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It began as another Saturday morning at the Home Depot in Paramount, a working class in the Latino suburbs south of downtown Los Angeles.
Typically, shops surrounded by Los Angeles riverbeds are filled with weekend warriors working to improve their homes, and workers gathering supplies and immigrants in search of work.
However, that morning, Border Patrol Agents were spotted across the street from Home Depot and quickly spread to social media around 9am. Passersby squealed the corner. Soon the protesters arrived. Home Depot was eventually closed.
The clashes between authorities and protesters lasted for hours in both Paramount and nearby Compton, but it was far from wide. The chaos directly covered the area around the Alondra Boulevard store, but was enough to provide dramatic TV video.
And it was a major trigger for the Trump administration to send 2,000 National Guard troops to L.A. to deal with the uproar and support immigration actions.
What happened at Paramount?
Double reporters spent more time on Saturday, day and night. This is what they saw.
During the protest, protesters protect themselves from law enforcement.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Trouble tips
Before the crowds arrived, José Luis Solache Jr., a lawmaker representing the most important areas, including Home Depot, was driving on the highway on his way to a community event in nearby Lakewood when he spotted a caravan of US customs and border protection vehicles leaving Alondra Boulevard. The streets pass through working class centres and are primarily immigrant Latino communities in Paramount.
He turns around and thinks they could be carrying out immigrant raids in his district, he tracks them across the street from Home Depot to the office park and Paramount Business Centre. Federal law enforcement agencies have facilities in Paramount.
The agents were still there, and later opened a black gate guarding with tear gas and a volley of flash bang renades.
It was unclear why they were there, he decided to record an Instagram post.
“I saw a border agent coming off the highway here from Alondra. I was like, no, that wouldn’t happen,” he said.
It was around 9am
“This is horrifying,” he said in one of the posts. “I’m literally shaking.”
“I don’t know what they’re doing inside. But why, why were they at Paramount?” he told his followers.
Protesters are flying Mexican flags as LA County Sheriff’s deputies form law enforcement.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
It’s quickly spread on social media.
Passersby squealed the corner. Soon the protesters arrived.
“This is the situation,” council member Sorache said he was turning cameras and showing dozens of uniform immigrants and customs enforcement agents outside the black gates as people were holding cameras in the scene and blapping Mariachi’s music.
“The community is coming out strongly to show that they are not welcome in our community,” said Solache, whose parents moved to the US from Guanajuato, Mexico. “It’s not my district. Vámonos Pa ‘Fuera (Let’s go, we can leave here).”
Anger has been rising in Los Angeles and its Latino immigrant communities after tightening enforcement measures.
The previous day, federal officials raided retail and distribution warehouses in downtown Fashion District, a business district fueled by immigrants, and arrested the union’s best officials. Towards the workplace attack, federal agents arrested immigrants, came to scheduled check-in or appeared in court up and down the state, ripping their families apart. One father was arrested in front of his son, eight years old. The parent group issued an alarm after a Torrance elementary school student and his father were prepared for deportation. For many, talking about the deportation of violent criminals was not true. “This whole rhetoric of coming after hardworking families is something we all worry about,” Sorache said. “When you start raids at a company, that’s where your anger comes from.”
He said he and many others came out to observe and send messages that immigration enforcement was not welcome in their community.
Drawn lines
The scene began to darken as agents formed a line, fired tear gas, and brought out the rifle that pushed the crowd back.
The protests arrived as they were spreading on social media for attacks at Home Depot and meat-packed locations. Although there were no raids at Home Depot, dozens of Border Patrol agents and other federal agencies were found inside the Gate Industrial Office Park, where the first crowds were gathered.
Most of the protesters were filming. There were social workers, neighbors and supporters.
But whenever federal agents saw protesters throw something at them or approaching police lines, they fired tear gas or flash bangrounds. There were about 100 people there. As the crowd grew, sheriff’s deputies were deployed to block the east and west boundary near the 710 highway. The protesters cried out to lawmakers and asked why they were helping.
The crowd began to form as hundreds of rounds were shot near the office park.
Tensions rose around noon as agents tried to clear the roads of Border Patrol and other unmarked vehicles leaving the business park. They fired tear gas and flash vans rena bullets at demonstrators standing on Alondra Boulevard. When the federal vehicle caravan left the gates, protesters followed them, throwing rocks and other objects.
Protesters continue to march towards law enforcement policies.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Chaos continues
Shortly after they left, one protester took out a garbage bag and burned it. Several others pushed carts with concrete blocks from Home Depot and lined up roads to block vehicles. One man shattered the block and spread the broken pieces on the road. Further west along Alondora Boulevard, crowds gathered behind a boundary set by sheriff’s deputies near the 710 Highway.
The US Marshall Bus was then pulled up from the highway to Alondora. The crowd surrounded the bus trying to push it back, kicking it until tear gas was shot.
The standoffs continued into the afternoon, with protesters documenting sheriff’s deputies equipped with shields and weapons at the intersection of Alondora Boulevard and Hansaker Avenue, next to the eastern boundary and Manuel Dominguez High School.
The crowd chanted “Ice Go Home” and “No Justice, No Peace.” Several people cried out to their deputies, questioning why they were putting their strength into it. At one point, the deputies began firing flash van rena bullets at the crowd, causing them to retreat. People were angry and cursed their agents. I saw at least one man screaming at his deputy, recording them. “What the heck are you doing?
One woman appears to be bleeding in the protest group, and another man has been treated for the injury. At least one person took off his shirt and walked around, his back being damaged by the foam projectile that had hit him. In the distance, near the business park, demonstrators had turned off the fireworks and saw a ton of black smoke.
Protesters exploded fireworks on a torched car at the Compton intersection.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The collision continues until the night
Despite the use of tear gas and the so-called less lethal projectiles, people returned to the intersection of Alondra Boulevard and Hansaker Avenue, screaming at their deputies, and occasionally laughing.
Around 4pm, the conflict near Home Depot was declared an illegal parliament, and authorities warned protesters in Spanish and English to leave the area.
By 7pm, about 100 protesters had gathered on the other side of the 710 highway near Atlantic Avenue and Alondra Boulevard. They sparked at least three fires in the area, including a car burning in the middle of the intersection.
At one point, the lawmaker retreated back to the bottom of the bridge running through the 710 Highway and the Los Angeles River. All night, lawmakers and demonstrators exchanged jabs, and demonstrators launched fireworks that exploded near the line of lawmakers and police vehicles. They used the car to drive towards the deputies, trying to scare them, urging them to fire rubber bullets, tear gas and flash bang hand rena bullets in the vehicle.
The sheriff’s helicopters spent the evening, warning people to be found and arrested after illegal assembly was declared, but demonstrators continued to chant flags and people in the crowd continued to throw things at lawmakers.
We were approaching 9:30pm when a line of deputies and vehicles began moving towards the crowd, causing them to escape to Atlantic Avenue and Alondra Boulevard.
There, they continued to fire tear gas and flash vans’ hand-rena bullets in the direction of the gas station where the protesters were standing. By midnight, demonstrators began to leave and finished the night of a dispute between local and federal law enforcement officers and residents of Paramount.
Federal authorities said several arrests were made by agents. At least one video showed the woman working on the ground previously and being carried. Other videos show that the other two are being carried by federal agents.
“Several arrests have already been made for obstructing our business,” said Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI.
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