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Huntington Park High School principal Carlos Garibaldi was preparing to graduate on campus with a desperate colleague on radio. Immigrants are coming.
A fleet of trucks and vans was speeding up Miles Avenue in front of the school’s main building.
School staff followed the emergency plan that Garibaldi had discussed with them a day ago. Secure the gate. Quietly, he urges his parents to flow into the auditorium and hurry. Let them know what’s going on. Prepare for the worst.
However, the fleet did not dive. They quickly built it towards Home Depot next to the high school baseball field.
Armed federal agents flocked to chase after day-to-day workers and food vendors. Witnesses said at least four people were in custody. However, the crowd was smaller than usual that morning. That’s because Huntington Park City Councilman Jonathan Sanabria arrived a few minutes ago after receiving the hint to yell Ramigras being there.
“Some people didn’t believe me,” the First Councillor told me, his voice caught.
The June 9th attack on Home Depot launched a month of chaos in a city synonymous with Latino immigration in the Southern California imagination. Huntington Park, once a hub for blue-collar white families, is 97% Latino, and according to the census, 89% of households speak languages other than English and 47% of foreign-born families.
The city’s transformation has long been attracting public attention, but it is mostly positive.
Signs posted to the Huntington Park Store ask customers to knock for a recent federal sweep. The shop is located on Pacific Avenue, once a busy hub before the attack.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Some people have condemned corruption scandals that appear to be born every few years in the composition of the city council.
Tom Jackson at the time resigned after being caught up in the tape in 2000 and then caught up in the tape saying, “Even if the whole country of Mexico cannot come to California and it makes it difficult for them to come here, they won’t come.” However, by 2015, Huntington Park had become so kind to immigrants that the city councillors had appointed two of them illegally to serve on the city committee.
Sanabria said that this reputation led the Trump administration to punish Huntington Park with famous actions and use forces better suited to the battlefield, saying, “They know our demographics. They know exactly who we are.”
On June 12, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem accompanied Ice Agent to Huntington Park, as the crew of the film tailed her. Two weeks later, federal agents blew the front door of a US citizen’s home that accidentally hit a government vehicle. At least four attacks were attacked by the city’s Home Depot. Migra sightings are broadcast on social media almost daily.
DHS officials responded to Sanabria’s allegations, stated the number of people detained in the city’s immigrant sweep, and pointed out only the total number of “illicit aliens” detained across Southern California in recent weeks.
Whatever the exact number is, the Federation Army shows have driven many of the cities, one of California’s most dense people, underground.
Businesses are not open and do not display signs indicating that walk-ins are not welcome. Most popular restaurants like El Garo Giro and Tam are empty. Salt Lake Park’s weekly farmers market is a proverb ghost town. Traffic flows faster. Events and classes will be cancelled. The once scattered neighbourhood is quiet.
A few weeks ago, Isabel Wangel and several friends picked up a complimentary fruit cup and toiletries at a resource fair hosted by a local nonprofit. It was the first time a woman had left home in a few weeks.
“I’m not even going to work,” Langel said in Spanish as her friend nodded. The DJ spun Cumbias, where melancholy words collided with happy rhythms.
Edgard Orchelas, 39, is suffering from fewer visitors at Salt Lake Park’s weekly Harbor Area Farmers Market.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“The kids don’t even want to go outside when they come from here. They say ‘Ramigra, Ramigra,'” added Wangel, a Mexican immigrant who works in the factory and has lived in Huntington Park for 24 years.
Pacific Avenue, evoking the age of mid-century buildings, is desolate. The Mexican men’s soccer team won the US in the Gold Cup final on July 6th. This usually encouraged fans to spill onto the sidewalks and streets, only pulling a few cars waving Mexican flags.
Recently Juan Perez was standing outside the Kinseáñera store that houses his photography business. He relied on plastic displays, highlighting his work, highlighting red business cards that educate people about their rights if Ice was detained.
“It was so dead that the business owners now park right in front of our store,” the 37-year-old said with a weak laugh, as if they needed to find a silver lining. “We’ll be lucky if we can reach the end of the year like this.”
A few blocks away, Paola Martinez was sitting in front of her mother’s huge depot of clothing. It was 1pm and I was the first person she had greeted all day.
“There is sadness here, but what are we going to do?” said the Salvadoran native. “We can’t do anything.”
But the longer ice agents clean up the town, the more residents are doing something about it.
33-year-old Iris Delgado walks around Home Depot’s parking lot almost daily, carrying a water bottle cart for daytime workers and occasionally livestream mobile phones. The LA County Department of Health epidemiologist, co-founder of the Huntington Park Run Club, met regularly for jogging until the attack.
“We kept running and ‘Hey, Ice picked up someone there. Oh, God, there’s another place,” she said. “I’m not identifying myself as an activist, but are we trying to make this happen? The basic guidelines for a good community are to take care of each other.
She checked in Susana Moreno. Susana Moreno sold burritos and tortas from behind the Home Depot SUV for two years. Mexican immigrants witnessed the attack on June 9th.
“We once had five vendors here,” Moreno said in Spanish. “Now, I’m that. I’m a citizen. But trust me, I’m scared.”
Former Marine, Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, appeared at press conferences with other Southern California mayors, including La Mayor Karenbus, and asked Ice to suspend the campaign. In a media interview, he condemned the deployment of fellow Southern California Marines – despite concerns that his figure would place an even bigger bull’s eye on his city.
“At this point, there’s no point in trying to soften our voices,” said Flores, whose parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles became American citizens through a 1986 pardon. “Now we have to be as loud as possible.”
Flags were sold in 1998 at Pacific Boulevard and Florence Avenue in Huntington Park.
(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
In the 1970s, when Rosary Marine recently arrived teenagers from Mexico City, deportation was a part of everyday life at Huntington Park.
“My mother comes home from work and says, ‘Mija, Ramigra’ has come,'” Marin said. He served on the Huntington Park City Council from 1994 until 2001 when he was appointed US Treasurer.
Her family was part of the Mexican immigration stream that moved to southeastern LA County when local factories closed and white residents left.
Nearby cities, including Cudahy, Maywood and South Gate, also saw dramatic demographic changes. However, nothing coincided with what happened in Huntington Park, the oldest city in the area. The proportion of Latino residents has grown from 36% in 1970 to 97% just 20 years later.
Local and national media have been revised. According to a 1990 story, “Nowhere in Southern California has a dramatic influx of Latin American immigrants that are as sharp as Huntington Park.” An article in the New York Times in the same year called the “test ground” of whether California can adapt Latinos to its fabric. The 2000 follow-up considered it a “citizenship incubator.” Frequent clashes between Mexican football fans and Pacific police, particularly the free clash of 1998 that led to the arrest of 191 people – prompted dispatches portraying the site as an out-of-control Mexican colony.
City Councilman Sanabria grew up during this period in unincorporated Walnut Park, located on the south side of Florence Avenue in Huntington Park. His parents were Salvadorans who entered the United States without documents after fleeing their country’s civil war. But deportation was not a fear of his family or friends. The 37-year-old remembers the city he affectionately calls “HP” a cultural oasis. There, he played soccer in the park and spent the weekend walking around LA Pacific.
“It was a very safe bubble for me, so I didn’t understand what we were until I went to school at UCLA,” he said. “As a Latinos, anywhere else, you are the ‘other’. On HP, you are “normal.” ”
Marine also returned after time in DC. It was portrayed in the Latin nature of the region.
“We’ve seen who we are, and we’re very proud of who we are,” she said. “Where I go, I say I’m from Huntington Park. [My aunt first arrived to this country there]. ‘Everyone knows Huntington Park because we have [Latinos] I was there for a very long time. ”
That’s why Marin, who currently lives in Walnut Park, believes that the massive deportation that clashes with Southern California is “relent” and that homeland security claims to focus on violent offenders are “nonsense.”
Huntington Park’s official Jonathan Sanabria is holding a flyer announcing the postponement of a community event due to an immigrant raid.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
As a councillor and mayor, she pushed police to crack down on gangs and people selling fake green cards.
“They are [criminals] I know how difficult it is because they threatened me and chased me. Let’s take them out,” Marin said. Please take a break. ”
“I am a former US treasurer and now I feel like I have to carry my passport all the time,” she concluded. “It shows you the level of fear this community feels about government.”
On July 7th, the city council unanimously declared Huntington Park a sanctuary city. The council has secured $150,000 to fund food distribution, link residents with legal aid, and approved a requirement to identify federal agents to police when asked.
Flores knows that the federal government sued Los Angeles for sanctuary policies, and that NOEM released a list of similar municipalities in May, saying it “has put Americans and our law enforcement in the hopes of protecting violent criminally illegal aliens.” However, he is happy to accept the opportunity to make the Fed even more angry.
“Do you know that in school we talk about moments of scarring in history?” Flores said. “We’re in one of those historic wounds. We’re literally at the heart of it. That doesn’t mean we’re at home with our arms crossed. That means we need to show up.”
Garibaldi, the principal of Huntington Park, prepares for the uncertainty of the school year. Meanwhile, bands and cheer camps are being held on campus. The soccer team is practicing in the summer. The staff are trained in case Ramigra appears. And he is already counselling nervous students.
“I don’t want them to accept this as a new normal,” Garibaldi said. “Not so. That’s not possible because it means the brown community is being attacked. That’s fine. It’s never acceptable.”
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