Immigration raids continuted to spark nervousness and anger over the weekend throughout Southern California.
Armed, masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers executed a raid Saturday afternoon at a swap meet in Santa Fe Springs hours earlier than a live performance was to start, witnesses mentioned.
The brokers arrived at Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet round 3:30 p.m., in line with eyewitness Howie Rezendez, who filmed armed brokers hop off their automobiles and head into the venue.
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“There have been round 50 to 80” brokers, Rezendez mentioned. “They’d greater than 30 automobiles and vans filled with brokers, and three helicopters up there too.”
A live performance that includes musical acts like Los Cadetes de Linares, Los Dinamicos del Norte and La Nueva Rebelión was scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. However on-line footage from witnesses present a virtually vacant venue, a stark distinction to the massive crowds the venue sometimes attracts.
Rezendez mentioned the brokers left round 4:30 p.m. Omar Benjamin Zaldivar, who additionally recorded the brokers, mentioned ICE took “a bunch of individuals.”
“If you happen to regarded Hispanic in any manner, they only took you,” Zaldivar mentioned.
The variety of individuals swept up from the raid stays unclear.
Shortly after the raid, swap meet officers postponed the live performance.
“Later we are going to present particulars,” the Instagram put up mentioned.
Swap meet officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The 17-acre out of doors hub first opened in 1965. Often called a sizzling spot for música Mexicana, the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet hosts an out of doors live performance each weekend. Different fashionable Latino swap meets in Los Angeles appeared equally vacant amid the continued ICE raids.
The Whittier Swap Meet closed final week in preparation for attainable raids.
The Whittier Police Division didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The tensions have been additionally felt at a significant soccer match Saturday night at SoFi Stadium.
Waving Mexican flags and indicators criticizing President Trump, about 300 individuals overtook sidewalks in Inglewood on Saturday afternoon within the hours main as much as the group-stage match between Mexico and the Dominican Republic on the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Protesters march Saturday in Inglewood, with the Intuit Dome within the background.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Instances)
Esmeralda Sanchez, who was not attending the sport, mentioned she got here to the rally to assist members of the family and pals who usually are not within the nation legally.
“We’re the voice that our mother and father and the older era couldn’t be immediately,” Sanchez mentioned over the sound of horns and cheers.
The parking zone outdoors the stadium felt comparatively subdued, with some followers making carne asada on transportable grills and others waving Mexican flags.
Emilio Estrada and Ashley Ruiz from Bakersfield posed for a photograph in entrance of the lake by the stadium, saying their mother and father had been fretting about their go to to L.A.
“My mother stored calling me as we drove down,” Estrada mentioned.
Jesse Murillo of Orange County mentioned attending the sport to assist the Mexican nationwide group felt like a transparent signal of protest towards the federal authorities.
“We’re not afraid to come back out right here and present our colours,” he mentioned. “It doesn’t matter what, our individuals have all the time discovered a solution to be right here.”
Followers arrive early inside SoFi Stadium earlier than Saturday’s CONCACAF Gold Cup group-stage match between Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
(Wally Skalij / Related Press)
His good friend Richard Barrera mentioned many individuals have been afraid as a result of a lot data, and misinformation, is ricocheting round social media.
“So many individuals reside in worry and that appears unfair, since you see a lot on-line after which it seems ICE isn’t there,” Barrera mentioned.
Throughout the road from the stadium, Inglewood native Jorge Gomez mentioned he had been nervous about attending any protests due to the immigration raids taking part in out throughout Southern California.
“I’ve been attempting to be extra cautious, be extra cautious,” he mentioned. “I shouldn’t be out right here, however I’m — as a result of deep down inside is one thing that retains telling me that that is incorrect and I want to face up.”
Taqueros, fruteros and different road distributors are emptying the streets of Los Angeles amid widespread immigration sweeps, fearing their very own arrest and deportation.
However a Koreatown-based nonprofit not too long ago launched a fundraiser to offset misplaced wages, donating to cowl lease, utilities and different requirements — and permitting distributors to remain house.
“The explanation they have been on the market, regardless that it’s so harmful to their security proper now” is that the lease is so excessive and so they have payments,” mentioned Andreina Kniss, an organizer and longtime volunteer at Ktown for All.
“We acquired collectively and we mentioned, ‘Each day we will preserve them off the streets is a day they’re safer.’”
Ktown for All is sourcing donations by Venmo, with account data posted to Instagram, then discreetly distributing them to dozens of road distributors to cowl 30 days of lease and payments. Based on Kniss, they’ve raised greater than $50,000 within the final week.
Since its founding in 2018, Ktown for All has targeted most of its efforts on advocating for Koreatown’s unhoused inhabitants and distributing sources similar to water, blankets, laundry kits and ready meals. In the midst of feeding this demographic, members of Ktown for All constructed connections with the neighborhood’s road distributors.
Many road meals distributors, normally a standard sight in Southern California, are staying house for worry of being nabbed by immigration brokers.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
In instances of financial vendor hardship similar to wet seasons or emergencies like January’s fires, the nonprofit launched a “vendor buy-out” initiative to assist maintain them. Donated funds “purchase out” meals similar to tamales and tacos from the distributors, then Ktown for All’s volunteers distribute them to these in want. Now the nonprofit is approaching distributors in Koreatown and asking, “What wouldn’t it take to get you off the road?”
Many distributors are merely being paid with out supplying meals. “We’re road distributors,” one donation recipient advised Ktown for All and whose identify was withheld to take care of anonymity.
“We’re afraid to exit, and all we wish is to work for our households.”
“Lots of them are in hiding with no monetary assist proper now,” mentioned Kniss. “It’s actually nauseating having to choose [between] paying your payments or being kidnapped.”
For Kniss, the trigger is private. She was raised in a household of immigrants and farmworkers on the Central Coast, and have become a U.S. citizen 5 years in the past.
“Having been a type of households that had lived in worry, seeing the best way that our road distributors have been residing in terror, actually struck my coronary heart,” she mentioned.
The nonprofit plans to lift funds for the “vendor buy-out” till ICE leaves Los Angeles or till the cash runs out, and is often discovering new road distributors to assist by its community.
This system’s attain is already increasing past Koreatown, aiding a frutero in Echo Park, a sizzling canine vendor in downtown L.A. and past. The response from the group, Kniss mentioned, is overwhelming.
She hopes different mutual-aid organizations will “copy” the strategy.
“I assumed the acute fears of getting my household ripped other than me as slightly boy have been simply exaggerations,” one other nameless vendor wrote to Ktown for All.
“However now this administration [has] resurfaced those self same fears and have terrorized probably the most real, type and hard-working immigrants I’ve identified for my whole life.”
