Over the course of eight days, three people were killed in immigration raids by federal authorities, two of them fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. In a national call to action, protests were held nationwide on July 18 condemning the violence by ICE, including one at the North Hollywood Metro Station.
Around 15 demonstrators assembled just outside the entryway to the station, including members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Valley Defensa, an immigrant rights organization formed last year after the raids first began.
The small group chanted and held signs with messages calling for equal rights for all immigrants and demanding that ICE get out of their communities. This was in response to the late June surge when ICE was arresting as many as 2,000 people a day, according to estimates by news media.
In mid July, three people were killed following encounters with ICE agents. The first was 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, who was shot on July 7; the second was Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 25, in Maine, who was also fatally shot on July 13. The third was a Mexican tourist, now identified as Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, who was killed by a semi-truck the following day in Florida, when he ran into traffic attempting to flee from ICE and Homeland Security agents.
In the Valley and throughout LA, ICE agents have been spotted in the early morning. One such instance occurred on July 8, when ICE conducted a raid in the City of San Fernando near the intersection of 1st Street and Harding Avenue, where a resident said her husband had been taken, and her brother was chased and ran back into his house.
Unión del Barrio, a Latino advocacy organization, has recently posted photos and videos of ICE immigration raids in and around the San Fernando Valley on their social media, and several of these raids have taken place before 8 a.m.
On July 21, ICE was seen in Panorama City near Rayen Street and Tobias Avenue around 6:30 a.m. The following day in Burbank, at around 11 a.m., individuals wearing military-style vests believed to be immigration agents were recorded in the parking lot of a Target.
Alyssa Dancel, a member of the PSL, lives in East Los Angeles but grew up just a few minutes away from the North Hollywood Station. She joined the Saturday protest, not just for those three men who were killed, but for everyone who has died at the hands of immigration authorities, including people whose names we don’t know.
“All of this that’s been happening is completely preventable. It’s disgraceful that our tax dollars can fund these things … to terrorize our neighbors,” Dancel said, referencing the $70 billion budget bill for immigration enforcement that was narrowly passed by the House of Representatives.
“No one wants this,” Dancel continued. “Our elected officials are supposed to represent us, but … it doesn’t matter if it’s immigration, the LAPD [LA Police Department] budget, the war on Iran, … we have no say, and it’s just as clear that our government has no respect or regard for the sanctity of life.”
Dancel said that with the money allocated for Homeland Security and the billions used to bomb schools and hospitals in Iran, Congress could fully fund public health care in the United States. She added that several family members have died this year because they refused to seek medical treatment out of fear of getting into debilitating debt.
But despite so many things being so dire, what has given her hope is that many other people are feeling the same frustration and anger she does and are refusing to stay quiet about it. She pointed to the mass protests in Minneapolis after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, where thousands assembled in freezing weather to condemn ICE.
“My hope is people are aware and are getting sick of all of these things that are happening,” Dancel said. “We don’t know what the next couple of days are going to look like, … but it’s clear the people don’t want any of this. We want this money to be going to things that people need.
“When repression happens, the people always stand up and fight back. … The people will again rise up and defeat ICE for good, but it takes all of us.”