Los Angeles has become ground zero for America’s immigration face-off.
Continuing confrontations on the streets over deportation enforcement have advanced to the courtroom. Last week, the Trump administration sued the city over its “sanctuary” policy. Immigrant advocates, joined by the city, are suing to challenge the legality of the federal tactics. On Thursday, a federal judge in that case tentatively decided to block enforcement sweeps, Fox News reported, adding that the judge’s order is expected Friday.
A truce, perhaps more narrowly focused on deporting violent criminals, seems elusive as the Trump administration and LA Mayor Karen Bass dig in. Meanwhile, the aggressive federal presence is having a profound effect on the nation’s second-largest city, where shops are reporting a dramatic slowdown in business, and some streets have become eerily devoid of traffic.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump and Los Angeles are in a standoff over immigration enforcement, on the streets and in court. The resolution could shape what happens in other areas of the U.S.
LA is a place where white residents have not been the majority for more than three decades, and Latinos are the largest ethnic group. After decades of unresolved immigration issues at the federal level, it’s also a place where those with papers and those without have been integrated into an economic and cultural whole.
All this has made it a natural flash point for President Donald Trump, who was elected partly on a promise to restore order at the border and deport millions.
It’s been more than a month since the Trump administration started its enforcement crackdown in Greater Los Angeles, sparking protests and isolated incidents of violence. The president followed up by sending National Guard troops and Marines to LA, he said to quell unrest and protect federal buildings and agents – despite the city and state’s insistence that federal help was not needed.
But the tensions in LA have hardly abated. And depending on which side ultimately prevails, the standoff over immigration here could have major implications for the rest of the country – politically, legally, and even economically.
“We are the canary in the coal mine,” said City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez at a press conference Monday. That morning, a phalanx of armed and masked federal agents, some of them on horseback, swept through MacArthur Park in her Latino immigrant neighborhood where children were in summer camp. The children were quickly ushered inside for their protection.
Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor
Businesses lament “empty” LA
Across the region, many migrants, both documented and unauthorized, are hunkered down at home, afraid to venture out to work, shop, eat at restaurants, or attend church. Some streets are quiet, as if the pandemic has struck again – particularly in Latino neighborhoods, says Carmen Perez, who designs and sells flower-girl dresses from her crammed shop, Carmen Creation, in the downtown fashion district.
Ms. Perez, who has a mostly Latino clientele, says foot traffic has come to a standstill since June 6, when federal agents descended on a nearby warehouse, detaining dozens.
“Ask me if I sold something. My hands are empty,” she laments. A retailer who’s been in business for years, she’s now making “maybe” $50 a day and recently had to dip into her savings to pay her $1,800 rent. “People don’t want to come here. They don’t want to risk their life,” she explains. “I pray God to make my payments.”
It’s a similar story all over these historic city blocks that make up LA’s fashion district, where small shops sit cheek-by-jowl, curvy mannequins line the sidewalks, and designer knockoffs and bolts of high-end fabric await customers. “Empty, empty, empty,” complains another retailer, in front of his stand of cowboy hats.
Since June 6, nearly 2,800 unauthorized people have been arrested in Greater Los Angeles. Immigrant advocates, as well as some surrounding city governments, are offering aid for families that have become separated.
Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor
Many Angelenos point to one idea where they say officials could find common ground: Focus enforcement efforts on violent criminals instead of broad sweeps at car washes and Home Depot parking lots, and stop making a show of federal force at places like MacArthur Park.
Mayor Bass called the recent action there “outrageous” and “un-American,” and part of a political agenda to “terrorize” immigrants. But that may be the point, if displays of force lead some unauthorized migrants to choose to leave on their own. U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino warned on the social platform X that agents may revisit the park and other places in and around LA. “Illegal aliens had the opportunity to self deport, now we’ll help things along a bit,” he said.
The vast majority of Americans support deporting immigrants without permanent legal status who have been convicted of a violent crime, according to a July 1 Marist poll. A slight majority, 54%, believe Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been going too far.
Here on the street, public opinion is mixed. In the fashion district, one retailer said ICE has to leave. Two others said they support the raids, with one complaining of drug and human trafficking in the area. A private security guard at the federal building downtown said the raids must stop, but at the same time, was unhappy that unauthorized people receive state benefits “on a silver platter.”
When it comes to political leadership, “both sides have an incentive to double down on their positions,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant in California and an expert on the Latino vote. But it’s a “lopsided fight,” he says, in which the president has “enormous leverage” – the military, federal dollars, a big media town where he’ll get lots of coverage, and a Democratic stronghold where he fears no political backlash.
U.S.: LA needs to “get out of our way”
That stronghold is part of the problem, says Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli, who serves California’s Central District, including LA. The federal government will not negotiate which laws to enforce, he says. Nor will it negotiate with leaders who insist that LA does not need to cooperate with the federal government for immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration escalated this battle June 30 with a federal lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Bass, and the City Council. The lawsuit says LA is hindering federal agents as they go about their lawful enforcement duties and that, by barring only some agencies from places and information that could help with immigration enforcement, LA is discriminating against the federal government. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause preempts local policies, reads the filing.
“We’re not asking them to do immigration [enforcement] for us, we’re asking them to get out of our way,” says Mr. Essayli, among those bringing the suit.
Local officials maintain they are staying out of the way; they simply don’t have an obligation to help.
State law prohibits the use of state and local resources – such as police, schools, healthcare systems, and courts – for enforcing federal immigration laws. The law was enacted during the first Trump administration and upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
That law is consistent with a long-standing LAPD policy of not investigating immigration status or enforcing federal immigration law, which police say allows them to focus their limited resources on public safety and builds essential trust with the immigrant community.
LA’s sanctuary city ordinance builds on state law by prohibiting any use of city personnel or facilities for federal immigration enforcement. With few exceptions, it prohibits data sharing that might reveal a person’s immigration status. To this end, officers do not collect or record a person’s place of birth unless it is directly related to a criminal investigation.
The boundaries for federal requirements around sharing that type of information haven’t been constitutionally tested, says Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School. “We might see from this lawsuit a little bit of clarification,” he says.
Mr. Essayli argues that local policies extend far beyond the city’s right to opt out of federal law enforcement. The federal government wants to work with local law enforcement so they can focus on public safety risks together, he says. “But we don’t do that right now. They won’t do it. And so we have to go out and basically do all these enforcement operations out in the community.”
In a countermove, a coalition of LA and surrounding cities, the American Civil Liberties Union, and immigrant rights groups has sued the Department of Homeland Security. In describing the lawsuit, the ACLU accused federal agents of “abducting and disappearing community members using unlawful stop and arrest practices.” Those detained include a “shocking” number of U.S. citizens and people here lawfully, the suit says, asking a judge to stop the raids.
Mr. Essayli denies that anyone here lawfully is being “swept up” in deportation efforts.
Bass defends city of immigrants
Mayor Karen Bass is resolute – and furious. “I personally won’t be intimidated by these tactics,” she said last week, demanding that the raids end.
She never fails to point out that the City of Angels is a city of immigrants and dependent on migrant labor. “We support Angelenos, period – regardless of when they got here, where they came from, or why they’re here,” she said this week after the federal mobilization at MacArthur Park.
The region is proud of its diverse ethnicities from all over the world. One-third of the residents in LA are foreign-born, and half of that group does not hold U.S. citizenship, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Latinos make up nearly half of the population.
“Many parts of the state are racially and ethnically very integrated. People work in the same place with people who don’t look like them. They marry people, they date people that don’t look like them,” says Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA’s school of public affairs, and a former elected official. “Those are the kinds of things that are kind of run of the mill now.”
The mid-1990s were decisive in California’s relationship with the Latino population, says Mr. Madrid, author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy.” In 1994, Californians passed Proposition 187, which essentially barred unauthorized immigrants from accessing government services. It was the voters’ reaction to illegal immigration surging across the southern border and into their state.
The measure was found unconstitutional, but its passage awakened a sleeping giant of Latino voters and aspiring Latino politicians. With a gridlocked Congress unable to enact meaningful immigration reform or deliver on border security, the state simply moved on, integrating the unauthorized population with driver’s licenses, in-state tuition, and health care.
Demographically, the rest of the country is now at the point of 1990s California, where it’s no longer possible to “unmix the cake batter,” points out Mr. Madrid. The Census Bureau projects that non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in the United States in 2045.
“What Trump is trying to do is create a normal of what it was like 35-40 years ago. But that is impossible. Where is that labor going to come from?” He added that the president “may win the political battle, but can’t win the demographic battle because you can’t beat time and history.”
Raquel Romȧn holds that history close. The native Angeleno is part of a grassroots collective that has sprung up to help alert the immigrant community about enforcement sweeps and offer help to people who are impacted.
The Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network operates a hotline that people can call during a raid. The network will send someone to verify the incident, determine which agency has detained a person and their location, and help family members figure out next steps.
The sweeps have been hardest on mixed-status families, especially when young people become caretakers because a parent has been detained, says Ms. Romȧn. The Boyle Heights group offers connections to legal services, helps with rent and utilities, and runs a food pantry that is serving only half its usual 800 families a week because people are too afraid to show up, she says.
Ms. Romȧn says everyone should have a way to become citizens. Two-thirds of Americans agree, to a degree: 64% prefer giving “most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. a pathway to legal status,” according to a recent poll.
Ms. Romȧn wants local and federal leaders to come together like they did during the January wildfires. “Let’s have a conversation, a roundtable, with different people where we could come to some sort of agreement,” she says. “That would be the dream.”
