Mario Tama / Getty Images – Protestors wave flags in response to a series of immigration raids in Los Angeles. The rising tensions occurred after the Trump administration called in the National Guard and Marines against the wishes of city leaders.
The Big Con
It was Thursday of last week when ICE leaders, White House Chief of Staff Steven Miller and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, sternly ordered ICE agents to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day.
This mindless and short-sighted quota — demanding ICE agents arrest over a million people each year — forced agents into a desperate scramble, prioritizing numbers over justice just to hang on to their morally bankrupt jobs.
The easiest possible targets, of course, were not the violent criminals that the Trump administration loved to shine a spotlight on (you’d think, as their rallying cry for justifying civil rights violations, that they would at least get that part right).
Instead, ICE wasted no time seeking to detain those simply trying to live in tranquility: laborers seeking an honest day’s work at Home Depot, migrants walking out of their scheduled courthouse hearings in good faith, fourth-graders on their way to school, and street vendors working tirelessly to provide for their communities.
On Friday, at least 45 individuals in LA’s downtown fashion district were detained without warrants, many of whom were longtime Angelenos who’ve been part of this city longer than I have been alive.
ICE agents, donned in masks and abducting Angelenos off the street, have decisively eroded any inkling of security and public trust in less than a day.
In Los Angeles, a city predominantly Latino in name and population, ICE indubitably knew they would pour salt on old wounds. As children of immigrants, many Angelenos understand the need to fight for their parents and grandparents’ sacrifices, to fight for the opportunity that America once promised many moons ago.
But the Trump administration was smugly counting on just that: the inevitable ignition of grief, outrage, and, ultimately, resistance.
The trap was set.
While ICE Divides, Angelenos Rise
In downtown LA’s Civic Center, hundreds gathered in protest: marching, chanting, sign-waving, and filming with the occasional slight at riot-clad officers.
It was sufficiently tame, with even the Los Angeles Police Department taking the remarkable step of issuing a public statement that the protests were “peaceful” and “concluded without incident.”
⚠️Traffic Advisory⚠️
— LAPD Central Division (@LAPDCentral) June 9, 2025
There are currently 3 demonstrations in the Civic Center part of DTLA
ALAMEDA AND ALISO
LOS ANGELES NORTH OF TEMPLE
LA PLACITA OLVERA
All groups are peaceful.
But when ICE agents descended upon the Home Depot in Paramount a day after their downtown raid, the Trump Administration found the smoking gun they were looking for.
It was just another Saturday morning at the Home Depot in a working-class, Latinx suburb of downtown LA. But that morning, border patrol agents were spotted across the street. Word quickly spread on social media. Passersby honked their horns.
Soon, the protestors arrived, and shouts and flash bangs ensued. Average folks found themselves face to face against militarized police and federal agents with a seemingly unlimited supply of tactical gear, choking in tears as they endured hours of tear gas.
The hands of the protestors were inevitably forced, their fates as the perfect scapegoats sealed. The clashes provided for dramatic TV video, in a small area around the Alonda Boulevard store.
Barricades were soon erected, pepper spray and tear gas were thrown with reckless abandon, and burning cars were seen amid the chaos.
The seeds of resistance have been sown, which played right into the Trump administration’s preemptive plans.
The President is Lying to You
Trump’s authoritarianism in real time:
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 8, 2025
▪️Conduct massive illegal raids.
▪️Provoke a counter-response.
▪️Declare a state of emergency.
▪️Call in the troops.
Unacceptable.
The media narrative swiftly capitalized on the images of dissent.
Photos of dumpster fires and vandalized Waymo robotaxis were splashed across feeds, portraying the LA protests as a feverous riot, a city thrown into complete anarchy.
But as the L.A. Times pointed out, they were relatively small protests in very specific locations where ICE agents conducted raids; most of LA continued with its usual ho-hum: celebrating Pride Month and going to weekend brunch.
LAPD reassured the public that the situation was under control. It was, after all, not nearly as chaotic as when the Dodgers won the MLB World Series or when the Lakers won the NBA championship.
However, that didn’t stop Trump from revving the propaganda machine and distorting the truth.
An Administration’s War on Truth
Despite the wishes of Governor Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and other local leaders, President Trump doubled down, deploying over 2,100 National Guard (and, as of Wednesday, 700 Marines), branding protestors as paid insurrectionists and foreign agitators.
He seized on social media posts, like claims of “Soros-funded bricks,” to inflate the protests into a looming domestic crisis. Members of the Trump administration described isolated scenes of conflict as an “insurrection” over and over and over and over again.
Just a week ago, L.A. was at peace. Now the Marines and National Guard are parading the streets, in an unnecessary show of force, and causing real and irreparable damage to the city.
The addition of 700 Marines is itself can only be described as federal antagonization. But that is not surprising from a man whose entire presidency is built on divisive rhetoric and escalating racial tensions.
And the question has always been: why?
Why didn’t President Trump use the same show of force against the Capitol Attack 4 years ago?
Why use the U.S. Marines, an institution built to defend democracy, as political pawns to oppress the constitutional right of peaceful assembly?
Why has President Trump bypassed the approval of a state governor, a breach of federal oversight that hasn’t happened in a state for 60 years? (Which, by the way, was during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.)
Maybe it’s just a measly coincidence that President Donald Trump orchestrated this planned fracture right after he was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding.
If I were a gambling man, I would bet the house and the farm that:
For Trump, it may never be about the money, but more about bringing California, and all his political enemies, to heel.
Language of the Unheard
Spin the truth as you may, but there is no denying that the protests in LA have not warranted the Marines and the National Guard to be called in a state of nonemergency.
Sure, some protestors took things a little “too far.” But what is considered “too far” when people’s families are being ripped apart, when loved ones don’t come home, when you see parents and neighbors taken off the street by masked men in nondescript vans, without you ever knowing if and when you’ll see them again.
Sure, people tagged buildings. You can paint over them.
Sure, people blocked roads for a few hours and got pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed for their trouble.
Sure, Waymo driverless cars were burned down. But maybe you didn’t know that because local law enforcement can easily access Waymo footage, they are essentially a full 360-degree surveillance system rolling up to spy on protestors.
If you could hear the cries of people being detained, banging and screaming against the thinly opened windows of detention centers, if you could see nonviolent protestors being cruelly run over, if you saw a local union leader being beaten and detained, wouldn’t you see why Angelenos were provoked?
If you took a moment to look beyond the headlines, you’d understand the impossible choices that people are forced to make in circumstances that are inconceivable to navigate through.
Democracy Dies in the Darkness
In the coming days, the national media is going to call LA a war zone. But the truth is, the folks protesting over the past week were worried about their friends, their neighbors, and their community.
In any protest, there will always be a select few who will throw rocks, take advantage of the chaos, and loot, and it’ll proceed to take over the entire media narrative.
But just know that LA is afraid right now because their friends were kidnapped at work. Because masked men kidnapped the elotero who brought joy on the weekends, and because of the deafening silence of our neighbors who never came home.
Progress can be a painful and unforgiving process. Still, when ICE terrorizes LA by zeroing in on our friends, our families, and our livelihoods, Los Angeles responds in kind, in crowds, in true solidarity, in loud, defiant chants. It’s the language of the unheard, born of the sacrifice of countless immigrants who are cruelly dehumanized for trying to live fairly on stolen land.
The President can rewrite the narrative all he wants. His constant need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Oppression is the mask of fear. What he fears most isn’t chaos: it’s a people, a gente, uniting beyond his reach.
. . .
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