Imagine this: Your beloved family member says goodbye to go to work. On his way, he is stopped by people who look like civilians but have their faces covered. They push him into a car against his will. Eight hours later, he doesn’t come home. His car is found abandoned. He is nowhere to be found.
If that’s not terrifying enough, imagine this: Your family member does make it to work. But while he’s there, dozens of people in military gear—fully equipped for war—barge into his workplace without a judicial warrant. Your family member and his coworkers are terrified. He has no criminal record. Yet, he is handcuffed and disappeared. Days later, you find his name in a database that does not indicate his location.
On Friday, June 6, 2025, I received the first reports of what would become a turning point: a workplace raid by ICE at an apparel warehouse in downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District. But this wasn’t a typical ICE raid. In addition to ICE entering without a judicial warrant, officers in full military gear had barricaded the entrance, preventing anyone from entering to inform the workers of their constitutional rights.
Over the past several months, we have seen escalating violence targeting people of color and undocumented immigrants across the country. Under previous administrations, immigration agencies operated under deportation priorities—focusing enforcement on individuals with criminal records. However, shortly after Donald Trump became president, those priorities were eliminated. Even though immigration violations are typically civil offenses, this administration has treated every undocumented person as a criminal.
Supreme Court precedent—specifically the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe—makes it clear that constitutional protections apply to all people present on U.S. soil. However, this seems not to matter to current policy. For example, Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” has begun challenging “Know Your Rights” trainings, which aim to educate U.S. residents about these protections.
Since January, immigrants’ fear has increased as their due process rights have begun to erode, both during investigative stops and after individuals are detained. The Constitution requires that law enforcement have “reasonable suspicion” before stopping someone. But ICE began targeting Latino/a people without reason and racially profiling them. We began to see plainclothes officers, masked and refusing to identify themselves, disappearing people.
As of last Friday, however, the escalation feels like an intentional act of terror against our communities. The militarized scene and blatant constitutional violations during the arrests at the apparel warehouse enraged the community. People began to protest. Most of the protests were peaceful. A few minor disturbances occurred, but nothing that local law enforcement couldn’t manage. The decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines was an unnecessary provocation—a show of force reminiscent of a dictatorship.
Over the course of the past week, the disappearances have continued, and so have the peaceful protests.
On Sunday, June 8—Pentecost Sunday—I received a message from a church acquaintance: A mutual friend and his brother had been detained and disappeared by immigration officers as they were leaving their house. My heart sank. My friend has been in the United States for over two decades. We met in 2006 as part of a jóvenes (young adult) group at church. We sang in the choir together every Sunday for years. We had volunteered countless hours organizing youth retreats and helping build a more loving and compassionate parish. Although I hadn’t seen him recently, I followed his work on social media, where he would proudly post photos from construction job sites he worked on. He has a young child.
On Wednesday, June 11, another young friend—someone I knew from my time as a faith-based community organizer—called me in tears. His father had been detained by ICE while working at a car wash. The heartbreak continues.
While a federal judge ruled on Thursday, June 12, 2025, that the California National Guard must be returned to the control of the California governor, this ruling is likely to be appealed and does not address the initial problem: the terrorizing of our immigrant communities.
Angelenos are outraged. Our people are being deliberately terrorized by the federal government, in violation of every constitutional protection. If there is any violence in Los Angeles, it is the violence of the current administration.
The people they are terrorizing and disappearing are our people. They’re not strangers—they’re ours. Ours! So yes, we are peacefully protesting, exercising our constitutionally protected right to free speech. It is the least we can do.
While the worth of undocumented people should not be measured in number or based on their contribution, we must start calling out the lies that have caused a percentage of the population to remain silent.
In 2022, undocumented immigrants collectively paid an estimated $96.7 billion in taxes: $59.4 billion in federal taxes and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes. Undocumented people can apply for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to pay taxes—and they do so—despite having no access to federal benefits or the right to vote. Many do so in hopes that one day, if immigration reform creates a pathway to legal status, their good moral character will be recognized. If the founding fathers were alive today, the cries of “no taxation without representation” would ring just as loud as it did in the 1700s. Undocumented people are also less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born individuals.
If you have clothing in your closet labeled “Made in the USA,” and buying items made in the United States matters to you, then you should know there’s an 80 percent chance that piece of clothing was produced in LA’s garment industry—maybe even by the very hands that are now being torn from their families.
The Constitution—the very document that the president, the military, and those of us in the legal profession swear to defend—is being violated over and over again. This administration is acting as if it didn’t exist. As if that weren’t enough, these actions are being carried out in the name of God by so-called Christians who have misrepresented the gospel and corrupted Christianity. White Christian nationalism has slowly taken root in religious spaces and now claims to speak on God’s behalf.
It is our duty to reclaim the prophetic voice of Christianity.
The following song is a good reminder of this duty. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a great deal of political instability in Latin America. Corrupt governments, led by the wealthy and authoritarian forces, seized the lands of the poor and of the peasants. The institutional church, afraid of being labeled communist, often aligned itself with those powerful interests. Los Guaraguao, a 1970s band, called out the rich, the government, and the church using words that might be needed today:
“Christ—at the service of whom? asked Jaime the worker. . . At the service of a few, who took him prisoner, disguising him with luxury, even though they know he belongs to the people. . . A Church that does not denounce injustice and oppression is a Church that has been bought. We want resurrection.”
The terror and violence inflicted by the current administration on immigrants is evil, immoral, and unconstitutional. We should all care about what happens next, and we must put our faith into action—wherever we are and in whatever way we can—to prevent this violence from spreading.
We must free Christ.
The future of this country, its theoretical soul, the rule of law, and the Constitution depends on how we respond today.
Image: Unsplash
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