ICE in LA Sets Hollywood Summer on Edge as Latino Workers Hide: ‘It’s Like Anne Frank’

The man swimming laps next to me in the public pool in Santa Monica paused at the edge of the limpid water and sighed. A fifth-generation Angeleno of Chinese descent, Colin said he’s been driving his two daughters to their activities all over town – today is swim team training — because their nanny won’t. 

The nannies will not come out of the house. He said: “It’s like Anne Frank or something.”

The nannies in this town are mostly Hispanic and like so many other Latinos doing important jobs in our community, they’re now living in a state of terror. Because ICE agents will pick up anyone with brown skin, regardless of whether they are legal or not, and sometimes even if they are American. It doesn’t seem to matter. 

With their faces obscured, no warrants and no identification, ICE is showing up at the Home Depot. They’re showing up at parks. Car washes. Restaurants. Schools. Colin’s wife is a pediatrician and ICE agents have come into her medical office looking for patients and staff, he said. The other day, Hispanic staff crowded into an examination room and huddled there when agents showed up because ICE is not allowed in the exam rooms.

Not yet anyway. 

This is the kind of insanity and terror that’s being spread in our city. According to the Department of Homeland Security, over 1,600 immigrants have been detained in Southern California over a period of more than two weeks as of June 25th. This equates to roughly 101 arrests per day.

In a quest to punish a Democratic majority city – nearly half Latino by last count — and in an obsession to meet made-up quotas to deport undocumented immigrants, the Trump administration has set Los Angeles on edge.

His intent to terrorize our city is working. My local car wash on Sepulveda is closed. The owner said he needs to protect his labor force.

Now the latest is we have ICE wannabes. Local television KTLA reported that on Friday an LA man was arrested for impersonating a federal agent. He had a loaded gun, fake documents, cop gear and a blinking light on his car. No biggie. 

“People are staying home. It does feel very scary out there right now,” said immigration attorney Jaclyn Granet, who works closely with entertainment clients. 

“It’s incredibly disturbing to witness as a human and also as an immigrant attorney, who works with foreign talent,” she told me. “I support the idea that America is better when we have a global community within our borders. It really feels like this program of mass ICE raids and mass detention is extremely short-sighted… If you’re raiding the farms, the restaurants – how long does it take until a restaurant has to close, or we don’t have this crop or that crop?”

A lawyer friend of mine said she was in Van Nuys on Friday picking up boxes from a storage place and talked to a group of Hispanic men who find work outside the store. They were scared, they told her. “They’re afraid to go out for work right now,” said this friend who did not want to be named. “Their families are staying in their home.”

Her housekeeper, who is legal, said people are afraid to leave their houses. Her client told her that her nanny, like Colin’s, won’t leave the house. “Even if they’re legal they’re afraid to take the kids to the park, afraid to take them to school. This is affecting not just the undocumented, it’s affecting people who are legal who have brown skin,” she said. 

ICE is operating aggressively all over – from the wealthy west side where many undocumented folks work, to the working class section on the east where many live. If you’re going to Gelson’s watch out. You might see men pull up in one SUV, or several, armed to the hilt and dressed in combat gear surround a young woman no more than 100 lbs or so. That was in Ladera Heights.

Here is a video of a full-on military raid–military uniforms, night vision goggles, rifles – descending on a home in Huntington Park where they unceremoniously blast open the door and then we see a young mother with child and toddler in her arms being escorted out. 

The overkill is the point. 

Colin comes from the fifth generation American family of Chinese origin. He said his family first came here to build the railroads back in the 1800s. His father now lives in South Carolina and is a Trumper. He recalled the discrimination his parents felt, especially during the Second World War (even though they are not Japanese). We both shared our immigrant backgrounds — mine from Ukrainian and Polish descent only two generations in — and wondered aloud: It’s not that hard to imagine the descendants of today’s terrorized Latino population in 20 years from now marveling at the criminality, the inhumanity and the deliberate aggression.

And we all wonder what can be done. For the moment, it seems, not very much.

“Do I think that this level of force is necessary? Absolutely not,” said Granet. “That is part of the chaos and scare tactics meant to be communicated through these raids. Part of Trump’s plan is to create chaos.” 

Scenes from ICE terrorizing civilians in LA:

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