In response to President Donald Trump’s promises to increase deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, activist groups in Los Angeles have set up complex “community defense” networks. ‘La migra patrols’ look for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, students walk out of public schools, and volunteers canvass neighborhoods with flyers informing people of how to assert their rights if approached by ICE officers. Many of those groups draw on a rich, decades-long history of “community self-defense” and Chicano activism within Los Angeles.
During his 2024 reelection bid, President Donald Trump not only promised increased immigration enforcement along the US border, but used the slogan “mass deportations now” regularly on the campaign trail. Once Trump entered office on Jan. 20, he appointed Tom Homan as border czar, who announced his focus would be to deport “as many as we can.”
Almost immediately after his inauguration, Trump threatened to pull federal funding for sanctuary cities and pushed for immigration enforcement agents to be allowed to enter churches and schools to make arrests. Los Angeles officially declared its status as “sanctuary city” in December.
Protests against the threat of mass deportation began quickly. On Feb. 2, a large group marched through downtown LA and took to the 101 freeway. Hundreds of students left their schools and walked Cesar Chavez Avenue in protest two days later. Students from nearby middle and high schools denounced the ramp-up of deportations, walking out again on Feb. 20 to Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights.
This current wave of protests often references Los Angeles’ past of Chicano revolt. Call-and-response chants of “Chicano power” ring occasionally throughout the crowds. Brown Beret chapters from throughout Southern California have attended the protests to provide security. Indigenous dance groups often attend, and dance in step with drums.
The Chicano Moratorium on Aug. 29, 1970, looms large within immigrant rights groups in Los Angeles. On that day, as many as 30,000 activists marched through Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War and draft. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department broke up the rally violently; they claimed they had received reports that a nearby liquor store was being robbed. They chased the “suspects” into Laguna Park, and promptly declared the gathering of thousands to be an illegal assembly. More than 150 were arrested. Three people were killed: Lyn Ward, a medic and Brown Beret, Angel Gilberto Díaz, a Brown Beret from Pico Rivera, and Rubén Salazar, a Los Angeles Times journalist and columnist. Laguna Park was later renamed to Salazar Park in honor of the journalist.
The Chicano Moratorium on Aug. 29, 1970, looms large within immigrant rights groups in Los Angeles.
Though the brutality in response to the Aug. 29, 1970, Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War has led to it getting a large share of attention, there were actually three Chicano Moratorium rallies from 1969 to 1970. Years later, public records requests provided concrete evidence that the FBI had infiltrated them in an attempt to suppress their goals.
The Brown Berets emerged as a pro-Chicano organization in the late 1960s, and were central to organizing the Aug. 29 march. The group had been working for educational reform and farmworkers’ rights. They also worked against police brutality and the Vietnam War. Brown Berets began to operate under the motto “To Serve, Observe, and Protect,” and formed what they referred to as “community self-defense.” Often, they were outwardly in opposition to the Los Angeles Police Department, whose motto is “To Protect And To Serve.”
Carlos Montes was a co-founder of the Brown Berets and an organizer of the first rally of the Chicano Moratorium in 1969. He recalled moving to Los Angeles as a boy from Juarez, Mexico, and spending most of his life fighting what he called “the nightmare of US racism.” He said that, alongside others, he’d “organized the Brown Berets with the young, angry men and women. Angry Chicanos. We wanted to express our identity of being proud Chicanos, and we took on the struggle for better education.”
By the early 1970s, most Brown Beret groups had disbanded. Federal and state law enforcement infiltrated the group. Sexism allegations led women to resign en masse. The “East LA 13,” including Montes, faced 66 years in prison before they were acquitted on charges stemming from student walkout organizing. Montes fled underground to Mexico in 1970 with his wife, due to “heavy repression and threats.” Eustacio Martinez, an employee of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the US Treasury Department, had acted as an agent provocateur; he wreaked havoc on relations between pro-Chicano groups.
In 1994, California passed Proposition 187, which restricted undocumented immigrants from accessing public services, including education and healthcare. Just weeks later, a federal judge ruled an injunction after immigrant rights groups challenged it in court. Ultimately, courts sided with immigrant rights groups and ruled it unconstitutional under the 14th amendment.
In response to Proposition 187, and rising anti-immigrant sentiment, the Brown Berets began to reform. Today, female leadership and organizers are often at the helm of chapters. At ra, the majority of the voices saying “Ya Basta!” are often women.
Calle Olvera and its adjoining plaza filled with pro-immigrant speakers and organizations on Feb. 17 of this year. More than 100 people gathered. More than 70 different activist organizations were present. Those organizations have agreed to march as the Community Self-Defense Coalition.
Rosalio Muñoz was present at the Calle Olvera protest carrying a sign; he’d been an organizer for the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. Muñoz was the first Chicano student president at UCLA. He won 60% of the vote on a platform that supported the work of the United Farm Workers, as well as organized against police brutality and US involvement in Vietnam.
Montes was there in Calle Olvera as well. He now works with Centro CSO, one of the groups that participated in the Feb. 17 march. The group organizes for immigrant rights, public education, and “supporting, in solidarity, other communities seeking social justice,” according to their website. The group is also helping to organize against threats of mass deportation, particularly in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.
In early February, Los Angeles Times revealed that ICE had plans for a “large scale” immigration operation. Further details were sparse, though rumors the operation would begin on Feb. 23 would ultimately prove correct.
Activist groups began to ramp up work behind the scenes to form ad-hoc community defense. Via Signal, an encrypted messaging service application, group chats were used for communication between different organizations and affinity groups. Dozens of “Know Your Rights” seminars have been held at community centers, churches, parks; many of them broadcast live on social media.
Unión del Barrio is another activist group involved in the Community Self-Defense Coalition. Since the 11th anniversary of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium in 1981, Unión del Barrio has “led struggles to resist migra and police violence; defend the rights of workers, prisoners, mujeres, and youth; and even launched numerous independent electoral campaigns.” Ahead of the Feb. 23 date, they called for additional volunteers in a widely circulated social media post. It read, in part, “Los Angeles: Who is willing to patrol their community tomorrow to look for ICE activities? Let’s protect each other by participating in this form of Community Self-Defense!”
Centro CSO organizes for immigrant rights, public education, and “supporting, in solidarity, other communities seeking social justice,” according to their website.
Unión del Barrio formed their patrols in 1992. On their website, they say they’re “a means of building community-based power that will challenge police and migra attacks. These agencies are trained to profile, harass, detain, arrest, and brutalize our people.”
Today, groups like Unión del Barrio train volunteers to look out for potential signs of ICE agents. They look out especially for Ford Explorers, Dodge Durangos, and Chevy Impalas—all vehicles they say are often used by immigration enforcement officers.
Lupe Carrasco Cardona, a member of the Association of Raza Educators (ARE), often patrols in neighborhoods of Los Angeles before she begins her workday as an educator for Los Angeles Unified School District. She says the group is about “communicating self defense, to defend the rights of the people whether they have documents or not.”
ARE has existed since 1994, and was originally founded in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood as a response to Proposition 187’s attempts to remove undocumented children from public schools. They have since expanded throughout California and have chapters in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Sacramento. In their mission statement, ARE says that they “believe that education is the first step in creating consciousness that leads to action. In these turbulent times, we know that it’s just not enough to teach about social justice, we have to practice social justice in every face [of] our lives.”
Carrasco Cardona said that she’s seen mental health issues rise among her students. From what she has seen as an educator in LAUSD, “students are very afraid. Students are not going to school; they’re coming to school with anxiety. It is really impacting their education.” The patrols are partially designed also to calm those fears, according to Carrasco Cardona. She continued, “We’re all here saying we see you, we love you, we are not going to let them just come and take you. We have to get to a point where the people defend themselves.”
Carrasco Cardona described how community self-defense works. “We divide major streets from north to south, and then everyone with a partner goes in a vehicle. We have radios and we have megaphones.” She said that if they find ICE officers, they respond with noise and alert nearby neighbors: “…We put them on notice that we see them. We make noise for people in the community so they know not to open their doors, and we radio the other community self defense units to come and support us [with backup].”
On Feb. 23, there were patrols on the lookout for immigration officials throughout the 4,084 square mile area of Los Angeles County, including in South Los Angeles, Skid Row, West Adams, Lennox, Boyle Heights, and East Los Angeles.
In Boyle Heights, a sign commemorates the neighborhood’s “tradition of activism.” Erected by the city of Los Angeles, it describes the neighborhood as “often viewed by longstanding residents as a district too easily marginalized by the city’s political and economic elite…” The sign describes an era from the 1920s to the 1940s, when Yiddish pro-labor organizations and mutual aid groups were harassed by LAPD’s anti-leftist “Red Squad.” In 1947, a chapter of the Community Service Organization was founded in Boyle Heights; Cesar Chavez began his tenure as national director there. The sign mentions walkouts in the 1960s, and refers to the East LA 13.
Just one block away from the sign, several members of Centro CSO filed into vehicles around 5AM on Feb. 23, beginning their “la migra” patrol. They used Signal and walkie talkies to communicate with others on patrol. Four people arrived in a black vehicle. While talking with The Real News Network, occasional updates came in via group chats. Updates came from patrols in other neighborhoods reported where there was no ICE presence.
The patrols are partially designed also to calm those fears, according to Carrasco Cardona. … “We’re all here saying we see you, we love you, we are not going to let them just come and take you.”
Between various check-ins, Montes described his life of activism. He described being represented in the East LA 13 trials by Oscar Z. Acosta, the boisterous inspiration for Hunter S. Thompson’s Dr. Gonzo in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. He checks in with others via walkie talkie. He moves onto various law enforcement raids on his home throughout his life. Then, he checks in again via walkie talkie. Eventually, he begins to talk about how some of the members of the Chicano movement in the 1960s have become labor organizers or politicians.
ICE agents passed by a Catholic church on 4th street in Boyle Heights. A short discussion of when the last time members attended mass followed. Several used to attend that church. One of the patrol members looked nervous; others looked focused and ready to respond if ICE agents stopped in the neighborhood.
Occasionally, as residents of the neighborhood walked past, the patrol was greeted in Spanish. The patrol offered business cards with phone numbers of immigrant rights groups and legal assistance.
A separate patrol spotted ICE agents in a parking lot in front of a Target in Alhambra. Broadcasting live from her phone on social media, Carrasco Cardona screamed: “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Within minutes of Carraso Cardona pointing them out they began to separate and drive to different areas of the county, and were gone.
When the Boyle Heights patrol heard that Carrasco Cardona had found ICE agents, they quickly filed into their vehicles. They kept in communication; other nearby patrols tracked the ICE vehicles exiting the parking lot, marking where they turned on freeways throughout Los Angeles. Eventually, reports of the vehicles from other patrols slowed down and stopped for the day.
Since the Feb. 23 raids, ICE operations have continued in Los Angeles; protests popping up in response have continued as well. Volunteers continue to patrol neighborhoods and canvas neighborhoods like Boyle Heights with flyers and small red cards informing Angelenos of immigrant rights.
Plans are materializing from activists for a Chicano Summit in Boyle Heights in mid-April. Gabriel, an organizer with Centro CSO, told The Real News that there could be dozens of pro-Chicano groups from throughout Southern California, and possibly the country, there.
When asked about seeing protests and imagery drawing from the Chicano Movement of his youth, Montes said: “Some of the students have been yelling ‘Chicano power!’ When hundreds if not thousands of people are chanting. It’s pretty powerful.” He smiled, and quietly recited the chant, then said the resurgence “takes me back, you know? From the decade of the Chicano power movement. ’65 to ’75, more or less. We never die, you know.”
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.