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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.
Last week, hundreds of undocumented immigrants (people with no criminal history) have been detained in Los Angeles and surrounding communities as part of the Trump administration’s escalation of immigration enforcement. Protests with police, vandalism and sporadic clashes have urged President Trump to send troops to downtown LA, raising questions about the rights of the nation. The clash forced authorities to issue local curfews.
Elsewhere, undocumented immigrants, and even those who are legally here but fear that they will be racially profiled, take special care to navigate everyday life.
Already, many vendors had left as they fencing the city earlier this year after six people were injured in gang-related shootings. Business owners also regularly complain about crowds of people using drugs day and night in the park.
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. Meltzer said the woman, Alejandra Gascon, identified her husband as Jason Gonzalez.
Videos and photos taken by Meltzer and other residents shared with the Times show masked federal agents in the plains wearing “police” vests with the three-letter acronym for Homeland Security Survey, a branch of U.S. immigration and customs enforcement. All unmarked vehicles included a black Dodge 4×4 truck with Arizona license plates.
In another video filmed by Meltzer, Gascon said her husband was on his way to work when her husband took him into custody.
“He had just left the house,” she said.
Meltzer said people can drive, ring, and at some point hear “ice, ice, ice, ice” screaming while the men are running their operations.
Natalie Martino was in an apartment facing the street hearing people screaming, unable to know what they were saying, but he could hear what sounded like “ice.”
Martino ran to her balcony and saw federal agents detain her downstairs neighbor and began using their cell phones to record the incident.
At one point she went downstairs and saw a white van parked across the street after the other agents left.
“So I crossed the street to this white van and walked through this white van with a coloured window and looked closely to see who was sitting inside. Of course, it was another agent,” she said. “I only saw his best, so I started screaming “ice” [van] And he left. ”
After the operation was finished, she began posting videos to her Instagram account and reported the incident on the building’s message board. She also said she tried to perform a live show on the civic app but didn’t work.
Martino said her neighbor was a good person.
“He walks through this little Yorkie wearing a dress,” she said. “This is a parent and this is a family man. [who] I was literally walking to his car and leaving for work. ”
It was the first operation Martino witnessed, and she said it emphasized a disturbing calm about how they were being carried out.
“It’s very strange to me that someone has the ability to walk down the street and pick up someone and take them away. It’s a big question mark, where they’re going, how they’ll be treated, and whether they’ll come back,” she said. “There’s no answer. There’s no follow-up. There’s no accountability.”
“It’s all crazy,” she added.
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