Since federal agents descended onto Los Angeles streets in early June, several United States citizens have been detained and held in immigration detention centers. A Capital & Main review of local reporting, video and social media posts found at least nine citizens were taken into custody by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection after protesting near or observing immigration raids in the Los Angeles area since June 6. Two are currently facing federal charges.
Job Garcia arrived at the Home Depot in Hollywood for his delivery gig for another company on the morning of June 19 expecting to have a regular day. But moments later, Garcia — a U.S. citizen — was tackled, arrested and detained by federal agents.
Garcia said he spotted vans pulling into the store’s parking lot, and began filming as federal agents started breaking the window of a truck with a man sitting behind the wheel. Videos taken by Garcia and other bystanders show several masked men in green vests that read “POLICE” and “U.S. Border Patrol” approach Garcia and tackle him to the ground.
“Give me your fucking hand! You want it, you got it,” one agent said. “You want to go to jail? You got it.”
The agents took Garcia to Dodger Stadium, where he told Capital & Main he was held for hours before being transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. The federal prison’s basement has been turned into a detention facility for people apprehended by federal immigration enforcement officers, where civil rights advocates say detainees are being kept in grossly overcrowded, dungeon-like conditions. One of the Border Patrol agents who detained Garcia is the same man who was subsequently arrested and charged with assaulting a Long Beach police officer and resisting arrest in a separate incident, according to Capital & Main’s review of the footage. “This matter is under investigation,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement to Capital & Main.
“This is a case of Border Patrol and ICE essentially punishing citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights. It goes against the values of this country,” said Ernest Herrera, an attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who is representing Garcia in a claim against Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, and ICE. “It looks more like the behavior of a crackpot military dictatorship in a different country. But it’s here. This is happening right now in our country.”
It’s unclear how many U.S. citizens federal agents have arrested since undertaking a series of immigration raids in Southern California starting in June. Federal officials did not answer Capital & Main’s questions about the detention of U.S. citizens.
“Threats or acts of violence toward law enforcement officers will NOT be tolerated,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, adding that Secretary Kristi Noem “has made it clear: If you threaten or attempt to harm a law enforcement officer, we will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation for the law firm Public Counsel, said that ICE agents are not permitted to detain citizens. “Are they permitted to do that? Absolutely not, absolutely not. But in Los Angeles, citizens … are carrying around their passports in order to substantiate that they are citizens.” Rosenbaum is representing Southern California residents, workers and advocacy groups who are suing the Department of Homeland Security. The complaint alleges that the agency has unconstitutionally arrested and detained people in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration.
In a landmark decision in the case on July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong found that the roving immigration patrols were conducted without reasonable suspicion of lawbreaking, and that the government was denying detainees access to counsel.
In at least three instances reviewed by Capital & Main, Los Angeles Police Department officers were present as federal agents took U.S. citizens into custody. Immigration rights and press freedom advocates have pointed to officers establishing traffic blocks around immigration raids and officers’ brute force during anti-ICE protests as evidence of collaboration with federal immigration agents. The LAPD has prohibited its officers from initiating action to determine someone’s immigration status since 1979.
Many immigration raids and protests have occurred in Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s district.
“We don’t want our local government to look like the oppression that’s coming from our federal government. … It may not look like we’re getting a lot of answers and sometimes the answer is we don’t have one yet,” Jurado said of LAPD’s actions.
“This is the way a democracy dies. … Local officials should not be handmaidens to the federal government,” Rosenbaum said.
The Guardian reported that U.S. immigration officers have made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during protests. The Justice Department has charged at least 26 protesters, but prosecutors have been forced to dismiss at least nine cases.
The ongoing raids led a group of six California Republican state legislators to send a letter to President Donald Trump asking for ICE and DHS to change course.
“We have heard from employers in our districts that recent ICE raids are not only targeting undocumented workers, but also creating widespread fear among other employees, including those with legal immigration status. This fear is driving vital workers out of critical industries, taking California’s affordability crisis and making it even worse for our constituents,” the legislators said in their letter.
“No one wants to be caught up in the pathway of those raids because it could compromise the family as a whole,” California State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh told Capital & Main. “From what we’ve heard and understood is that they don’t want to be exposed to that so they won’t send their children to school or they won’t go to work because they don’t want to be placed in a scenario where the family could be compromised.” She supports removing undocumented people who have been classified as public safety threats, and advocates that California rescind a state law that prevents state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources to investigate or arrest people for federal immigration enforcement purposes.
Garcia and other citizens who were detained said they and their families are both dealing with considerable trauma.
“My mom was so relieved to see me. She had not slept,” Garcia said. “I’ve had nightmares multiple times of being arrested again. I see a lot of these officers. I know their faces.”
