Days before immigration raids sparked sometimes violent protests and the deployment of US troops in Los Angeles, Nancy Raquel Chirinos Medina said, her husband received a “strange” text.
The message from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement directed the father of two with one on the way to come to a federal building downtown with his family.
“It really surprised us, especially because it said the whole family had to be there … It was strange,” recalled Chirinos Medina, an asylum seeker from Honduras along with her husband. They routinely checked in with ICE, she said, but their next appointment wasn’t until September.
Chirinos Medina, who’s nine weeks pregnant, as well as her husband, their 8-year-old son, and their US-born toddler, wound up among the nearly 20 immigrant families detained by ICE for hours at that Los Angeles federal building the first Wednesday in June, she said. There were few answers about what was happening and, that night, her husband was arrested and later transferred to an ICE detention center to face deportation.
“Dad isn’t coming back, is he?” their young son asked Chirinos Medina late that night. He cried the entire 90-minute drive back home to Lancaster, a city in northern Los Angeles County.
“We entered as a family of four and only three of us left,” said Chirinos Medina, who – with her husband and son – came to the US four years ago. They’re in the process of appealing an immigration court decision denying their asylum claim.
Her husband, Randal Isaias Bonilla Mejia, has not returned home. A court order bars his deportation until the family’s asylum claim is adjudicated.
The events that unfolded that Wednesday, and the days that followed, illustrate the human toll of more aggressive methods the Trump administration have taken to detain migrants in the United States — taking into custody those who arrive for routine check-ins, while also conducting workplace raids that have unleashed waves of fear across Southern California and beyond.
A curfew was imposed in parts of downtown Los Angeles last week after fiery weekend protests outside the same complex of government buildings where Chirinos Medina’s husband was detained.
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Across the nation, demonstrators have taken to the streets, with hundreds of protests on Saturday as part of the “No Kings” movement that organizers said seeks to reject “authoritarianism, billionaire-first politics, and the militarization of our democracy.” The tumultuous week also reflects the complicated landscape of immigration in America and controversial enforcement actions that shape public perception.
“These are tactics that we haven’t seen before on this scale,” said Amada Armenta, UCLA associate professor of urban planning who specializes in immigration enforcement.
“They are showing up with masks. They are not identifying themselves,” she said of the heavily armed ICE officers in tactical gear and armored vehicles conducting the sweeps. “They are grabbing people indiscriminately, putting them into vans and then not letting them see attorneys. They’re sometimes quickly deporting people before they can get an attorney, or they’re moving them to other states where it’s hard for them to access support.”
ICE has not responded to CNN’s request for comment about the ramped up enforcement.
In statements last week, an ICE spokesperson said the agency “arrests aliens who commit crimes and other individuals who have violated our nation’s immigration laws,” and “takes very seriously it’s mandate to care for people in their custody with dignity and as mandated by law.”
‘Heartbroken, angry and scared’
Immigration sweeps on industries that rely heavily on immigrant workers have picked up in recent weeks amid a push to meet White House demands to increase daily arrests.
In an about-face, the Trump administration ordered ICE to scale back raids and arrests targeting farms, eateries and hotels — industries reliant on immigrant labor, according to an internal email and three officials with knowledge of the guidance cited by The New York Times on Friday. Officers should refrain from arresting “noncriminal collaterals,” or undocumented individuals without criminal records, the guidance said.
Undocumented immigrants make up 4% to 5% of the total US workforce, but 15% to 20% or more in industries such as crop production, food processing and construction, according to Goldman Sachs.
In Los Angeles County, about a tenth of roughly 950,000 residents are unauthorized immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. About a third have lived in the US 20 years or more. More than two-thirds are employed.
In a city where the names of streets reflect its Spanish roots – and which has even deeper ties to Mexico and Central America – the outrage over the sweeps is not surprising.
“The strong response that you’re seeing comes from … a really deep history of immigrant organizing in the city… It shows how intimately woven immigrants are to Los Angeles,” said Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.
On June 6, raids outside a Home Depot and an apparel warehouse in Los Angeles set off days of protests and, on some nights, clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement. President Donald Trump on June 7 deployed National Guard troops to the city to “temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions” and to protect federal property, according to a memo –– overriding California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called the move a “brazen abuse of power.”
The Trump administration’s immigration policy “affects so many children of immigrants who are growing up with legal status in the United States, or people who have relatives who are undocumented or legal permanent residents. People who are naturalized citizens are worried and afraid,” said Jody Agius Vallejo, a professor of sociology at USC and associate director of the university’s Equity Research Institute. “There is not one person who is not touched by immigration in California and it is why these people are out there on the streets.”
In Los Angeles, some nannies are living in fear of being profiled by ICE officers. As the school year wound down, many children stayed home. Others wept openly in class, worried about the future of their families. Some relatives stayed away from graduation ceremonies.
“How do you explain the reality of this without truly frightening … the child more than they already are, because you can’t sugarcoat this. This is real,” said Adrian Tamayo, a special education teacher at Lorena Street Elementary School in the predominantly Hispanic Boyle Heights neighborhood.
Tamayo said he has asked his wife to drive when they ride together. “Your skin is lighter than mine,” he said he tells her. “It’s kind of sad that we’ve come to that.”
Martha Melendrez, a psychiatric social worker at a high school in Los Angeles County, said the anxiety of many students has been mounting since the November election. Three months ago, she said, immigration officers came to the house of one of her students and pointed a gun at him.
“It’s just infuriating. It’s heartbreaking. It’s sad,” said Melendrez, adding that she was formerly undocumented herself.
Outside the Los Angeles County apparel warehouse where dozens of immigrants were detained on June 6, Leslie Quechol, 23, said family members of the workers gathered, many weeping, as their loved ones were put into vans.
One detainee was her cousin, Ismael Quechol, 40, who she said has three US-born children and migrated from Mexico more than 15 years ago. Many of those arrested descended from the Zapotecs, an Indigenous people of Mexico.
“Our whole community is heartbroken, angry and scared. We’re just seeing how our loved ones being taken away,” she said. “Our communities are under attack, basically.”
‘We felt like we were imprisoned’
Chirinos Medina, her husband and their then-4-year-old son arrived in the United States in 2021. The family, nationals of Honduras, arrived at the US-Mexico border and moved to California. They left Honduras after her husband, a bus driver back home, received death threats from MS-13 gang members, according to their asylum application. Her toddler is a US citizen.
The family checked in regularly with ICE, she said. “We’ve done everything like they asked.”
On June 4, a Wednesday, the family went to a federal building downtown, proceeding as they would for any other routine check-in. But the waiting time dragged on, Chirinos Medina said.
Chirinos Medina and her husband were in a room with nearly 20 adults plus many children. They noticed that the doors had been closed, and officers appeared to be standing guard, she said.
“We felt like we were imprisoned … We were all sitting and we heard the yells of someone saying, ‘Help.’ My son got scared. I asked my son if he was afraid. He was trembling and said yes,” she told CNN in Spanish. “We were afraid they were going to separate us.”
Eventually, Chirinos Medina was pulled aside by an officer who said she’d be able to go home with her kids, but her husband would remain detained.
“I had to inform my husband that he was going to remain detained while I went home,” she said.
“Stay strong,” he told her.
“They closed the door, and I didn’t see him again,” Chirinos Medina recalled.
Nearly 12 hours later, she left the building with her children.
Her husband, who she said has no criminal record, is now detained at an ICE facility in California.
“We never thought this would happen,” Chirinos Medina said, adding that she expected Trump to go after criminals, not people like her and her husband. “A lot of families are suffering.”
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