Los Angeles, California — On a heat Tuesday afternoon in East Hollywood, Payo grilled up heaping plates of rooster, carne asada, potatoes and ribs on the meals stall the place he works.
He moved right here three years in the past from the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. He has a one-year-old daughter in the US.
However within the nation that he now calls “residence”, even doing his job now feels harmful.
For tens of millions of undocumented migrants within the US, worry and uncertainty concerning the future are fixtures of life. But with the administration of US President Donald Trump launching a sequence of aggressive immigration raids and calling within the Nationwide Guard and greater than 700 US Marines to crack down on protests which have adopted, the final a number of days have felt totally different to Payo and residents of neighbourhoods in Los Angeles with massive immigrant communities.
“I really feel tense. It’s a little bit of a danger even being out right here on the road,” says Payo, who requested that solely his first title be used.
Nonetheless, he feels he has little alternative however to proceed his work, to help his daughter, in addition to household again in Mexico.
“I’ve by no means felt like this earlier than throughout my time right here,” he says. “Whenever you go away your own home, you don’t know should you’ll return residence.”
A person working at a meals stall within the East Hollywood neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, on June 10, 2025 (Brian Osgood/Al Jazeera)
Chilling impact
East Hollywood is positioned a number of miles from downtown Los Angeles, which has been the positioning of huge demonstrations and protests, a few of which have turned violent and included clashes with legislation enforcement, since final Friday. Native officers have accused Trump of looking for to escalate the scenario quite than serving to restore calm.
Residents of the neighbourhood say that the streets have been quiet, with fewer folks venturing outdoors amid heightened fears over immigration raids and arrests.
“Individuals aren’t going out as a lot. They’re not going to work as a result of they’re afraid,” stated Jose Medina, who works as a cleaner at a hospital and first got here to Los Angeles from El Salvador about 45 years in the past.
He says the town’s standing as a metropolis with a big Latino neighborhood is a part of what drew him there. In response to a 2023 census survey, Spanish is spoken in almost 40 p.c of Los Angeles households, and the town’s ties to Latin America are as outdated as the US itself.
“It’s a good looking metropolis, a metropolis of working folks,” says Medina, noting that immigrant staff typically tackle demanding jobs comparable to development, landscaping and cleansing companies.
Immigration raids throughout Los Angeles and the state during the last a number of days have regularly focused workplaces, including to the sensation of tension in immigrant communities. So, too, has the aggressive nature of the Trump administration’s method to enforcement.
“What you see within the information and within the statements is that they’re going after essentially the most violent criminals, however we all know that’s a lie and that’s not what’s occurring. We’re seeing brokers coming right into a Dwelling Depot and selecting up everybody, not even investigating,” stated Jose Madera, director of the Pasadena Group Job Heart, which affords help for day labourers.
“With day labour, should you miss at some point of labor, that’s the lease, or that’s meals on the desk in your kids and your loved ones,” he added, of the financial price of staying residence from work resulting from worry over immigration raids. “That’s the choice that day by day labourer and each migrant individual has to make.”
He additionally stated that the due course of rights of these detained and deported additionally appear to have been ignored.
The dad and mom of a 23-year-old man deported to Mexico after being arrested on Friday informed The Washington Put up newspaper that he signed what he believed was a kind consenting to a COVID-19 take a look at, however might have been a doc agreeing to his deportation.
Delicate areas which have historically been exempted from immigration enforcement actions, comparable to courthouses, have additionally been subjected to raids. Los Angeles college district officers stated on Monday that faculty safety will arrange security perimeters round colleges in order that households can really feel safe as they attend pupil graduations.
Marlene Marin, the proprietor of a hair salon in East Hollywood who has lived within the metropolis for 35 years and is initially from the Peruvian capital of Lima, stated that the final a number of days have reminded her of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when folks stayed in and the streets had been largely empty.
“Individuals have a whole lot of anxiousness. We don’t have many purchasers coming in,” she stated. “There’s an financial impression when folks don’t need to exit to the shops and the outlets.”
Marlene Marin sits in her hair salon in Los Angeles, California, on June 10, 2025 (Brian Osgood/Al Jazeera)
Historical past of dissent
On Tuesday night, Mayor Karen Bass declared a curfew within the downtown space of Los Angeles in what she stated was an effort to halt vandalism and looting.
“There are some dangerous folks burning police vehicles,” stated Marin. “However I don’t suppose the folks doing which can be immigrants.”
In a speech on Tuesday, Trump leaned into incendiary rhetoric, promising to “liberate” the town from “animals” and “a international enemy”. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal company largely tasked with immigration raids, shared an image on social media exhibiting immigration brokers flanked by closely armed troopers detaining a person.
However opposite to Trump’s narrative, research have repeatedly proven that migrants are much less more likely to commit crimes than those that are born within the US. “Individuals are right here on the lookout for one thing higher, to help their households,” says Payo, standing below a tent that shields him from the afternoon solar as smoke pours off the grill in East Hollywood.
All through Los Angeles’s historical past, a practice of strong dissent and immigrant activism has regularly introduced native figures and actions into confrontation with federal authorities.
Through the Eighties, the town grew to become a key a part of the nation’s sanctuary motion, which provided help for refugees fleeing violence in nations like El Salvador and Guatemala, the place navy governments, with the backing of the US, had been finishing up campaigns of brutal violence.
When a Roman Catholic priest named Father Luis Olivares provided refugees and undocumented staff bodily sanctuary contained in the La Placita church close to the town’s historic centre, immigration officers threatened to raid the church if Olivares continued to defy the federal authorities. Finally, the federal government didn’t comply with by on the menace.
However Mario Garcia, a professor of Chicano research on the College of California at Santa Barbara who wrote a biography on the lifetime of Olivares, says that the Trump administration has pushed an aggressive interpretation of govt energy with few comparisons in trendy US historical past.
An indication informing migrants of their rights if they’re confronted by immigration enforcement brokers inside a constructing in Los Angeles, California, on June 10, 2025 (Brian Osgood/Al Jazeera)
“(Ronald) Reagan’s insurance policies within the Eighties on immigration didn’t embody the militarisation of INS (the Immigration and Naturalization Service), the predecessor of ICE. It didn’t embody utilizing the Nationwide Guard and the Marines to place down protests in help of the undocumented and Central American refugees,” he stated in an electronic mail to Al Jazeera.
Garcia believes that Trump isn’t accomplished but and that his latest strikes could also be laying the groundwork for one thing much more dramatic: the declaration of martial legislation.
“Los Angeles has an extended historical past of protesting in opposition to unconstitutional efforts to repress free speech and mass peaceable protests,” he stated. “As a metropolis of immigrants, Angelenos recognise and help the work and contributions of immigrants, whether or not documented or undocumented.”
