Why has Los Angeles, of all U.S. cities, erupted in mass protests against immigration raids? The answer may lie in this region’s racial, ethnic and demographic makeup.
Los Angeles: A city whose population is more than 1/3 foreign-born
Los Angeles County sprawls over more than 4,000 square miles of Southern California, and includes the city of Los Angeles, as well as Beverly Hill, Burbank, Compton, Glendale, Hollywood, Long Beach, Malibu, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Torrance and several other communities. It’s home to nearly 10 million people and accounts for about 27% of California’s population.
A third of L.A. County’s 10 million residents are foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census.
The city of Los Angeles, in the heart of L.A. County, is home to nearly 3.9 million people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. More than 35% of them were born outside the United States.
Just over half of L.A.’s foreign-born residents are naturalized citizens, and more than 56% of Los Angeles residents speak a language other than English at home ‒ predominantly Spanish.
More than 1.8 million of Los Angeles residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, and close to half a million are Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. More than 1.15 million people say they are “some other race,” and just over half a million identify with two or more races.
The demographics of the Los Angeles area “play a big role” in how the region functions, said Dr. Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and director of the university’s Equity Research Institute.
Nearly half of L.A. County’s workforce is foreign-born, he said, and about 60% of children have at least one immigrant parent, with nearly one out of five county residents either being undocumented or living with an undocumented family member, “so about 1/5th of the people here are experiencing this, whether directly or indirectly,” Pastor said.
Los Angelenos’ average age is just over 37 years old, with the biggest portion of its “population pyramid” (a visual representation comparing the numbers of people in certain age cohorts) falling in the 25-29, 30-34 and 35-39 ranges.
According to a 2020 study by University of Southern California Dornsife, there are about 900,000 undocumented immigrants in the city of Los Angeles, most of whom had been in the U.S. for 10 years or more.
“So these people are deeply settled here,” Pastor said. “They’re part of the communities here, working in businesses, belonging to faith institutions.”
Many Angeleno families live in “mixed status” households, the study added, in which some members are citizens and some are not. The study also noted that, in 2020, “120,000 youth in L.A. County will become eligible to vote for the first time. Of that group, 60% have at least one immigrant parent.”
‘Fertile ground’ for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown
Many of the U.S.’s more recent immigrants, especially those who arrived between 2020 and 2023, went to places with lower costs of living than Southern California, like Florida and Texas, Pastor noted.
“This matters because we are basically fertile ground for the Trump Administration to launch its spectacle of enforcement,” Pastor said. The administration has said it’s targeting criminals, but Los Angelenos are skeptical, he added: “It’s more likely in L.A. to be removing a father who showed up to work or a mother who picked up her kids at school. Hard-core criminals are hard to find; pulling people from a day labor site is much easier.”
“To the extent that residents with documentation (i.e., naturalized citizens and lawful residents) feel sympathy with undocumented persons who may be targeted by ICE, that could play a role in the current protests,” said Tim Bruckner a professor of public health and co-director at the University of California Irvine’s Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy.
Bruckner noted that past research has shown there is “a ‘chilling’ effect that targeted enforcement (such as ICE raids) has on persons who were not themselves targeted, but who felt a connection to the populations targeted,” an effect that “extends beyond simply family or friends who know the persons targeted.”
Other factors might also be at play, he added, including education and income levels, not just in terms of where immigration enforcement is targeted but also the reaction to it. Undocumented people are less likely to have a bachelor’s degree, and thus are more likely to be employed in low-wage jobs, and the district where the raids have taken place is believed to be home to a large share of the city’s immigrants, “which might have led to further enforcement of areas in Downtown (Los Angeles).”
How does political affiliation come into play?
In the 2024 election, Los Angeles County voters went overwhelmingly for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris (California’s former attorney general) over Trump, with Harris winning nearly 65% of the vote to Trump’s almost 32%. In addition, Democrat Adam Schiff, an incumbent, defeated Republican Steve Garvey (a former Los Angeles Dodger) for one of the state’s U.S. Senate seat.
There are nearly 6 million registered voters in Los Angeles County.
Of those, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a 3 to 1 margin: just over 3 million to slightly under 1 million (there are 148,078 registered Independents and 22,483 Green Party voters).
Both California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are Democrats.
Those political demographics also play a role, Pastor said.
“Aside from immigrant-bashing, California-bashing has also become a GOP sport,” he said. “And it’s pretty widespread here that people do not like ICE.”
Los Angelenos have also become accustomed to, and supportive of, their immigrant neighbors, whose ties to the community run deep and wide, he said.
“Even people who aren’t too far left value having a Korean taco truck, getting their lawns mowed and houses built,” Pastor said. “There are a number of people who worry about their kids going to school to find their friends are suddenly gone, or have family members who are gone.”
Ultimately, he said, the ramifications for Los Angeles and its surrounding communities, still reeling from devastating wildfires earlier this year, could be dire.
“One-third of our residential construction labor is undocumented immigrants,” Pastor said. “If we’re going to rebuild from the fires, (deporting immigrants) is not a strategy for relief.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How LA, with a million-plus immigrants erupted into anti-ICE protest
