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Over 200 people marched through downtown Ontario on Saturday morning to support the inland empire as the Trump administration pledged its biggest deportation effort in US history.
The energetic crowd waving American and Mexican flags, pounding drums, unleashing the noise that paraded along the sidewalk. They chant “We haven’t left,” and the United Farm Workers’ motto, “See, Sep-Ede.” The demonstrators erupted in cheers as vehicles along Euclidean Avenue sounded their support.
The protest was promoted on social media as “a massive mobilization against massive deportation” – was led by the San Bernardino-based Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, consisting of more than 35 organizations serving the inland empire’s immigrant communities.
The area has a significant immigrant population. According to a 2018 report from the UC Riverside Social Innovation Center, the Inland Coalition of Immigration Justice, and the California Center for Immigration Policy, one in five inland Empire residents are immigrants, with nearly one million immigrants in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Dozens of protesters from the Inland Union for Immigrant Justice and several other Inland Imperial organizations were taking part in demonstrations in Ontario on Saturday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
San Bernardino County is also home to the Adelanto Ice Processing Center, one of California’s largest immigration detention centers. The coalition of immigrant rights groups has been defending facility closures for years, citing health, safety and human rights concerns.
Talking to the crowd before beginning March, Javier Hernandez, executive director of the Inland Coalition of Immigrant Justice, framed the administration’s rhetoric in an attempt to quell the fear and panic among the immigrant communities. A trick to make people fall in love with shadows and self-selling.
“The way we fight back is to get out on the street,” Hernandez said. “We are leaving fear behind and pushing our fight forward for immigration rights.”
“Sympaperez, Sinmied,” he cried, leading the attendees with a loud chant. “It’s not documented, I’m not afraid.”
Protesters wearing flags representing the US and Mexico join dozens of other protesters in Ontario on Saturday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
It was in the minds of many protesters to stand up to speaking for those who felt they were attacked and feared to protest.
Andy Gallibey came to the country as a baby and currently has job approval and deportation protection through the Infant Arrival Program (DACA postponement measures). The mother of two lives in Rialto and works in payroll management.
She said she and her family have the advantage in the threat of the Trump administration. She said her family group chats seem constantly hanging out with sightings of immigrant staff near the warehouse where many relatives work.
“Why is it like this?” Garibay, who holds the sign that reads “One Love,” said she had a Mexican flag wrapped around her hair.
Diana Penino of Ontario is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant. He worked hard to teach her and her brothers to be proud of Americans.
Penino, a respiratory therapist at a local hospital, said several colleagues have stopped coming to work and she is afraid that immigration authorities will show up at any time. On his first day in office, Trump rescinded Biden-era policies to protect certain sensitive places, such as churches, schools and hospitals, from immigration enforcement.
Penino also fought Proposal 187, a voting initiative in 1994. The experience proved to her that “we can fight and make a difference.”
On Saturday in March, she held a sign that read “Deport Elon.” This is a reference to Elon Musk, a South African immigrant who is making controversial efforts to eliminate allegations of fraud, waste and abuse from the federal government.
Trump initially focused on tracking immigrants who lacked approval for his rhetoric and tracking those accused of violent crimes. His administration says it considers all immigrants in the United States without criminalizing legal permits because it violates immigration law.
Dozens of protesters participated in the “large mobilization against massive deportation” held in Ontario on Saturday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has already carried out well-known businesses in Chicago and New York, among other places. The pledge of more enforcement has rattled immigrant communities across California and across the country, driving activist groundwells.
Over the weekend, many people were on high alert with rumours that the federal government was planning a massive immigration enforcement sweep in Los Angeles County. At the time, ICE officials did not say whether special operations were carried out or not, and did not announce the number of daily arrests. However, such operations do not appear to have been as widespread as many people had predicted.
In early January, at the Biden administration’s tail-end, Border Patrol agents carried out several days of raids in rural Kern County, resulting in detention and deportation of undocumented workers.
This week, ACLU lawyers representing United Farm workers and five Kern County residents sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials. The attack amounted to a “fishing expedition” that indiscriminately targeted people of color who looked like farm workers or day-long workers.
This article is part of the Times Equity Report initiative funded by the James Irvine Foundation, which examines the challenges faced by low-income workers and efforts to address economic disparities in California.
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