Near Glenoaks Boulevard in Glendale last week, a woman’s piercing screams were heart-wrenching. “Help me! Help me!” she cried out repeatedly in Spanish, as five U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents piled on top of her young adult son, holding him face down on the sidewalk.
As the frantic unidentified mother ran up to them, a masked ICE officer stopped her and pushed her away. “My God, my God,” she desperately wailed. “My son, my son!” Her son, worried about her safety, cried out to her, “Mommy, go back inside; they’ll get you too.” As the ICE caravan started to leave, she ran into the street and threw her sandals after them and then they were gone, along with her son, leaving the woman alone on the street, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Our streets are being terrorized by ICE every single day,” said Michelle Arkin of Granada Hills, a member of the grassroots organization No Concentration Camps California. “Every day families are being torn apart and children are being traumatized. This has never been about immigration; this is about scaring the American people into submission [and] silencing dissent.
“The people must use their voices and call for justice – now,” stressed Arkin, who helped organize a protest held in downtown Los Angeles last Saturday to demand justice for every person who has been killed during ICE operations, including Lorenzo Salgado Araujo from Texas and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero from Maine, who were both fatally shot in their cars by ICE officers earlier this month; and also for the many who have have died while in custody.
Dubbed “Justice for All,” the event was also to draw attention to the “people who are being kidnapped at courthouses or Home Depots or off the streets,” said organizer Mary Linda Moss of the Northeast Los Angeles Alliance for Democracy.
The late afternoon demonstration on July 25 was part of the national “Disappeared in America” Day of Action. Many protesters wore black for the symbolic funeral procession from outside LA City Hall to La Placita Olvera, where they staged a vigil. They carried 76 black cardboard coffins to represent the 76 lives lost due to immigration enforcement under the current administration, said Arkin.
Demonstrators also held signs with messages such as “ICE Kills,” “Silence is Consent” and “ICE Off Our Streets!” Other signs bore the individual name and photo of a person who has died.
“It’s very tragic,” said Moss. She explained that the 76 deaths to date have happened under different circumstances – some became ill and died in detention centers or while being transferred between facilities; a nearly-blind man was found dead in freezing weather after being released from ICE custody; and a woman was struck and killed by a car while fleeing ICE.
“A man was sent back to [his native country] in a vegetative state so they wouldn’t have to take responsibility,” she continued. In another case, a mother was deported to Honduras without her 3-year-old son, despite begging authorities to allow them to be deported together. Instead, the boy was given to a violent relative in the U.S. – he was later charged with the child’s murder.
“An event like this is important because we do feel so helpless sometimes when it comes to ICE detentions and deportations and violence and everything they’re doing,” said Kayla Owens, a member of the steering committee for Northridge Indivisible, about the Justice for All protest. “We can’t become numb to it.”
Owens said she makes an effort to remain vigilant and engaged “for our own humanity.”
By doing so, “hopefully we can remind other people that these things are still happening today, even if they’re not on the news as much as they were last year,” continued Owens. “Actually, there are more deportations going on every day right now than there were a year ago.”
Diana Browne of East Valley Indivisible said representatives of over 40 LA organizations collaborated to plan the recent protest in under 10 days, with volunteers working around the clock. She said part of the goal was to call for changes to federal immigration policies.
In the short term, Browne said they want to see stricter guidelines placed on ICE actions, but overall she believes the agency has become so dysfunctional that “there needs to be a whole different turn” in how the U.S. handles immigration issues, paired with the long overdue immigration reform “everybody knows we need,” but keeps getting stalled for political reasons.
Arkin agreed that the recent protest wasn’t just about coming together for one afternoon of remembrance; it was also about looking forward and taking action, individually and collectively. That’s why part of the day’s mission was to provide participants with flyers featuring a QR code linking them to a page outlining how they can be proactive based on their abilities and interests.
Some suggested actions include supporting a rapid response network, which watches for ICE activity in specific communities; visiting immigration detention centers; protecting voting rights efforts; or joining a local grassroots group “so that you know you are not alone,” said Arkin.
“We gathered to mourn lives that should never have been lost. Our grief is real, but it is not the end of the story,” she said. “We transformed mourning into a powerful reminder that no one stands alone – unity is our greatest strength.
“When communities come together across backgrounds, faiths and experiences,” added Arkin, “we send a clear message: every human life has dignity, every family deserves justice and we will continue to stand together to demand accountability.”
For more information, go to: https://linktr.ee/lajustice4all.