A week-long cleaning of a week in Southern California immigrants has made some communities creepy and some residents say they are avoiding going out and attending everyday businesses in fear of being stopped.
Where residents and merchants say there is far down on foot traffic is the fashion district, usually bustling MacArthur Park area, where a massive migrant attack was seen on June 6th.
This is a sample of how life is changing:
South LA
These were the sounds I hadn’t heard coming from schools in South Los Angeles on Saturday. The kids are laughing with friends, teachers who are burning about their parents hooping for their child’s first guitar solo, exceeding all expectations about piano students.
The music was silent this Father’s Day weekend at the Young Musicians Foundation.
The venerable school for working-class students canceled traditional end-of-semester concerts and celebrations because many of its students and parents feared that gathering would make them vulnerable to Trump administration’s immigrant raids.
After a week of immigration and customs enforcement arrests around Southern California, many parents in USC’s east working class neighborhood pulled their children out of class last week.
Many more families, including those legally in the US, said they would not attend the current concert on Saturday, due to the abundant caution that they would have to be arrested and have to spend weeks certifying their legal status.
“This week, they said this week, ‘It breaks our hearts, but we’re scared to come out,'” said Walter Zoo, executive director of the Young Musicians Foundation. “People are separated from their families, their communities from these kinds of opportunities they love.”
Instead of a traditional party, and the accompanying pizza, papsa and other Mexican and Central American delicacies, the East Feast of the East, handed over the instruments they had borrowed on Friday, quietly saying goodbye. One mother said she was sad, but felt that she had no choice but to separate her 12-year-old daughter from YMF classes.
“She misses being with her friends and being inspired by other students,” said the woman who gave her only her middle name, Esther, as she said she was worried about being targeted. “And as parents, we miss seeing the happiness and satisfaction they get from applause and encouragement when they finish their performance.”
First struggling to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano, Esther’s born girl now flies over the keyboard and sends her fingers to deliver American pop classics and songs from her parents’ native Mexico.
“She sees this place like an oasis,” said Esther, computer technology. “This program is like therapy. It helps her and makes her better.”
One of the teachers at YMF is Andy Abad. The guitarist, who is himself an immigrant LA-born son, played alongside Jennifer Lopez and the Backstreet Boys, and played alongside Lady Gaga and Bonnie Raitt.
He currently teaches at USC at YMF School a few days a week and hides on the first floor of a subsidized housing complex. He began teaching at school and provided role models to students. Many of the students had never accessed instruments or music lessons.
“These immigrants work hard. They pay Social Security and other taxes. They just want to live,” Abbado said. “That’s part of what current political leaders don’t want you to notice. They want to make them demons and scapegoat them.”
“It’s affecting everyone,” Abbado said. “And these kids in particular just want to learn, just do more.”
Westlake District
On Friday morning, the area around MacArthur Park, a longtime immigration hub, to the west of downtown, was significantly quieter than usual.
Many vendors who once lined up Southern Alvarado Street all day were gone, selling everything from baby formulas to Lionel Messi jerseys.
“There’s probably sadness, maybe sadness. I think a lot of fear, a lot of fear is going around these communities. And people are very cautious and very cautious,” said 37-year-old Christina Serrano.
At Panda Boxing, gym owners now regularly walk up and down the block to ensure that gym people feel safe, Serrano said.
“I mean, most of us are American citizens, but once again, if there’s someone we know at the gym. [who isn’t]we will protect them and keep them safe,” she said.
Despite being a citizen at birth, she says she was taken to carry a copy of her birth certificate along with every place she goes as a precaution. She also has a speed dial lawyer.
“I’m targeting people who look like me, so to be honest, I don’t know who they want to stop or who they’re targeting,” she said.
She also said the next-door restaurant in Mexico suddenly closed for two days without explanation.
One of the barbershops dusted her hair from her chair as a customer stood up to stand up at Tony’s barbers next block.
The barber, who refused to give her name, explained in Spanish that the business had almost disappeared.
When asked why, she says that after exchanging an angry look with a customer, “Ramigra” (slang for ice) appears all over the area, scaring the customer.
On Friday morning, Julia Meltzer was just turning left on Virgil Avenue from Sixth Avenue on her way to work and saw many men in the bulletproof vest. There was at least one vehicle, a Silver Ford SUV with Arizona license plates, parked in the driveway of my apartment.
When she pulled up near the car, she said she saw the man handcuffing a man wearing an orange shirt and white shorts. Meltzer said she began taking photos and videos after she realized she had just handed over and came across a federal immigration operation.
As she and other residents continued to document, Meltzer met a distraught woman, the wife of a man who had just been arrested by federal agents.
Huntington Park
On Thursday, federal agents stormed their Huntington Park home, accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem.
Sabrina Medina, 28, was cleaning her patio Wednesday night when she saw a silver minivan slow in front of her Huntington Park home.
She said she saw the driver recording her and her stepbrothers at home.
“I cried out to them: ‘Why are you recording me?'” she said. “I started screaming because I thought something bad would happen to me.”
She said the people in the van didn’t respond. Fearing her four children, Medina went into the house and called her husband, Jorge Saldana, 30. She told him what happened to him and that he needed to go home.
She and her husband were caught up in a debate over his immigrant status, she said. Medina was worried that immigration officers were targeting him and their homes. At one point, she told her husband he didn’t want to attend his 10-year-old daughter’s graduation.
She said the argument ended when her husband ran out of the house.
“He was upset,” she said. “He wanted to go to graduate, but I said no to him and told him I was going to take my sister with me.”
Medina’s husband, Saldana, wanted to be in the country after her deportation. Eight years ago, Saldana was arrested for a violent crime, but the criminal charges were dropped and he was subsequently deported, Medina said.
Early on Thursday morning, Medina rattled at several big knocks on the front door. As she looked through the window, she saw a tired man carrying an assault rifle. One of them pointed his weapon at her and ordered her to come out of the house, she said.
She explained that she had just finished the shower and needed to get dressed and that she needed to wake up her child. Medina asked the soldiers to put their guns on, and she said.
Eventually, the family went outside and stood in the driveway as the tired man searched the house for her husband, Medina said. He wasn’t home at the time.
As she, her brother-in-law and her children were waiting in the driveway, Medina said she found a gnome watching the surgery. She also said she found a video crew and someone she believed was Dr. Philmc Grow sitting in an SUV.
The site of the baseball hat and ballistic vest gnomes is amazing and Medina said she started recording her on the phone.
“I was scared. I recognized her. I ‘What is she doing in my house?’ So I started recording her,” Medina said.
The pregnant mother said Noem was laughing and appeared as if she was “waiting for something to happen.”
Cameras on the inside and outside of the house captured a man who was walking around the house in exhaustion and searching for the house. Medina said the man had left soon. There were at least 12 men in fatigue, according to Medina and a video reviewed by The Times.
She hasn’t spoken to her husband since the attack on their home, but she is worried that she will be able to pay $3,000 in rent this month. Her husband was the main producer.
According to Medina, the incident hurt her four children in a range of 2 to 10. She said she was four months pregnant with her twin boys.
“My daughter is so sad, she wanted to go to graduate,” she said. “My seven year old asked where his father was. They’re very close to each other.”
“This is not a way of life,” she added.
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