Adam Greenfield was cold-hearted home nursing when his girlfriend told him that immigrants and customs enforcement vehicles were parked in a trendy San Diego neighborhood.
The author and podcast producer grabbed his iPhone, bolted the door barefoot and joined a few neighbors who recorded masked agents who raided a popular Italian restaurant nearby. An hour later, the crowd grew to nearly 75 people, with many in front of the agent’s vehicle.
“I couldn’t be silent,” Greenfield said. “It was literally outside my front door.”
As President Donald Trump’s administration is actively working to increase immigrant arrests, we have witnessed people being carried away, shopping, exercising in the gym, eating, or otherwise doing everyday life. When the attacks touch the lives of people not the migrants themselves, many Americans rarely participate in civil disobedience, recording their actions on their mobile phones and rushing to launch improvised protests.
The arrest is being made outside the gym, busy restaurant
Greenfield said the crowd included grandparents, retired servicemen, hippies and a restaurant patron who arrived on the night of the date, on the evening of the May 30th. Authorities threw flash bangs to force the crowd, and ousted them along with four detained workers, he said.
“To do this, they were about to make a statement at five o’clock, at a rush of dinner, at a busy intersection with multiple restaurants,” Greenfield said. “But I don’t know if their intended points are beyond the way they want them to. I think that’s causing more backlash.”
Previously, many arrests were caused by agents waiting outside people’s homes when they were made late or late at night, when they finished their day outside their workplace or work location. When Ice stormed another popular restaurant in San Diego in 2008, agents did it in the early hours without any problems.
White House border border Tom Homan said sanctuary policies restricting collaboration with ICE in certain cities and states forced agents to arrest more in their communities. ICE has enforced national immigration laws, but it seeks state and local support in asking federal authorities for immigrants to be deported and warning federal officers not to retain them until detained.
Vice President JD Vance said during his visit to Los Angeles on Friday that these policies “had agents informed the local governments of this community that they were not allowed to do their jobs, which gave them a bit of a morale issue.”
“When that border patrol agent went out to work, they said within 15 minutes they had protesters, sometimes violent protesters who were blocking them,” he said.
At a press conference Friday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass responded to comments from Vice President JD Vance criticizing the mayor and governor over the handling of federal immigration projects in the city.
“It was like a scene from a movie.”
Melyssa Rivas arrived at her office in the suburban Los Angeles in Downey, California one morning, and heard the frightened screams of a young woman. She goes outside and finds a woman confronting almost 12 masked federal agents who surround the man kneeling on the pavement.
“It was like a scene from a movie,” Rivas said. “They all stood on this man with their faces covered and apparently traumatized. And there are these young girls screaming at the top of their lungs.”
As Rivas began to record the interaction, a group of growing neighbors screamed at the agent, leaving the man alone. They eventually drove in a vehicle without restraining him, and the video show.
Rivas then spoke to the man and said he had arrived at the car wash that the agent was working for that morning and chased him as he escaped by bike. It was one of several recent workplace raids in majority cities.
The same day, federal agents were seen at Home Depot, construction sites and LA Fitness Gyms. It was not immediately clear how many people were taken into custody.
“Everyone’s rattles,” said LA Fitness employee Alex Freide, standing at the entrance after seeing an agent outside the gym and saying he was ready to drive them away as another employee warned the customer about the sighting. In the end, the agent never came in.
Vice President JD Vance doubled on Friday due to the need to federalize US troops in Los Angeles after meeting with federal law enforcement. The video aired during NBC4 News on Friday, June 20, 2025 at 6pm.
Community protests centered on ice buildings
Arrested at immigration courts and other ice buildings prompted emotional scenes as masked agents appeared to detain people who went to routine appointments and hearings.
Hundreds of people rushed to protest outside the ice building in Spokane, in the eastern state of Washington, after a former city councillor Ben Staccato posted on Facebook on June 11th. Staccato wrote that he was the legal guardian of asylum seekers in Venezuela whom he went to check in at the ice building. His Venezuelan roommate was also taken into custody.
Both men had permission to temporarily reside and work in the United States under humanitarian parole, Staccato told The Associated Press.
“I’m going to sit in front of the bus,” Staccato wrote, referring to the van set up to transport the two men to an ice detention center in Tacoma. “The Latino community now needs the rest of our community. Not tonight, not Saturday, now!!!”
About 230,000 cities are seated in Spokane County, with over half of voters voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Staccato was moved to see his mother’s caregiver being seen in the protesters.
“She said, ‘I’m here because I love your mom and I love you. If you or your friends need help, I want to help,” he shed tears.
By evening, the Spokane Police Station had dispatched more than 180 officers, some using pepper bowls to disperse the protesters. More than 30 people have been arrested, including Staccato, who blocked the transport van with others. He was later released.
Aisha Mercer, a mother at home of the three, said she was “not political in any form, shape or form.” But many kids in her Spokane neighborhood — playing in her yard and jumping on the trampoline — come from immigrant families, and the idea that they will be affected by deportation is “unacceptable,” she said.
She said she couldn’t go to Staccato’s protest. However, she marched for the first time in her life on June 14th, joining millions of “kings” protests across the country.
“I don’t think I’ve felt so strong as to be doing the second right thing here,” she said.
Source link
