense of the term, a Third World nation. All other issues in our national life are derivative of this fact.'
These comments seem at odds with Trump's remarks about moderating the policy to protect farmworkers and bellhops. But then, just hours after Trump said that, he returned to posting about the 'tsunami of Illegals' that had stolen American jobs and destroyed America's schools, parks, resources and living conditions.
'All of them have to go home, as do countless other Illegals and Criminals, who will turn us into a bankrupt Third World Nation,' the president wrote. 'America was invaded and occupied. I am reversing the Invasion. It's called Remigration.'
The Trump presidency, and the MAGA universe, is a battle between the ideologues in senior positions and the businessman at the top who has a tendency to announce an extreme position and then backtrack after taking stock of the real-world impacts – whether that be farmers losing workers or the bond market balking at tariffs. The extent to which Trump moderates – or gives up on – his mass deportation plans remains to be seen.
In the meantime, life in Los Angeles remains altered. While schools have just broken up for the summer, in recent days parents have been reluctant to send their children to school.
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Brett Celi, a fourth-grade teacher at Sharp Avenue Elementary in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, said attendance fell after Friday's immigration raids.
'It is 99 per cent Hispanic,' he said of the school. 'For sure this year was the worst attendance I've ever noticed for the last couple of days of school. Some teachers were missing almost half their kids. I was missing a third on the last day.'
Celi said staff were briefed on what to do if ICE agents turned up at school drop-off or pick-up, although the instructions were a little vague. His understanding was: 'If you see anything, just call the office.'
Protests against the ICE raids are not all loud, or flashy, or attention-seeking. Half an hour's drive away from downtown Los Angeles, outside the Wilshire Federal Building in West LA, this masthead found 27-year-old Danny Silva standing at an intersection on his own, calmly waving a Mexican flag under the hot Californian summer sun.
Metres away, a handful of National Guard members were keeping watch and debating whether to let a small autonomous vehicle enter the property. The Coco robot was carrying lunch for some of their colleagues.
'They're tearing families apart in my community,' said Silva, the son of Mexican immigrants. 'Even if I'm the only one out here, I just want people to know that at least one person isn't going to stand for it.'
Silva just graduated from law school at the adjacent University of California, Los Angeles, and is wearing his black and purple graduation cap. Asked what he would say to people who wonder why California believes it shouldn't be subject to the federal immigration laws of the US, he pivots.
'The media likes to sensationalise a very small minority of what's happening on the ground,' Silva says. 'Someone lights a car on fire, every single camera is pointing to it. The vast majority of people protesting are just doing what I'm doing – standing around, waving a flag, having our voices heard.
'You don't see this kind of military mobilisation when the Eagles win a Super Bowl. They trash all of Philadelphia, but you don't see the Marines show up there. So it's absolutely – it's racist. I've been to a lot of demonstrations and almost every single time it's always the police that brings the violence.'
In reality, the protests are a mix of characters. Most are angry but peaceful, seeking to have their say. They're interspersed with agitators trying to stir up trouble, test the limits or perform for the news cameras and social media. On Tuesday afternoon, a colourful figure known as Daisy the Venice Healer rode up to police lines on a skateboard, yelling into a hand-held loudspeaker.
The next day, this masthead met 'Robby Roadsteamer' outside City Hall, who stood on the street wearing an eagle suit and a pink G-string, and dancing to a band playing Latin American music. 'We could have the new Woodstock if we want,' he said. 'But no more ICE. No more busting people without identification.'
Later that evening, outside the Department of Justice in downtown LA, a small crew of protesters danced in circles to John Lennon's Imagine in front of graffiti that said 'DEAD COPS', 'Kill a COP' and 'DEATH TO AMERIKKA'.
Karen Haas, a 44-year-old from Los Angeles, stood a couple of metres from a wall of homeland security agents, telling them they were stealing her friends and serving a 'Nazi' in Stephen Miller.
'I don't really get an opportunity to get this close to border patrol, so it's a chance to tell them how I feel, where they have to stand and listen to us,' she said. 'I think they need to hear it.'
Earlier, Lynn Sturgis and Ellen Carpenter, two white women in their 60s from Santa Monica, protested outside the federal building holding cardboard signs that said, 'Political Theatre or Public Safety?' and 'We the people are all Immigrants'.
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Sturgis said most Americans' views on immigration raids and the LA protests depended upon their news source. There were two entirely separate national conversations about what was happening, she said.
'There's Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Fox News. And then if you listen to other news like MSNBC and CNN, you realise the truth,' she said.
But was it not fair for the Trump administration to ask why California felt it was entitled to thumb its nose at nation laws?
'Well, it's how you're enforcing the laws,' Sturgis said. Plenty of migrants were following the legal process, she said, only to end up being arrested. 'So they're not doing the right thing.'
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"What we need to focus on is just making sure the system is simple, the distribution is fair, the distribution is predictable, but also the distribution is understandable." Another federal issue with implications for state budgets is the rise of the black market for illicit tobacco fuelled by rising excise on dinky-di durries. The market shift is robbing the Commonwealth of expected revenue and creating criminal complications for states. It has already led to increased funding for enforcement within the health budget, but Premier Chris Minns indicated earlier in June a decision would have to be made about the resources devoted to combating illicit tobacco sales. While smoke clouds what the budget might do to address the issue, Mr Mookhey notes it is a source of public anxiety. "It's right and fair that we respond to community concerns about it ... we're going to have to work through what is the right solution." 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