The Los Angeles Protests Are an Act of Self-Defense

Angelenos mobilized this weekend, after ICE descended on their city and over several days began making very public arrests. Last week, people arriving at their mandatory ICE check-ins at a federal building were instead quickly locked up in a makeshift detention center, where as many as 200 people were being held in basement rooms. (“No food. No water. Locked in holding rooms for over 12 to 24 hours,” said Democratic Representative Jimmy Gomez, who represents parts of Los Angeles.) Dozens of people were arrested at a Home Depot on Friday by masked agents in tactical gear. Multiple federal agencies assisted ICE. One witness described unidentified agents descending on food vendors nearby: “They were just grabbing people. They don’t ask questions. They didn’t know if any of us were in any kind of immigration process.” Another witness said that he was in his car when ICE agents stopped traffic, “in all their military gear.” People in the traffic jam could see ICE putting people into vans. “We weren’t there to protest,” the man told KCAL-TV, but when people got out of their cars and began to record with their phones, they were tear-gassed. As ICE agents raided a business in the Fashion District, footage of some community members challenging them indicates, LAPD was apparently stationed outside. And as the news of the raids spread, and more people came out to witness and protest, LAPD was there to push back, to control, to demobilize.

For Bass, it seemed, the problem was not that the LAPD was violently policing those protesting ICE raids; the problem was Trump’s calling in the National Guard to do the same thing. By this logic, the ICE raids, conducted with the support of myriad federal agencies, are a terrifying abuse of power that police should not collaborate in—but it’s fine for police to collaborate by keeping protesters and witnesses away. The upside-down thinking goes even further: It’s wrong for the National Guard to put down protests against the will of the governor and city officials, but it’s fine for state and local law enforcement to do it, so long as state and local officials want them to. The line of reasoning is maddening, seemingly designed to scramble and demobilize support for the people of Los Angeles. Accept the terms of the debate, and you end up in a bizarre argument about how much violence, from which armed agents of the law, is acceptable.

Those with the clearest view are the ones bearing the brunt of such attacks. Whether it’s the sheriffs, police, or Border Patrol, “it was brutal violence,” said Ron Gochez, a community organizer, who was part of the protests. “What they didn’t think was going to happen was that the people would resist.” Over eight hours on Saturday, he said, after a battle with Border Patrol—“and it was a battle, because there were people throwing back tear gas, people throwing anything that they could to defend themselves and to defend the workers that were being surrounded”—the Border Patrol retreated. “And the hundreds of workers that were in the factories around them were able to escape,” Gochez recounted. “They were able to go to their cars and go home. That was only thanks to the resistance that allowed them to go home that night.” If any community was going to fight back without apology, it was this one.