“It literally felt like kidnapping. I saw three of those ‘kidnappings’ happen in the span of 20 minutes.”
That is how Angel Mortel, the lead community organizer for the multi-faith community organization LA Voice and a parishioner at Dolores Mission Church, a Jesuit parish, described detainments she witnessed outside of a Los Angeles courtroom.
Ms. Mortel, along with Brendan Busse, S.J., the pastor of Dolores Mission, and other clergy from Los Angeles County, had been standing outside of an L.A. immigration courtroom two weeks ago, bearing witness to the arrests happening inside the courthouse.
She described immigrants who had been granted future court dates leaving the courtroom grateful and smiling, only to be devastated moments later when they were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in plainclothes as they tried to exit the court. Ms. Mortel believes these courthouse confrontations contributed to the brewing public anger that led to the protests in Los Angeles this week.
The number of ICE raids conducted across the country has escalated in recent weeks. White House officials, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, border czar Thomas Homan and President Donald J. Trump himself, have been demanding a sharp increase in deportations of undocumented immigrants. Mr. Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have in fact ordered that federal ICE agents arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day, triple the daily arrest quota set earlier this year.
In response, ICE raids and detainments have been reported in cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Omaha, Neb., Nashville, Atlanta and Boston. Some raids have been chaotic and there have been reports of the arrest and detention of not only undocumented individuals but also immigrants with legal residency, even of naturalized and native-born community members.
“This is a criminalization of migrants, be they undocumented or documented,” David Brotherton, a professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996, he said, offers ICE agents “massive leeway in terms of what they can and can’t do.”
“ICE existed [before the act] but not in anything like it is now,” he said. “Now it’s the largest police force in America. And [the act] gave them incredible levels of jurisdiction to basically arrest people and become a kind of judge and jury.”
Abigail Andrews, the director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego and a professor of urban studies and planning, spoke about what may come next. “From what we’re seeing and from everything Trump has said and his administration has said, this is a huge priority of theirs, and they are willing to violate all possible paths, practices and norms in order to ramp up their deportation numbers,” she said.
“I think the numbers themselves are really going to rely on what kind of budget gets passed for immigration enforcement,” Ms. Andrews said. In order to expand its ranks and “really reach as many people as they say they want to,” she said that ICE will need a bigger budget.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” aims to do exactly that. The proposed legislation includes a nearly 400 percent increase in funding for immigration enforcement and detention, allocating $25 billion and $45 billion to each, respectively.
In an op-ed for the Miami Herald on June 10, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami criticized the proposed spike in enforcement spending. “This legislation will fund a mass deportation campaign that could tear apart families, disrupt industrie [sic], and undermine communities,” he wrote. The bill, which the House passed on May 22, is now under consideration in the Senate.
Across the country, church leaders have spoken out against the current administration’s intensified push for deportations. Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles condemned the abrupt increase in enforcement. In a statement released on June 6, he said the raids are provoking “fear and anxiety among ordinary, hard-working immigrants and their families.”
Bishop Gomez called for comprehensive immigration policy reform and prayed that everyone involved in the raids would “exercise restraint and calm.” In the meantime, protests in Los Angeles and other cities against the widening enforcement efforts have continued.
The public outcry against the raids has been heavily documented on social media and local news coverage. Two protests in Los Angeles on June 8 converged in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center where immigrants arrested last week by ICE at a Home Depot parking lot and other work sites were being held.
A week before, on the other side of the country, high school students in Milford, Mass., protested the detention of an 18-year-old classmate, Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, who was detained by ICE agents while he was on his way to volleyball practice. By June 11, protests emerged in Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
Responding to the nationwide spectacle, Carlos Rodriguez, the director of organizing at LA Voice and a former volunteer with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, asked: “How do we create a county that’s more reflective of God’s abundant love?”
While preparing for an evening vigil that would be led by interfaith leaders, including the founder of Homeboy Industries, Greg Boyle, S.J., on June 10, Mr. Rodriguez told America that he hopes the protests will bring consolation not only to Los Angeles but also to the entire country.
He believes the protests will show that “L.A. is a place with a richness of faith and values, and that it’s a welcoming place. We want all those across the country to share that with us, [and] to lift their voices for that.”
