While ICE and law enforcement unleash raids across LA, protesters stand firm, exposing the brutal machinery of deportation and the state’s violent response to dissent and resistance.
Originally published in Struggle la Lucha.
May 17 – Tense confrontations are escalating in Los Angeles’ residential neighborhoods. In just the first two weeks of May, incidents in South Central include a raid near Exposition and Arlington.
According to witnesses, ICE agents arrived in force, shutting down the entire block with at least eight vehicles, including trucks and unmarked cars. Officers in full tactical gear, wearing bulletproof vests, detained at least five individuals.
Neighbors reported hearing a detained individual shouting for a lawyer, while others described a heavy police presence nearby, including armored trucks.
Forcible removals and warrantless searches
In a separate incident, residents reported that a neighbor, sitting in her car, had her window broken by ICE agents who forcibly removed her.
This writer, a member of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, witnessed another incident in South Central Los Angeles during a community self-defense patrol. Law enforcement, including West Covina Police and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, entered a family’s home without a warrant. Minors were forced to provide DNA swabs without parental consent, and property was seized before a warrant was produced, at least three hours after the raid began.
The government continues to criminalize basic constitutional rights, break laws requiring warrants, terrorize families, and rely on intimidation.
The raid is part of a broader escalation in immigration enforcement, with federal agencies increasingly collaborating with local police — a violation of California’s sanctuary city laws. Members of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a grassroots network that monitors and challenges illegal ICE operations, witnessed and documented unlawful tactics.
The Community Self-Defense Coalition has gained international attention for its efforts in organizing neighborhood patrols, providing know-your-rights education, and mobilizing rapid response teams during ICE raids. During these patrols, coalition members distribute literature and encourage residents to document the raid with cell phones, creating a visible counter-presence to law enforcement.
State repression and growing resistance
To discourage the fightback against the government’s fascist repression, the state is redefining constitutional rights in a way that denies the well-established principles of free speech and assembly. The FBI is now being redirected against immigrant communities, while white-collar crimes and criminals (think Elon Musk) are deprioritized.
Despite increasing repression, the coalition reports that its numbers have grown since May 1 (International Workers’ Day), with more militant patrols forming in heavily targeted neighborhoods and on college campuses.
The Community Self-Defense Coalition will continue to do its work to push back fascist attacks of the Trump administration, which is a continuation of the previous administration’s genocidal police attacks and ICE deportations targeting primarily Black and Brown communities, and increasingly now, anyone in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Palestine solidarity and campus protest
On May 15, the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the mass slaughter of 15,000 Palestinians as over 400 Palestinian villages were depopulated or razed, removing more than half the Palestinian population from their homeland in 1948 — UCLA students and coalition member Maggie Vascassenno participated in a demonstration organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The action occurred despite the university’s criminalization of pro-Palestine activities, which led to students and professors being subject to deportations and detentions.
Vascassenno described the action:
“Today, at UCLA, Students for Justice in Palestine organized a powerful event to illustrate the loss that was Nakba. First they set up at Dickson N, then when the cops started creeping in, the organizers quickly moved the crowd to a new location, where they built a community with boxes and painted banners, and they planted an orange tree. It was Jaffa, and it was beautiful, until the cops started surrounding us, then we rushed down the long steps, carrying what we could and went to the final site, named Gaza, where again we were rapidly dispersed. Throughout the event, students recited the words and remembrances of Palestinian survivors of the original Nakba.”
That fighting spirit will continue to grow from Los Angeles to Palestine.
Alec Karakatsanis is an attorney with a long history of work as a public defender.
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