Speaker 1: Old Zone Media it.
Speaker 2: It could happen here with the podcast about I don't know.
Speaker 3: How am I supposed to do the pivot from like
Speaker 3: it the Stephen King novel, which could at any point
Speaker 3: happen in a place where you are.
Speaker 2: I was trying to get to the podcast coming to
Speaker 2: you not quite live from a place where a bunch
Speaker 2: of just masked guys are drabbing people off the street.
Speaker 2: But that works too, Stephen King could pivot. Haven't done
Speaker 2: that one yet. I'm your host, Miya Wong. With me
Speaker 2: is James Stout, and we're also joined by the wonderful
Speaker 2: freelance journalists melbuer At A fucking holy shit. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: that happened simultaneously as I inhaled and like apparently a
Speaker 2: piece of popcorn just like fucking rail guned into the
Speaker 2: back of my throat relief for this song.
Speaker 4: A professionals here, shit, this is going great. Is journalist
Speaker 4: John Vector Carpentum. Good lord, I'm so.
Speaker 5: Good at my job.
Speaker 2: So what we're gonna be talking about is the continued
Speaker 2: resistance to ice and ice actions in LA and in
Speaker 2: sort of broader parts of California as stuff has shifted
Speaker 2: and intensified so both of you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Glad to be here, happy to be here.
Speaker 2: So I think the place I want to start is,
Speaker 2: could you give people just kind of a brief reminder
Speaker 2: of what happened during that sort of big flare up
Speaker 2: several weeks ago of protests and ice actions in LA I.
Speaker 5: Can probably speak a little bit more to that.
Speaker 6: So, as part of the federal immigration raids that Donald
Speaker 6: Trump promised, Los Angeles was one of the first targets
Speaker 6: of pretty large scale and pretty frankly random immigration raids.
Speaker 6: So it started in early June where you started to see,
Speaker 6: you know, massed agents without oftentimes badges or names on
Speaker 6: their badges or sometimes even serial numbers. First they started
Speaker 6: in home depots areas like that, just sort of running
Speaker 6: around parking lots, tackling people and throwing them into buses.
Speaker 6: Pretty understandably, Los Angelinos started to protest, and they started
Speaker 6: to protest pretty hard, and that happened for a few weeks.
Speaker 6: Eventually the Marines in the National Guard were both deployed
Speaker 6: to federal buildings more large scale protests, and that sort
Speaker 6: of brings us to the last few weeks, which I
Speaker 6: think mel can probably speak to Yeah, so.
Speaker 7: You know, the National Guard and the Marines were deployed
Speaker 7: like mid June, right, Yeah, and we kind of saw
Speaker 7: a little bit of petering out of like the mass
Speaker 7: protests that we saw at.
Speaker 1: The beginning of June.
Speaker 7: But still there were a number of organizations and groups
Speaker 7: that were trying to keep tabs on the sort of
Speaker 7: roving patrols that were happening in Los Angeles throughout the
Speaker 7: month of June and early July. So these groups were
Speaker 7: taking in tips and trying to maintain a sort of
Speaker 7: map of rapid response locations to the ice detainments, kidnappings,
Speaker 7: suspension of constitutional rights, if you will.
Speaker 1: And so what.
Speaker 7: We saw was you know, a good number of weeks
Speaker 7: of social media sort of proliferating these posts about where
Speaker 7: ice patrols had gone. And because the you know, and
Speaker 7: this is something that organizations have spoken to in the
Speaker 7: last couple of weeks, but because their pounder surveillance, I
Speaker 7: suppose you could say by these organizations was pretty successful,
Speaker 7: the sort of ice patrols began to not happen throughout
Speaker 7: the later half of the day.
Speaker 1: They would happen early in the morning.
Speaker 7: They would you know, hit a location, grab as many
Speaker 7: people as possible, pull them into the van and take
Speaker 7: them away. And they had gotten it down to something
Speaker 7: like less than ten minutes that they were on scene,
Speaker 7: and it made it a little bit difficult for folks
Speaker 7: to be able to respond forcefully to those events. And
Speaker 7: they kept it to parking lots, car washes, you know, businesses,
Speaker 7: random street vendors, places that they could enter quickly and
Speaker 7: leave quickly. We saw in the middle of June and
Speaker 7: in the later half of the month that if they
Speaker 7: were trying to execute Warrens, for example, in a neighborhood,
Speaker 7: they would be blocked in almost immediately by neighbors. So
Speaker 7: you can see that there was a pretty consistent response
Speaker 7: by Angelino's across the board as much as they could.
Speaker 7: And while this was happening, there was also a pretty
Speaker 7: dedicated group of individuals who were spending a lot of
Speaker 7: time outside the Mentro Detention Center downtown and downtown LA
Speaker 7: which is where many of these vans were going in
Speaker 7: and out of.
Speaker 1: Before they were taking detainees elsewhere.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you know, across the board, what we've seen
Speaker 7: is quite a bit of organizing. Much of this organizing
Speaker 7: is decades in the making, especially in Los Angeles, but
Speaker 7: also in places like Ventura County and a little bit
Speaker 7: up north where you see the same kind of work
Speaker 7: that's being done. In the later half of the month,
Speaker 7: early July, I should say, we began to see some
Speaker 7: pretty intense movements by Border Patrol, most notably in MacArthur
Speaker 7: Park on July eighth, I believe, and in the cama
Speaker 7: Rio Oxynard area, which is right on the border of
Speaker 7: Venture County and other county's name. Escapes me at two
Speaker 7: cannabis farms that next week, and those were large scale operations.
Speaker 7: A lot of militarized Border Patrol National Guard I believe
Speaker 7: helped with both of those operations as well, and also
Speaker 7: saw some pretty intense community response to those.
Speaker 3: So, Sean, you'd mentioned you wanted to talk a little
Speaker 3: more about the organizing, right, Like the way people are
Speaker 3: organized to try and kind of resist this or at
Speaker 3: least like do what they could.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I think is interesting this
Speaker 6: isn't unique to Los Angeles. We're seeing groups organize what
Speaker 6: I've been hearing called megri patrols here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: There's also pretty heavy touch of this from San Diego.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I thought was really really
Speaker 6: interesting was in Los Angeles has been preparing for a
Speaker 6: moment like this since the late sixties. Frankly, you know,
Speaker 6: you have groups that have a pretty solid through line
Speaker 6: since the mid sixties at the dawn of the Chicano movement,
Speaker 6: and these are groups that already have experience with large
Speaker 6: scale attainments. Not throughout the city like we were seeing
Speaker 6: the last few weeks, but there's this really impressive level
Speaker 6: of organization. Where I saw a detainment in Boyle Heights
Speaker 6: of a gentleman who was accused of getting a police officer.
Speaker 6: Within I think three minutes of them arriving. Not only
Speaker 6: was there one or two people, but there was like
Speaker 6: fifteen people already onseen. Boyle Heights is pretty singular in
Speaker 6: its preparation. However, it was not uncommon. I mean in
Speaker 6: MacArthur Park there was a detainment of a few people
Speaker 6: who were walking down the street. I was maybe eight
Speaker 6: minutes away when I heard about the raid. There was
Speaker 6: already like ten people there, including a college professor, including
Speaker 6: members of Union Del Borro and at Tennis Union. I
Speaker 6: have a bit of a theory that I don't know
Speaker 6: if Los Angeles was chosen because they wanted to prove
Speaker 6: a point. And there is a part of me that
Speaker 6: wonders seeing how quickly people are responding to these raids,
Speaker 6: There's a part of me that wonders at that point
Speaker 6: was even made.
Speaker 3: I think the government's actions can be understood in like
Speaker 3: owning the libs and like if your Facebook uncle got
Speaker 3: to make government policy, it wouldn't look that different from this.
Speaker 3: So I think that was certainly like the point early on,
Speaker 3: and they'd have detained a lot of people in La Like,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they're organizing. You have very entrenched work in
Speaker 3: clouds communities, even going back way before the sixties, right,
Speaker 3: like if we look at the zoot suit, right, if
Speaker 3: we look at the Brassero program and the attempts to
Speaker 3: expel people after that, Like if we look at United
Speaker 3: farm Workers like across LA County, we have a long
Speaker 3: history of organizing, so like it's a hard target for
Speaker 3: them for sure.
Speaker 2: And I think it's really interesting listening to YouTube talk
Speaker 2: about this matches a lot of what I was hearing
Speaker 2: about the way that it all kind of decentralized in
Speaker 2: between sort of May and June. And the thing that
Speaker 2: it reminds me of really interestingly is what was happening
Speaker 2: to sort of other protest movements but reversed. You know,
Speaker 2: if you look at like the Power Side encampments right
Speaker 2: where it's okay you put a bunch of people in
Speaker 2: one spot and then they all get crushed because the
Speaker 2: police can bring overwhelming numbers, And it feels like the
Speaker 2: raid response has almost been the reverse of that, where
Speaker 2: ices had to adopt, at least in that period, had
Speaker 2: to adopt the sort of hyper bulbile in and out
Speaker 2: like rapid strike kind of thing like because they were
Speaker 2: suddenly faced with a scenario where like if they tried
Speaker 2: to like stay in mass in an area, it went
Speaker 2: really badly for them. And that's absolutely fascinating to me.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I think is interesting is
Speaker 6: the first few days you saw a pretty heavy amount
Speaker 6: of raids sort of in the central courrior near downtown
Speaker 6: or you know, near East Hollywood things like that, and
Speaker 6: those were extremely heavily protested. You know, there was a
Speaker 6: protest sort of the first day of when the raids
Speaker 6: really really started in the garment districts or in the
Speaker 6: fashion district excuse me, within minutes there was like seventy
Speaker 6: five people there and you know, they were shouting. You know,
Speaker 6: they were there before all of the vehicles for federal
Speaker 6: agents were actually there. That's the one where you know,
Speaker 6: you saw quite a bit of new and folks who
Speaker 6: arrive extremely quickly, you know. And one of the other
Speaker 6: things that I think is really interesting about this organizing
Speaker 6: is you're also seeing regular people who I don't know
Speaker 6: if they normally would organize something where they're sort of
Speaker 6: facing off with federal agents. You're starting to see them
Speaker 6: mobilize in a way that I don't know if you
Speaker 6: would normally see them.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: One of the ladies that I spoke to as part
Speaker 6: of the Rapid Response sort of network is a teacher,
Speaker 6: and I talked to her and I was like, hey, like,
Speaker 6: why do you do this? And she told me, She's like,
Speaker 6: look like, I teach in a heavily immigrant community. My
Speaker 6: job is to take care of these kids, and unfortunately,
Speaker 6: now part of that is driving around the neighborhood and
Speaker 6: looking for white vans filled with people wearing masks.
Speaker 2: That's both incredibly moving and beautiful and also one of
Speaker 2: the most hideous things I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 3: There were quite a few teachers at the SEIU rally
Speaker 3: which was on the ninth of June, which was with
Speaker 3: David Wuerta, the president of the SCIU, was detained, I
Speaker 3: guess allegedly for obstructing federal agents are correctly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I met a lot of people who were older who
Speaker 3: I think were like solidly liberal in their politics, but
Speaker 3: not particularly radical, And it was a really interesting combination
Speaker 3: of these older people who were outraged and somewhat inexperienced
Speaker 3: in street politics and younger people who were outraged and
Speaker 3: somewhat inexperienced in street politics. Like it wasn't the same
Speaker 3: crowd that you see the people who I'd seen in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty when I covered stuff in La. Haven't really
Speaker 3: covered much of the Palestine stuff in LA. But a
Speaker 3: lot of the people who I interviewed in June were
Speaker 3: citizen children of non citizen parents, and they felt like
Speaker 3: an obligation on behalf of their community and their family
Speaker 3: to show up, and like it was really moving to
Speaker 3: see people who were clearly very afraid by the third
Speaker 3: night of like unhinged state violence right like as Sean
Speaker 3: was there too, but the amount of the les lethal's
Speaker 3: that were just being discharged by the third night, like
Speaker 3: the protest was split up and so was the policing.
Speaker 3: Like there wasn't really ever a point where all the
Speaker 3: protesters were able to get together because the police had
Speaker 3: so many roads bucked off, and like you would just
Speaker 3: turned down the street and they'd be firing leslithought you'd
Speaker 3: turned down.
Speaker 5: The street and there's tear gas.
Speaker 3: You turned down the street and there's pepper balls, like
Speaker 3: all over downtown LA. And these people were very afraid,
Speaker 3: but they still kept coming out, And that was quite
Speaker 3: like inspiring to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, I think that's the situation that
Speaker 2: we're in right where you know, the sort of the
Speaker 2: fear and the horror has to is being forced to
Speaker 2: give way to action because the only alternative to that
Speaker 2: is just watching them take your family and take your
Speaker 2: neighbors and taking the people you love and caraboll until
Speaker 2: one day they take you and it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: get to there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe you know what else is going to take you,
Speaker 3: God specifically take money from your wallet. It's these incredible
Speaker 3: products and services which we're lucky enough to be.
Speaker 5: Able to share with our listeners. We are back.
Speaker 2: I notably did not want to do an actual pivot there, but.
Speaker 6: We're back, I think, you know, speaking on sort of
Speaker 6: the climate of Los Angeles and at the same time
Speaker 6: this sort of insistent joy that Los Angeles has.
Speaker 5: There's a very famous.
Speaker 6: Song most of your listeners may have heard it, Lachona,
Speaker 6: which is basically just a song about a woman who
Speaker 6: won't listen to her husband and gets drunk, and you
Speaker 6: see it at every single protest in Los Angeles involving
Speaker 6: immigrant rights. And one of the interesting things about it
Speaker 6: is multiple times at the protests I would see this
Speaker 6: beginning of dancing to La Chona, and then multiple times
Speaker 6: it would be broken up. I think this was the thirteenth,
Speaker 6: mid June, And eventually it got to a point where
Speaker 6: I remember saying, you know, these protesters seem to really
Speaker 6: want to listen to this song, and I have a
Speaker 6: feeling it's going to end up being played in a
Speaker 6: weird spot. What ended up happening is by the end
Speaker 6: of it, I saw a bunch of people with like
Speaker 6: these gnarly bruises all over their body, you know, welts
Speaker 6: from less Lethal's fire, in the middle of the street,
Speaker 6: dancing to La Schona. They finally got their chance and
Speaker 6: you know, it's whenever the Dodgers win. This speaks to
Speaker 6: sort of the specific culture of Los Angeles. I have
Speaker 6: seen more fires and people dancing around them to that
Speaker 6: song than any other song, including protest songs, throughout the
Speaker 6: last five years.
Speaker 5: But there's also you know, I live.
Speaker 6: In Boyle Heights and one of the really interesting and
Speaker 6: kind of horrific things is I had sort of been
Speaker 6: queued up and trained to listen for the ice cream Man,
Speaker 6: both the actual van and there's a guy that does Rospatos,
Speaker 6: who just walks down the street honks a bicycle horn.
Speaker 6: And I am an actual child, and every time I
Speaker 6: heard that bicycle horn, just like I'm sick. It would
Speaker 6: just like run out with a lot of cash and
Speaker 6: by Rospatos. And for about a week, you didn't hear him.
Speaker 6: You didn't a lot of businesses were closed. And then
Speaker 6: after about a week he started to see younger people
Speaker 6: that looked kind of like the guy that used to
Speaker 6: do it, you know, usually the son or the daughter
Speaker 6: sort of working for their parents. Now we're starting to
Speaker 6: see you know a little bit of a more of
Speaker 6: a return to regularity. But you know, one of the
Speaker 6: things that was really interesting about all this organizing is
Speaker 6: you know, you have unions, you also have like former
Speaker 6: politicians and things like that. You know, I got an
Speaker 6: email from a former city councilman with the subject line
Speaker 6: that just said it is happening here, and I remember
Speaker 6: thinking that's that's probably not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not great talking of it is happening. I
Speaker 3: think both the NML you were there, you went up
Speaker 3: to Camerio right the raid on the cannabis grow operation
Speaker 3: and subsequent stand up that was just a different scene
Speaker 3: from like DTLA. Can you explain if people aren't familiar,
Speaker 3: maybe very briefly explain the operation and the consequences.
Speaker 7: So Sean and I just sat in federal court for
Speaker 7: five hours prior to that in downtown LA, where federal
Speaker 7: judge was listening to arguments being made in the hopes
Speaker 7: of getting a temporary restraining owner on the grounds that
Speaker 7: these roving patrols in Los Angeles were unconstitutional. And we
Speaker 7: left court and you know, one of our sources who
Speaker 7: was also there at the federal courthouse was talking about
Speaker 7: how they had heard about this raid happening in cam
Speaker 7: Mario and Carpenteria, two different cannabis grow houses, and by
Speaker 7: the timing left, it had been happening for five hours
Speaker 7: at that point, so they, under a warrant, had rated
Speaker 7: both of these cannabis co operations, which are quite large.
Speaker 7: We're talking hundreds of workers who work in these processing
Speaker 7: centers and greenhouses and such. And local organizers, particularly organizers
Speaker 7: with VC Defensa, which is in Ventura County, who has
Speaker 7: been doing really successful organizing following ice vehicles wherever they
Speaker 7: go to try and head off these roving patrols.
Speaker 1: They've really thrown a wrench in things up there.
Speaker 7: One of the organizers was following one of these border
Speaker 7: patrol vehicles and watched as the border patrol vehicle drove
Speaker 7: past the gates of a military base out there, and
Speaker 7: then kind of got an idea that, Okay, something big
Speaker 7: is happening. This is not normal, like this is not
Speaker 7: usually what happens when we follow these cars. Usually they're
Speaker 7: going into neighborhoods or things of that nature. And so
Speaker 7: almost immediately these groups were organizing to try and see
Speaker 7: where these cars armored vehicles were going, and they hit
Speaker 7: two different locations. One of the locations the one in
Speaker 7: came Rio, just outside of is kind of in the
Speaker 7: middle of nowhere. It's flanked on all sides with farm fields.
Speaker 7: You know, there's dirt highways and you know, two lane
Speaker 7: highways that kind of bisect everything. And what they did
Speaker 7: when they started this raid is they blocked off the
Speaker 7: roads leading into and out of this particular greenhouse, right
Speaker 7: and so they had checkpoints, like roadblocks, barricades at like
Speaker 7: four or five different locations at these intersections around the greenhouse,
Speaker 7: and at every single barricade there were people, so you know,
Speaker 7: there were these sort of like face offs between heavily
Speaker 7: militarized Border Patrol agents kitted out in the nines. You know,
Speaker 7: everything that you could possibly think of. They had, you know,
Speaker 7: these massive vehicles. National Guard helped them, you know, block
Speaker 7: off these roads. The local police them block off these roads,
Speaker 7: which you know, if you know about the sheriff in
Speaker 7: Venta County, he's one of the only guys who doesn't
Speaker 7: care about sanctuary state ordinances. So it was a standoff essentially,
Speaker 7: And when Shawn and I arrived, it was right around dusk,
Speaker 7: so you know, it had been many hours since these
Speaker 7: raids began. And essentially what Border Patrol found is that
Speaker 7: they couldn't leave because these roads were being blocked off.
Speaker 7: They got some fans through, but the vast majority of
Speaker 7: those vehicles were still there and they weren't prepared to
Speaker 7: be there that long. They had to air drop supplies, water,
Speaker 7: food in order to you know, shore up these folks,
Speaker 7: and you know, as word got out of the sort
Speaker 7: of community response to this event, more people showed up.
Speaker 7: So by the time Shawn and I got there, we
Speaker 7: were driving up lis Posas and suddenly there's cars just
Speaker 7: parked on either side of the road, and we ended
Speaker 7: up parking, I think like three quarters of a mile
Speaker 7: away from the nearest blockade.
Speaker 1: All have to hike in because.
Speaker 7: There was no space for cars, you know, I mean,
Speaker 7: we get up there and it's just about dusk and
Speaker 7: you can hear the chanting in the distance, and you know,
Speaker 7: it was a really horrible and also moving experience to
Speaker 7: walk up on, you know, community response to this, and
Speaker 7: you know, the standoff continued for another couple of hours,
Speaker 7: but it was you know, half of the folks there
Speaker 7: are concerned community members, folks of mixed status families who
Speaker 7: understand the absolute terror of what happens when the government
Speaker 7: is chasing after your dad, you know, and also individuals
Speaker 7: who are looking for parents, uncles, you know, they had
Speaker 7: no idea where their family members were. I think the
Speaker 7: total number of people who were detained and are probably
Speaker 7: going to be deported ended up somewhere around three hundred
Speaker 7: and sixty one across two farms. Yeah, it's significant, really insane,
Speaker 7: you know, and the standoff lasting for a couple extra
Speaker 7: hours into the night. People turned on their car headlights
Speaker 7: so that we had light out there. There was, you know,
Speaker 7: a pretty solid group of individuals who were in communication
Speaker 7: with other blockades, asking for folks to shift to other locations,
Speaker 7: sharing supplies and water, you know, and then water patrols
Speaker 7: started getting anty. You could see them playing with their guns,
Speaker 7: you know, their riot munition's weapons. They were shifting, they
Speaker 7: were forming and reforming, and you know, organizers kind of
Speaker 7: understood that something was about to happen, so they backed off,
Speaker 7: strategically retreated because there were marches planned for the next day.
Speaker 7: They were leaving. I could see off in the distance.
Speaker 7: It witnesses directly until we drove up on it, but
Speaker 7: you could see off in the distance that all of
Speaker 7: these cars, this line of cars was going around the
Speaker 7: back end of the factory on a side road and
Speaker 7: then ending up little bit farther down last Posos and
Speaker 7: there was flashing lights everywhere. Turns out that they were
Speaker 7: trying to make their getaway and they hit what I
Speaker 7: think was probably a traffic jam because.
Speaker 1: Folks were ready to go.
Speaker 7: They had packed up their cars and they were leaving
Speaker 7: when they tear gassed everybody so they could make their getaway.
Speaker 1: So, like Sean and I by the time we drove
Speaker 1: up on.
Speaker 7: It, because we saw in the distance it was like
Speaker 7: that cloud is not normal, this is a dust. Like
Speaker 7: that's tear gas. Let's get in the car and go
Speaker 7: see what's going on. We drove up just as the
Speaker 7: last canisters were being spent on the road and it
Speaker 7: was just a fog, you know, and cars people were panicking.
Speaker 7: You know, you get tear gas in your freaking car, man,
Speaker 7: You know. It was pretty pretty intense. Not a great experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I saw some videos from downtown LA on the
Speaker 3: first day of protests, and as Sean was there covering it,
Speaker 3: they had agents in gas masks in their vehicles and
Speaker 3: they would tear gasing in front. And then that seems
Speaker 3: to have been like their protocol, right, they will just
Speaker 3: tear as the fuck out of the block and then
Speaker 3: we'll wear our gas masks inside our vehicles and leave.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to explain people I've seen this a
Speaker 3: lot will be wondering why Border patrol with in Ventura, so, like,
Speaker 3: just to clarify, or Oxnard or wherever they were at
Speaker 3: the United States border isn't just a land border, like
Speaker 3: the United States has four edges, just like well, there's
Speaker 3: lots of edges, but you know, just like anything that's
Speaker 3: a big square, right, the ocean is a border too,
Speaker 3: and Border patrol has this somewhat arbitrary hundred mile enforcement
Speaker 3: zone in which they operate. So when you see border
Speaker 3: patrol operating a long way from a land border, that's
Speaker 3: because they are still within one hundred miles of a border,
Speaker 3: you know, to include the Great Lakes up north. Most
Speaker 3: of the United States population lives inside a border patrol
Speaker 3: enforcement zone, right.
Speaker 7: So you know you won't see as many unless there
Speaker 7: are warrants to be served. For example, in Omaha, Nebraska,
Speaker 7: where there was a raid on a factory there that
Speaker 7: was a warrant investigation. Generally speaking, Now, yeah, that's why
Speaker 7: you see it in Boston, in Chicago, in Florida and
Speaker 7: in most of California it lives, you know, withinside that border.
Speaker 7: And so, you know, the thing that I can say
Speaker 7: is that that next day when we went up and
Speaker 7: spoke to organizers, kind of got the skinny on how
Speaker 7: they were able to mobilize so quickly. As we were
Speaker 7: leaving that march, you know, a federal judge issued a
Speaker 7: temporary restraining order in Los Angeles County. Seven cities I
Speaker 7: think that were a party to the suit.
Speaker 6: It's not just Los Angeles County. It's the entire district
Speaker 6: of the CBD, thank you. Yes, yeah, it was quite
Speaker 6: a few cities filed suit as well as the ACLU
Speaker 6: farm workers several individual plaintiffs, which blocks them essentially from
Speaker 6: having a large scale rate with no warrant. So a
Speaker 6: judge basically told them, hey, you have to have a
Speaker 6: reason to be stopping entertaining people.
Speaker 5: The judge.
Speaker 6: I don't want to read too much into a judge's
Speaker 6: personal thoughts, but it became pretty clear even when they
Speaker 6: were having the hearing that the judge had pretty much
Speaker 6: had her own concerns that I don't think we're even
Speaker 6: in the filings. And it also bat is essentially the
Speaker 6: basement in a federal building, which is where a significant
Speaker 6: amount of the people are being held, and it forced
Speaker 6: them to allow lawyers access as well as a lot
Speaker 6: of them were essentially in these rooms that were like
Speaker 6: fifty to sixty people and there was one phone in
Speaker 6: the middle of it, so they were not getting private counsel.
Speaker 6: And with the restraining order, which I believe ends time
Speaker 6: next week, now they actually have to provide access to lawyers,
Speaker 6: you know, basic constitutional stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Man, let me tell you it was really, really bizarre
Speaker 7: to sit in a federal hearing. Now. Look, I've read
Speaker 7: transcripts from other reporters who listen in on these federal
Speaker 7: immigration issue hearings that you've had over the last six months.
Speaker 7: It is a whole other experience to be sitting in
Speaker 7: a courtroom with your little notepad, listening to the government's
Speaker 7: lawyers try and make the case that no, we're not
Speaker 7: actually racially profiling people here, we are just stopping them
Speaker 7: based on their appearance, facial expressions, what they're wearing, potentially
Speaker 7: the language that they choose to speak. And all of
Speaker 7: us sitting in the gallery are like, okay, you actually
Speaker 7: made that argument in an open court.
Speaker 1: Cool you know.
Speaker 7: What I mean, like absolutely insane to hear that come
Speaker 7: out of a DOJ lawyer's mouth, where they're like, we
Speaker 7: take umbrage with the fact that you're saying that we're
Speaker 7: racial profiling. By the way, here's all the things that
Speaker 7: we are doing, which is essentially profiling people.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: So the tro is essentially just enforcing the Fourth Amendment,
Speaker 7: which is saying, you know, you cannot conduct these roving
Speaker 7: patrols and stop people without probable cause or weren't you
Speaker 7: just can't do it, you know. And what that's done
Speaker 7: is we have seen much less of the immigration enforcement
Speaker 7: activity that was a feature of June and early July,
Speaker 7: and it's kind of moving to the periphericly. I know
Speaker 7: that there are things happening in San Diego, James, and
Speaker 7: we've seen some potential reports out of Sacramento. We've seen
Speaker 7: reports up north in San Francisco, you know, in terms
Speaker 7: of the enforcement zone in California. We're also seeing ramping
Speaker 7: up immigration activities in places like Chicago and other.
Speaker 1: Cities Utah, for example.
Speaker 7: And now in the last week and a half we've
Speaker 7: seen half of the federalized National Guard be taken off
Speaker 7: deployment and sent home and as of today, the twenty
Speaker 7: first of July, they're sending home the Marines, you know,
Speaker 7: which good right, But it's very clear that whatever they
Speaker 7: were trying to accomplish in Los Angeles to make a
Speaker 7: point to be a battering ram to set Los Angeles,
Speaker 7: which is always kind of been known as the sanctuary
Speaker 7: city and the surrounding area as like the example of
Speaker 7: what immigration enforcement activity in this new era of Trump
Speaker 7: two point zero what have you will look like? And
Speaker 7: ultimately I don't think they were successful. I mean, you
Speaker 7: look at the raid in MacArthur Park for example, or
Speaker 7: it was meant to be this you know, big operation
Speaker 7: essensibly to try and crack down on fake ID processing.
Speaker 7: Sean can talk to more of the context around MacArthur
Speaker 7: Park than I can. But they showed up and organizers
Speaker 7: had already cleared the park. You know, we were there
Speaker 7: for two and a half hours before they even showed up,
Speaker 7: and we watched as organizers put up signs. They were
Speaker 7: sitting at the home depot up the street making sure
Speaker 7: the folks knew that there might be a raid today.
Speaker 7: Like organizers had called through the entire park and said
Speaker 7: this might happen today. If you're a mixed status or
Speaker 7: you know, your status is not one with papers, you
Speaker 7: might want to go home. You know, they cleared the
Speaker 7: soccer fe which had forty five people playing soccer on it,
Speaker 7: you know, and so by the time these armored vehicles
Speaker 7: are running down the street and doing all of their theater,
Speaker 7: there's no one there at all. You know, there's journalists,
Speaker 7: there's us. You know, there's a couple of unhoused folks
Speaker 7: who said, you know, screw that, I don't want to leave,
Speaker 7: but the vast majority of people had already gone, and
Speaker 7: so all that they got out of it was a
Speaker 7: really shitty hype video and a mayor and a governor
Speaker 7: who were like really really pissed off, and you know,
Speaker 7: a city that's just not going to just roll over
Speaker 7: and let this kind of crap happen, you know. And
Speaker 7: I think that's really emblematic of like what's been going
Speaker 7: on in Los Angeles for the last six weeks is
Speaker 7: they did not get the response that they were expecting,
Speaker 7: and they weren't prepared for that response and for the
Speaker 7: you know, for that to be a continuous response to unconstitutional, oppressive,
Speaker 7: violent actions by ICE and by the agencies that are
Speaker 7: enabling ICE.
Speaker 3: So yeah, you know, I think when we say city,
Speaker 3: we should like be clear that we're referring to like
Speaker 3: the city kua like community, not city like as government entity. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: there really hasn't been any certainly here in San Diego.
Speaker 3: At San Diego Police Department technically don't assist ICE, but
Speaker 3: they do show up to like form a cordon around them, right,
Speaker 3: like to prevent any confrontation between them and protesters. And
Speaker 3: we saw like every police agency, like literally every police
Speaker 3: agency in La County and also Ventura County sheriffs were
Speaker 3: there for the biggest protest days. The city hasn't used
Speaker 3: its resources in that sense to stop this, right, They've
Speaker 3: made rhetorical statements, but they haven't done anything with their police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this speaks to a kind of
Speaker 2: larger thing, which is like these people thought they could
Speaker 2: just come into cities around the country and just shocking
Speaker 2: all everyone in ROLLI went over because like they think
Speaker 2: they're the Nazis. But the thing about the Nazis is
Speaker 2: that like people supported them, right, Like all the shit
Speaker 2: the Nazis were able to do happened because people wanted it.
Speaker 2: To happen, and in a country where people don't want
Speaker 2: that shit to happen, where everyone looks at this and goes,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is going on? We're like, it's like
Speaker 2: seventy nine percent support for like the effects of immigration
Speaker 2: on the US right now, where everyone's looking at this
Speaker 2: and just being like.
Speaker 5: No, they can't do it.
Speaker 2: There aren't enough of them. I don't know, Like it's
Speaker 2: just so stunning to me watching them like have to
Speaker 2: do the tactical adaptations that like normally like protest groups
Speaker 2: have to do because the cops have tuned more resources
Speaker 2: than them. But they're having to do it because they's
Speaker 2: just like every single person walking down the street is
Speaker 2: like fuck you eat shit, and so they're just like
Speaker 2: outnumbered everywhere they go. It's and that's not to say
Speaker 2: it's not like fucking horrible, because yeah, resisting fascism fucking
Speaker 2: sucks a lot of the time and a lot of
Speaker 2: people get hurt, and it's hideous, and also it's what
Speaker 2: has to be done. The last thing that I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask is, so, with the injunction kind of like
Speaker 2: coming to an end soon, what do you think is
Speaker 2: the future of sort of what ice is going to
Speaker 2: be doing, and what the response is going to be,
Speaker 2: and what border patrol are doing in this sort of
Speaker 2: month to come.
Speaker 5: It's hard to say.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I'm curious about is we
Speaker 6: won't really know what the federal government's plan is until
Speaker 6: I think it's the We'll just say late July when
Speaker 6: the next hearing is. So the temporar restraining order ends
Speaker 6: in late July. Generally speaking, with temporary restraining orders on
Speaker 6: law enforcement, what you see is they either continue while
Speaker 6: the hearings commence, or you see a pretty large mountain
Speaker 6: of evidence that says, hey, we did this, this, this, this,
Speaker 6: and this. That's changed it. So we're now sort of
Speaker 6: in cooperation with the order. That is likely one of
Speaker 6: the reasons why we've seen fewer raids here.
Speaker 5: In Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: Ultimately, a temporary restraining order is I don't want to
Speaker 6: call it a wilder extreme action at all, but those
Speaker 6: are generally signed when a judge agrees that it is
Speaker 6: extremely likely that, given the current situation, the plaintiffs have
Speaker 6: a case.
Speaker 5: So unless the federal.
Speaker 6: Government comes by with like this gigantic mountain of new
Speaker 6: training and all these new plans and things like that,
Speaker 6: My guess is we'll probably see at least some of
Speaker 6: the things in that temporary restraining order continue. I also
Speaker 6: think it's possible if the federal government is just going
Speaker 6: to say, you know what, this temporary restraining order only
Speaker 6: applies to this specific area, We'll just go somewhere else.
Speaker 3: It's the Central District of California, right, so like San Luis, Obispo,
Speaker 3: Santa Barbara, Venture La, Riverside County as well.
Speaker 5: I think yep, Riverside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't include San Diego, doesn't include the Northern District,
Speaker 3: which is most of the rest coast of California, or
Speaker 3: the Eastern District, which is to the Valley and further
Speaker 3: northeastern California. So yeah, it's perfectly possible they could go
Speaker 3: somewhere else and still do that shit within California.
Speaker 2: Or like you say, like.
Speaker 3: There are so many targets, right because immigrants are part
Speaker 3: of the fabric of our society. They are everywhere, and
Speaker 3: that's you know, they can just go for wherever they
Speaker 3: think a soft target is.
Speaker 7: And there's also work noting that you know, these organizers
Speaker 7: are going to continue to organize, right, So these groups
Speaker 7: Central Coso and Union of barrio, and you know the
Speaker 7: various other groups. Again, I've been around for decades. VC
Speaker 7: Defense that has been around since twenty sixteen. Right, this
Speaker 7: is only a portion of the organizing that they do.
Speaker 7: You know, they didn't start with or they will not
Speaker 7: end with, just these patrols. Right. So they've built out
Speaker 7: infrastructure and mutual aid group networks that are buying groceries
Speaker 7: for folks and mixed status families that are covering the
Speaker 7: sort of bills that are not being paid because people
Speaker 7: are too afraid to go to work. They're doing wildcare,
Speaker 7: they're getting kids to school, they're trying to provide legal defense.
Speaker 7: You know, like these are you know, coalitions of individuals
Speaker 7: who live in these areas who are doing long term
Speaker 7: organizing to shore up the community whether or not there
Speaker 7: is an onslaught of immigration enforcement activity in a certain
Speaker 7: geographical area.
Speaker 1: So in terms of organizing, it's just going to keep happening.
Speaker 7: And that's good, right, And you know, I think that
Speaker 7: what's hardening to see after the last you know, seven
Speaker 7: weeks of really intense, really scary, really horrifying kidnappings and
Speaker 7: detainments on the streets in southern California, is you know,
Speaker 7: an equal and often more you know, stronger response to
Speaker 7: it from the community that you know reminds you that
Speaker 7: this is not the end and folks are prepared for
Speaker 7: picking up the slack when things fall through.
Speaker 1: You know, people are not falling through the cracks.
Speaker 7: People are not having their lives shattered without someone watching
Speaker 7: and trying to help. So that's an important piece there,
Speaker 7: you know. So I would say that in terms of
Speaker 7: the response and what happens next, like it's a multi
Speaker 7: front thing. You have these legal cases finding their way
Speaker 7: through the courts, you have from all levels, right, and
Speaker 7: you have individuals who are trying to keep track of
Speaker 7: folks who have been detained and deported and sending money
Speaker 7: back to Mexico or whatever, you know, other country that
Speaker 7: these folks are being sent back to making sure that
Speaker 7: things are as much as they can. You know, there
Speaker 7: aren't any rips in the safety net. And I think
Speaker 7: that's the main lesson of the last seven weeks is
Speaker 7: like that sort of response is incredible and you can.
Speaker 1: Replicate it anywhere that you are.
Speaker 7: You know a lot of folks like to, you know,
Speaker 7: kind of roll their eyes at the idea of like
Speaker 7: organizing starts with talking to your neighbor. No, actually it does, right,
Speaker 7: And you know there's these models, especially in southern and
Speaker 7: central California, where this organizing works.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: It's not particularly ideological in many ways, sometimes it is,
Speaker 7: but the basic function of it is to make sure
Speaker 7: that your neighbor doesn't fall into a hole, right, and
Speaker 7: they'll do the same for you, so you don't fall
Speaker 7: into a hole should something happen to you. So you know,
Speaker 7: start there and take a look at these models that
Speaker 7: these absolute fucking heroes pardon my language, are doing in
Speaker 7: this area, and know that you can also do that.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, these people in every facet of this are
Speaker 2: just you somewhere else or help.
Speaker 5: Maybe they are literally you. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I keep up the good work, Suan.
Speaker 3: Do you want to explain to us very briefly the
Speaker 3: FBI arrests and the case against at least one of
Speaker 3: the Centro CSO members.
Speaker 6: Well, right now, there's only one criminal complaint, and that's
Speaker 6: for Alejandro Oriana, who is accused of conspiracy to commit
Speaker 6: to the disorder as well as hating and embedding a
Speaker 6: conspiracy to commit civil disorder. The criminal complaint, all it
Speaker 6: really says is that he gave a dispense with face
Speaker 6: shields to protesters who were dressed like they might do
Speaker 6: something bad. At no point during a criminal complaint does
Speaker 6: it even say, hey, he handed it to a guy
Speaker 6: and then that guy made.
Speaker 5: It a crime. Doesn't even go that far. It just
Speaker 5: goes those.
Speaker 6: Guys look kind of I don't know, they look like
Speaker 6: they're about to do something, and says that, you know,
Speaker 6: these people were dressed in such a way where it
Speaker 6: might interfere with law enforcement activities, like you know, it
Speaker 6: would deaden the impact of left leeple weapons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the impact of leslie for weapons on
Speaker 3: your face is potentially fatal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know beyond that, you know, there was
Speaker 6: a search warrant for another member of Central CSO who
Speaker 6: was roughly handled by FBI agents on a walk through
Speaker 6: the park and was given a search warrant and her
Speaker 6: phone was taken. I asked the US Attorney's office if
Speaker 6: they were related, and first was sold I don't know
Speaker 6: what you're talking about, which I thought was a little interesting.
Speaker 6: Never gotten that response from any official, and then a
Speaker 6: few hours later got an official response that said, no,
Speaker 6: it is another case. So what that means, time will
Speaker 6: tell but I think it's likely that there will be
Speaker 6: more to come on top of that. I think it's
Speaker 6: interesting to note that the first arraignment for Oreana was
Speaker 6: an absolutely packed court.
Speaker 5: And support of them.
Speaker 2: Where can people find youtubo's work and where can people
Speaker 2: support you as you do a whole bunch of incredibly
Speaker 2: critical journalism on the continuing resistance to the fascist deportation campaign.
Speaker 7: A lot of my reporting goes to Blue Sky, so
Speaker 7: you can find me at melbu or Blueskuy dot social
Speaker 7: I have a newsletter, the Words about Work dot blog,
Speaker 7: and you can also find me on my Instagram. My
Speaker 7: link trees linked in all sorts of places, so you
Speaker 7: can find all of those links in inconvenient.
Speaker 2: Place, including the description of this episode.
Speaker 1: Hey yeah, those are the places where you can find me.
Speaker 6: You can find me on a cat with news on
Speaker 6: all social media platforms, although most of my sort of
Speaker 6: breaking stories come on Blue Sky first, and I'm a
Speaker 6: freelance journalist, so usually you can just google my name
Speaker 6: and you'll see some stories there. On my Blue Sky
Speaker 6: and Instagram, there's a link tree if you want to support.
Speaker 2: Hell Yeah, and to everyone listening to the show, always
Speaker 2: remember you are many, they are few.
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