A Year After Beating Back Trump’s First ICE Surge, Los Angeles Remains Vigilant

One year after the Trump administration deployed thousands of federal agents to Los Angeles to arrest and detain people, immigrant rights activists are cautiously optimistic about the success of their organizing efforts. Although arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Southern California have dramatically dropped, organizers expect them to ramp up again in the future.

On June 6, 2025, multiple raids by ICE agents across the greater LA area sowed terror and chaos, resulting in dozens of arrests and spirited protests. Those raids marked the start of a campaign that lasted many months and included showdowns and violent arrests at garment factories and car washes, Home Depot parking lots and swap meets, outside schools and inside courthouses.

As fear spread across the sprawling metropolis, LA’s streets emptied and the characteristic bustle of summer activities came to a near standstill. For graduating seniors and their families, the timing couldn’t have been worse. With many first- and second-generation immigrants becoming the first in their families to graduate high school or university, their planned celebrations turned into grim affairs with low turnout.

Office workers, janitors, lawyers, and tourists stayed away from downtown LA, which is home to several federal immigration offices and courthouses. Instead, regular showdowns between protesters, police, and National Guards ensued, amid building walls and sidewalks festooned with anti-ICE graffiti.

According to Human Rights Watch, the June 2025 LA raids “set the stage for similar and subsequent abuses in cities around the country.”

Today, the streets of downtown LA are scrubbed clean, the graffiti painted over. Office workers and tourists jostle for parking spots, and ICE agents are scarce. At a May Day 2026 gathering outside LA City Hall, a young man named Richie who has been active with the Community Self-Defense Coalition explained that ICE agents are less visible now “because we ran them out. They still try to be clandestine, but we ran them out.” Still, Angelinos remain on high alert. Richie added, “We see them, and we let the community know, and the community knows what to do.”

What the activist was referring to was the painstaking work that immigrant rights activists like him did to counter last year’s ICE raids. “We just let them know that we are exercising our First Amendment right to freely assemble, and to let them know that they’re not welcome, that they’re invaders,” he said.

In early 2025, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, local organizations anticipated ICE raids. They mobilized their members and spent months preparing. Dozens of groups convened under the banner of the Community Self-Defense Coalition in February 2025, and trained hundreds of volunteers in the art of safely and effectively confronting ICE agents.

In June, when ICE unleashed its might, Community Self-Defense Coalition volunteers immediately began patrolling neighborhoods, confronting agents with bull horns, warning undocumented people to stay indoors, and calling on their documented neighbors to join the solidarity actions. They studied ICE operations and adjusted their responses accordingly.

According to community activist and high school history teacher Ron Gochez, ICE’s initial approach was to go “looking for individuals by names and pictures of their faces and going to homes or work sites.” But residents were ready, armed with “Know Your Rights” cards and the understanding that no matter how aggressive federal agents were, they had the right to refuse them entry.

ICE agents then pivoted to what Gochez called “kidnappings” or “snatch and grabs.” “We were a little more successful stopping those,” said Gochez. “As they see that our tactics are working, they change theirs.”

Although ICE arrested more than 14,000 people in the LA area in all of 2025 — more than double the previous year — Gochez pointed out that it was a small fraction of the city’s undocumented population and disproportionately less than other cities facing ICE raids. Gochez, whose organization Unión del Barrio is one of the groups leading LA’s Community Self-Defense Coalition, says “in Minneapolis, when they did their operation there, when they killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in six weeks they took 4,000 people.”

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Further, Gochez explained, “just for context, the neighborhood where I live and work, South Central LA, has a bigger population than all of Minneapolis, and just the undocumented population in LA proper is larger than the entire population of Minneapolis.”

Federal agents “spent probably half a billion dollars and a year’s worth of operations in LA to basically net about 1 percent of the undocumented population,” explained Gochez.

Nearly a year later, ICE raids in Los Angeles have markedly tapered in comparison to the previous year. Between January and April 2026, ICE arrests across the Los Angeles area numbered at only 2,612. And it’s not just LA. Across the country, ICE arrests have slowed down dramatically. According to Gochez, part of the decrease in activity has been due to funding challenges in Washington, D.C. with the 2026 federal government shutdown.

But ICE agents have also changed their tactics in response to widespread grassroots opposition, becoming less visible. “They’re still trying to kidnap people,” said Richie. “Just because the media doesn’t catch it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

Today, ICE agents are targeting immigrants where activists can’t gather en masse — outside court houses. Prior to the second Trump administration, so-called sensitive locations such as schools, churches, and court houses were protected from immigration enforcement. But in January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded those protections. This has placed immigrants who are fearful of deportation in a difficult situation. It is critical to attend court hearings, as failure to show up results in automatic deportation.

Unión Del Barrio receives phone calls from people experiencing or witnessing arrests outside immigration courts on a near daily basis. “While we legally cannot recommend for people to not go to their court cases or court hearings,” said Gochez, “what we can tell them is to never go alone. Make sure you take an attorney, and/or at least community members or community organizations.”

For individuals whose entire family may be undocumented, taking a “safety in numbers” approach can be tricky. To mitigate this, the Community Self-Defense Coalition has organized an “accompaniment committee” whose members accompany people to court hearings. In case ICE agents are present and make an arrest, those coalition members can immediately alert the victim’s family members. In some instances, activists also coordinate with people patrolling outside court houses to keep tabs on potential ICE activity. “It’s not ideal, but we think it’s better than nothing,” said Gochez. “And it’s made a difference.”

Fear of ICE arrests has left an indelible mark on the city. According to the Los Angeles Times, retail centers frequented by Latinos are still seeing far less activity than before. “Business is down for many merchants, and attendance has fallen at community events such as job fairs and holiday celebrations.”

Although most anti-ICE graffiti across LA has been washed off or painted over, there continues to be physical evidence of widespread anti-ICE sentiment. News media have spotted creative signs with messages like “No ICE, Please Get a Real Job” or “ICE Stole Someone Here.” City authorities have also posted hundreds of official signs across LA warning against the use of public property to stage immigration enforcement operations.

Activists in the city of Highland Park, located just north of downtown LA, are considering installing an air raid siren to warn of ICE raids. And, as LA gets ready to host the World Cup soccer tournament this summer, thousands of union workers who staff the SoFi stadium are threatening to strike if the international soccer authority FIFA doesn’t demand that ICE agents stay away from the games.

If the continued expansion of ICE detention centers in California is any indication, ICE raids are still likely to ramp up once more. “We know that they’ve hired thousands of more agents, and they’ve bought all those crazy warehouses and turned them into their concentration camps,” said Gochez. “So, we anticipate a second round of repression, and we’ve been training people in our efforts to beef up our ranks to be able to defend the community once that happens.”

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