Community Defense Groups Take the Last Stand Against ICE in LA

Anya was hiding. Crouched behind the counter at a car wash in Westchester, just outside Los Angeles International Airport, she kept quiet while her co-workers scattered outside. Some ran toward the In-N-Out Burger, others behind the Ralphs. One worker drove away in the car he was detailing. “La Migra” was here.

Federal immigration agents managed to take five of her colleagues into custody, said Anya, a Ukrainian Russian asylum-seeker who asked to have her name changed to protect her pending case. And less than 24 hours later — with the car wash short-staffed and shaken — plain-clothed, undercover agents surrounded the business in unmarked white SUVs.

“You guys came yesterday,” Anya’s boss said in a video of the raid reviewed by The Intercept. 

“Did we get car washes?” an agent joked in return. They left with two more workers in handcuffs.

Across Los Angeles County, ICE’s operations played out differently. When combat-ready federal agents gathered in large numbers at staging areas in Paramount and Compton on June 8, protesters swiftly mobilized collective resistance efforts and emergency patrols. Agents responded to large crowds with tear gas, flash bangs, and so-called “less-lethal” weapons. Organizers maintain that this grassroots mobilization sabotaged enforcement operations, putting agents on the defensive and preventing them from conducting raids for the rest of the day.

As ICE raids escalated across Los Angeles in early June, sending protesters into the streets and immigrant communities into hiding, the contrast between how the consequential weekend unfolded in different parts of the city was stark. Divergent outcomes in majority Latino areas further east with a long history of organizing and those largely disconnected from grassroots support highlighted the crucial role of community-led defense in the absence of meaningful government protection.

Unlike Compton or Paramount, the airport-adjacent Westchester is geographically and socially isolated from more established community organizing networks. And while LA’s sanctuary laws prohibit local police from working with ICE, organizers argue that the local law enforcement agencies can’t be trusted to keep immigrants safe.

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“Workers need to know their rights, whether it’s at the workplace or at their home, and they feel empowered to exercise those rights,” said Flor Melendrez, executive director of the labor advocacy group CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. Car wash workers, street vendors, and day laborers working in high-visibility, outdoor spaces face heightened risk for arrests as “easy targets” for ICE raids, while often lacking access to critical resources and workplace protections. Organizers said more than 55 car wash workers have been arrested across at least 35 businesses in the set of raids began on June 6.

According to the owner of the car wash, agents pressured workers into answering questions like where they were born. 

“They didn’t read their rights or anything at all. They just took them away immediately,” Anya said. She told The Intercept the second raid was over in a matter of minutes.

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Miles away from Anya, in a predominantly Latino neighborhood east of the Los Angeles River, a middle school teacher named Ruth was on her way to her school’s graduation ceremony when she noticed a group of day laborers running in her direction from the Home Depot parking lot.

“I started taking off my heels and putting on my flats. I got my megaphone and ran out of my car,” she told The Intercept. “I was ready.” 

Abandoned food stands and belongings scattered the parking lot. Ruth confirmed with witnesses that a handful of federal agents made a brief appearance but left without making arrests.

Ruth, who asked to be identified only by her first name so she wouldn’t be identified at school, is a member of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a volunteer-led group that patrols neighborhoods for ICE activity. She’s trained to identify undercover agents and vehicles; document raids; collect names and contact information to notify family members; and locate the detained and connect them to resources and legal assistance. 

Ruth has embraced organizing as a way to defend her community when existing institutions meant to protect people instead facilitate their persecution.

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While California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, have condemned the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on immigration, community organizers and local immigrant rights groups point to a discrepancy between rhetoric and reality. So-called sanctuary policies prohibit local officials from assisting with federal immigration enforcement, but observers have called these into question after seeing members of the Los Angeles Police Department cracking down on protests against ICE and seemingly protecting federal agents during raids.

To Ruth and other community defense organizers, LA’s sanctuary laws are a “myth.” The LAPD and the sheriff’s department “are working with ICE,” she said. “They’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us.”

While the LAPD has dismissed these allegations, a senior Department of Homeland Security official credited the increase in ICE arrests in part to “enhanced cooperation from local law enforcement partners.”

The Community Self Defense Coalition steps in to provide the protection that local law enforcement agencies won’t. When Ruth encounters ICE agents, she also notifies the Rapid Response Network hotline, which operates as an early warning system for community members to report ICE activity. If necessary, the network alerts the surrounding community so that those who are vulnerable to arrest can avoid the area, while others can mobilize in defense.

“If we don’t stand up and organize to defend our communities,” Ruth said, “who’s gonna do it?”

ICE’s mass raids across Los Angeles County have led to the arrest of at least 300 people since June 6, according to immigrants’ rights groups. But immigration lawyers and rights advocates maintain that the number is likely much higher, as groups continue to gather information from witnesses and family members. The detained have seemingly disappeared into the immigration detention system, as families and immigrant rights organizations struggle to locate them.

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The enforcement tactics on display at Anya’s car wash and across Los Angeles are part of ICE’s latest push to meet a steep daily quota of 3,000 arrests nationwide. Since late May, arrests have increased dramatically from an average of 600 to over 2,000 per day, according to the Department of Homeland Security. 

In a statement released June 8, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that ICE has arrested the “worst of the worst illegal alien criminals in Los Angeles.”

There is little reason to believe DHS.

“These are warrantless arrests targeting workers with no criminal background. We have laws that protect people’s rights, regardless of whether or not we’re documented, and those aren’t being respected,” said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center, a member organization of the Rapid Response Network. ICE agents — undercover, masked, or in tactical gear — have targeted working-class immigrants conducting raids in previously banned “sensitive areas” without judicial warrants. They’re separating families and instilling fear, Soriano Versoza said, for political theater. People are afraid to go to work, drive their kids to school, or even seek medical care.

Soriano Versoza noted that many of the detained continue to be denied access to legal assistance, particularly those being held in the federal detention center in downtown LA. Even elected officials, exercising their power of congressional oversight, have been refused entry into detention centers.

“I was present during the raid. I saw with my own eyes the pains of the families, crying, screaming, not knowing what to do, just like me,” said the daughter of Jorge Arrazola, a car wash worker taken in a raid at a press conference organized by CLEAN. Like many of those arrested in the raids, Arrazola was his household’s sole breadwinner, leaving his loved ones economically devastated and forced to fend for themselves.

CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, along with other groups and unions, have organized rights workshops and distributed red cards, or “Know Your Rights” cards, which outline how to assert rights in an encounter with federal immigration agents.

CLEAN and another group, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, have also implemented “adopt a car wash” or “adopt a corner” programs to set up volunteers to warn workers of approaching ICE agents or provide direct support and documentation during raids.

Anya’s car wash is now receiving support from CLEAN. But it was too late to protect against the initial raids. She and her bosses have located some but not all of her co-workers. One of her colleagues has already been deported to Mexico, and another has since been transferred to an ICE detention center in Texas. “I’ve known these people and seen them every day for two years,” Anya told The Intercept. Some had worked at the car wash since it opened in the early 2000s.

They have families, she said, who are desperately trying to find them. 

“I don’t know where they are. I don’t know how they’re being treated,” Anya said. “I feel helpless and hopeless.”

Update: June 23, 2025

This story has been updated to note that 55 workers at car washes have been arrested by immigration enforcement since June 6, after organizers released updated numbers.