A network of Latino, Black, Filipino and Jewish organizations in Los Angeles and across Southern California is banding together in an effort to protect immigrants from being swept up in raids conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The group, known as the Community Self-Defense Coalition, publicly launched Wednesday, Feb. 12, at a press conference in front of the federal immigration offices in downtown L.A. It also announced it was planning a rally at Placita Olvera on Monday.
“You will not come into our community without facing an organized resistance,” said Ron Gochez of Union Del Barrio during the press conference.
“One of the beautiful things about this coalition is the diversity that we have … Of course we have brown people, but we have Black people. We have white people. We have our Jewish brothers and sisters. We have Filipinos,” Gochez added.
Union Del Barrio, Centro CSO, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Black Men Build, as well as the L.A. chapters of the Association of Raza Educators, Jewish Voice for Peace and Anakbayan-USA are among the 60 groups that make up the coalition.
The creation of this network comes amid news that a “large scale” immigration enforcement action was coming to L.A. before the end of February. The Los Angeles Times cited leaked government documents showing that the ICE operation would focus on people who are not legally authorized to be in the country.
The plan, Gochez told Boyle Heights Beat, is to activate the network and the general public to create a blockade to prevent a potential raid from happening. “We’re going to call on the City of L.A. to surround them [ICE] and not allow them to kidnap our people,” Gochez said.
It’s one of other tactics to fight deportation, Gochez said.
Gochez noted Union Del Barrio’s community patrols in which members survey neighborhoods in their patrol cars for sightings of federal agents.
Lupe Carrasco Cardona, the chair of the Association of Raza Educators in Los Angeles, said they are joining Union Del Barrio in surveying neighborhoods.
“We’re doing community patrols before school and after school around the neighborhood. We’re working with students and parents to create phone trees, to not just know your rights, but to defend your rights,” Carrasco Cardona said at the press conference.
A CalMatters story found that Californians targeted in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have not appeared to pose risks to national security or public safety. The Department of Homeland Security posted that it deported 7,300 people in the first week of the Trump administration.
