POLITICS

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday issued a stark warning to Iran against retaliating on U.S. targets in the Middle East while also predicting Israel and Iran would “soon” make a deal to end their escalating conflict.

Trump in an early morning social media post said the United States “had nothing to do with the attack on Iran” as Israel and Iran traded missile attacks for the third straight day. Iran, however, has said that it would hold the U.S. — which has provided Israel with much of its deep arsenal of weaponry — responsible for its backing of Israel’s military actions.

Israel targeted Iran’s Defense Ministry headquarters in Tehran and sites it alleged were associated with Iran’s nuclear program, while Iranian missiles evaded Israeli air defenses and slammed into buildings deep inside Israel.

“If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before,” Trump said.

Hours later, Trump took to social media again, saying, “Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal.”

The U.S. president claimed he has a track record for de-escalating conflicts, and that he would get Israel and Iran to cease hostilities, “just like I got India and Pakistan to make” after the two countries’ recent cross-border confrontation. The U.S. was among a multinational diplomatic effort that defused that crisis.

India struck targets inside Pakistan after militants in April massacred 26 tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any links to the attackers. Following India’s strikes in Pakistan, the two sides exchanged heavy fire along their de facto borders, followed by missile and drone strikes into each other’s territories, mainly targeting military installations and airbases.

It was the most serious confrontation in decades between the countries. Trump on Sunday repeated his claim, disputed by India, that the two sides agreed to a ceasefire after he had offered to help both nations with trade if they agreed to de-escalate.

Trump also pointed to efforts by his administration during his first term to mediate disputes between Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia.

“Likewise, we will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran!” Trump said. “Many calls and meetings now taking place. I do a lot, and never get credit for anything, but that’s OK, the PEOPLE understand. MAKE THE MIDDLE EAST GREAT AGAIN!”

The growing conflict between Israel and Iran is testing Trump, who ran on a promise to quickly end the wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine and build a foreign policy that more broadly favors steering clear of foreign conflicts.

Trump has struggled to find an endgame to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which show no signs of abating.

And after criticizing President Biden during last year’s presidential campaign for persuading Israel against carrying out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Trump himself made the case to the Israelis to give diplomacy a chance.

His administration’s push on Tehran to give up its nuclear program came after the U.S. and other world powers in 2015 reached a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday about the growing Israel-Iran conflict. And Trump is set to travel later Sunday to Canada for the Group of 7 summit, where the Mideast crisis will loom large.

Some influential backers of Trump are him urging to keep the U.S. out of Israel’s escalating conflict with Iran.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson are among the prominent hard-right backers of Trump who have argued that voters supported his election because he would not involve the nation in foreign conflicts.

Kirk said last week that before Israel launched the strikes on Iran he was concerned the situation could lead to “a massive schism in MAGA and potentially disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful presidency.”

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul praised Trump, saying he showed restraint and that he hoped the president’s “instincts will prevail.”

“So, I think it’s going to be very hard to come out of this and have a negotiated settlement,” Paul said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” ”I see more war and more carnage. And it’s not the U.S.’s job to be involved in this war.”

Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Gary Fields contributed to this report.

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. — A massive search stretched into its second day Sunday for a man who authorities say wore a mask and posed as a police officer while fatally shooting a Democratic state lawmaker in her suburban Minneapolis home, an act Gov. Tim Walz called “a politically motivated assassination.” Authorities said the suspect also shot and wounded a second lawmaker and was trying to flee the area.

Former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed in their Brooklyn Park home early Saturday. Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were injured at their Champlin address, about nine miles away.

Authorities identified the suspect as 57-year-old Vance Boelter, and the FBI issued a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction. They shared a photo taken Saturday of Boelter wearing a tan cowboy hat and asked the public to report sightings. Hundreds of law enforcement officers fanned out in the search.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Sunday that authorities believe the shooter hasn’t gone far.

“We believe he’s somewhere in the vicinity and that they are going to find him,” the Democrat said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But right now, everyone’s on edge here, because we know that this man will kill at a second.”

Authorities had not yet given any details on a possible motive.

Boelter is a former political appointee who served on the same state workforce development board as Hoffman, records show, though it was not clear whether or how well they knew each other.

The attacks prompted warnings to other state elected officials and the cancellation of planned “No Kings” demonstrations against President Trump in Minnesota, though some went ahead anyway, including one that drew tens of thousands to the state Capitol in St. Paul. Authorities said the suspect had “No Kings” fliers in his car and writings mentioning the names of the victims as well as other lawmakers and officials, though they could not say whether he had any other specific targets.

A Minnesota official told AP the suspect’s writings also contained information targeting prominent lawmakers who have been outspoken in favor of abortion rights. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Law enforcement agents recovered several AK-style firearms from the suspect’s vehicle, and he was believed to still be armed with a pistol, a person familiar with the matter told AP. The person could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The shootings happened at a time when political leaders nationwide have been attacked, harassed and intimidated amid deep ideological divisions.

“We must all, in Minnesota and across the country, stand against all forms of political violence,” said Walz, a Democrat. He also ordered flags to fly at half-staff in Hortman’s honor.

“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!” President Trump said in a statement hours after the attack.

Exchange of gunfire

Police responded to reports of gunfire at the Hoffmans’ home shortly after 2 a.m., Champlin police said, and found the couple with multiple gunshot wounds.

After seeing who the victims were, police sent officers to proactively check on Hortman’s home. There they encountered what appeared to be a police vehicle and a man dressed as an officer at the door, leaving the house, authorities said.

“When officers confronted him, the individual immediately fired upon the officers, who exchanged gunfire, and the suspect retreated back into the home” and escaped on foot, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said.

Authorities believe the shooter was wearing a mask when carrying out the attacks, according to a law enforcement official. The FBI released photos of the suspect including an image that appears to show him wearing a mask that covered his face and head, a police uniform, and holding a flashlight.

Bullet holes could be seen in the front door of the Hoffmans’ home.

John and Yvette Hoffman each underwent surgery, according to Walz.

Two Democrats targeted

Hortman, 55, had been the top Democratic leader in the state House since 2017. She led Democrats in a three-week walkout at the beginning of this year’s session in a power struggle with Republicans. Under a power-sharing agreement, she turned the gavel over to Republican Rep. Lisa Demuth and assumed the title speaker emerita.

Hortman used her position as speaker in 2023 to champion expanded protections for abortion rights, including legislation to solidify Minnesota’s status as a refuge for patients from restrictive states who travel there to seek abortions — and to protect providers who serve them.

Walz called her a “formidable public servant, a fixture and a giant in Minnesota.”

Hortman and her husband had two adult children.

The initial autopsy reports from the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office gave their cause of death as “multiple gunshot wounds.”

The reports said Melissa Hortman died at the scene, while her husband was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Hoffman, 60, was first elected in 2012 and is chair of the Senate Human Services Committee, which oversees one of the biggest parts of the state budget. He and his wife have one daughter.

The suspect

Boelter was appointed to the workforce development board in 2016 and reappointed in 2019 to a four-year term that expired in 2023, state records show.

Corporate records show Boelter’s wife filed to create a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services with the same Green Isle mailing address listed for the couple. Boelter’s wife is listed as president and CEO and he is listed as director of security patrols on the company’s website.

The website says the company provides armed security for property and events and features a photo of an SUV painted in a two-tone black-and-silver pattern similar to a police vehicle. Another photo shows a man in black tactical gear with a military-style helmet and a ballistic vest.

An online resume says Boelter is a security contractor who has worked in the Middle East and Africa, in addition to past managerial roles at companies in Minnesota.

Around 6 a.m. Saturday, Boelter texted friends to say he had “made some choices,” the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.

In the messages, read to reporters by David Carlson, Boelter did not specify what he had done but said: “I’m going to be gone for a while. May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn’t gone this way. … I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused.”

Political violence

Klobuchar condemned online threats and urged people Sunday to think twice before posting accusations or motives on the internet.

Speaking of Hortman on CNN, Klobuchar said: “This is a person that did everything for the right reasons.

“Regardless of political parties, look at her face before you send out your next post,” Klobuchar said.

Demuth, the Republican House speaker, called the attack “evil” and said she was “heartbroken beyond words” by the killings.

The shootings are the latest in a series of attacks against lawmakers across parties.

In April an assailant set fire to the home of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, forcing him and his family to flee during the Jewish holiday of Passover. The suspect said he planned to beat Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he found him, according to court documents.

In July 2024, Trump was grazed on the ear by one of a hail of bullets that killed a Trump supporter. Two months later a man with a rifle was discovered near the president’s Florida golf course and arrested.

Other incidents include a 2022 hammer attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, in their San Francisco home and a 2020 plot by anti-government extremists to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and start a civil war.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said he asked Capitol Police to “immediately increase security” for Klobuchar and the other U.S. senator from Minnesota, Tina Smith. He also asked Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, to hold a briefing on member security.

Speaking Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday,” Smith said she personally felt safe and the thought of security details becoming the norm was unbearable.

“But I think we are at a tipping point right now when we see these kinds of personal threats. It gets worse, not better,” she said. “I don’t want to think that I need to have a personal security detail wherever I go.“

Sullivan, Karnowski and Richer write for the Associated Press. Sullivan reported from Brooklyn Park, Karnowski from Minneapolis and Durkin Richer from Washington. AP writers Giovanna Dell’Orto in Champlin, Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y., Michael Biesecker in Washington and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Friday signed the controversial emergency spending bill for the Iraq war as antiwar activists assailed congressional Democrats for dropping their demands that the legislation include timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Bush’s action ended his first major fight with the new Congress over the war, but Democratic leaders vowed to continue their effort to force an end to the 4-year-old war.

“We are going to come back in other pieces of legislation … and keep coming back,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois.

Democrats’ decision to pull back on the timetable issue reflected political realities: With most Republicans continuing to support Bush on the war, Democrats do not have enough votes to impose deadlines over the president’s objections. And, although they oppose the war, many Democrats are leery of doing anything that might be construed as not supporting the troops in the field — such as holding back funding.

Democratic strategists are planning for the next battle.

The most immediate opportunity may be a defense authorization bill scheduled to come before the Senate at the end of June. Some Democratic strategists are considering attaching withdrawal timelines to it.

But the next major showdown may come in September, when Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, is due to report on the progress of Bush’s U.S. troop buildup.

At that time, members of both parties will be more focused on their reelection campaigns, and the administration will need more money for the war.

“September is the moment of truth for this war,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said.

Although she voted against the almost-$120-billion spending measure, which included money for some nonmilitary items, Pelosi said it represented a “step in the direction of accountability that the Americans have demanded in the war in Iraq.”

Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged the mounting pressure for change. “I think that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it,” he said at a Capitol news conference.

Antiwar activists were enraged that 86 Democrats in the House and 37 in the Senate voted for the bill and vowed to hold the lawmakers accountable. Some activists even talked about recruiting primary challengers.

“Voters elected them in November to end the war. That’s the promise they made, and we expect them to deliver on it,” said Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org.

Bush signed the legislation without the fanfare that accompanied his veto of an earlier bill that included timelines.

“Rather than mandate arbitrary timetables for troop withdrawals or micromanage our military commanders, this legislation enables our servicemen and women to follow the judgment of commanders on the ground,” Bush said in a statement after signing the bill.

The legislation, which funds military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq through Sept. 30, sets benchmarks for the Iraqi government in securing the country. If the Iraqis do not demonstrate progress by mid-July, U.S. reconstruction aid could be withheld, though Bush could waive that provision.

The bill also contained one of the Democratic majority’s top legislative priorities: the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade — to $7.25 an hour, from $5.15, to be phased in over two years.

The vote reflected the uncomfortable political bind facing House Democrats: Though they are in the majority, it was the GOP minority that assured the bill’s passage. Of the 226 Democrats voting in the House, 140 opposed it, while 194 of 196 Republicans voting gave their support.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who voted for the spending measure, said in a statement Friday: “Democrats have voted over and over again to change course in Iraq. But … we simply do not have the 67 votes at this point to overcome the president’s veto.”

“The problem here is that we have troops in harm’s way who must have the necessary equipment and support,” she said.

Pariser, however, said of the Democrats: “They’re in a very strong position to take the fight to the president. The country is with them. We think they have to make the president come to them, not go to where he is.”

Karen Jacob of Women’s Action for New Directions was among about a dozen antiwar activists from Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly’s Indiana district who showed up at an event he held Friday at a grocery store. She said the group “just very politely expressed our dismay at his voting for this legislation.”

“We want to let the representatives know we’re very unhappy, and if they continue on this direction, we will work to replace them,” she said.

Complaints about the war will be only one sore subject that lawmakers are likely to hear about when they go home for their weeklong recess for Memorial Day. The immigration debate has stirred emotions, and many are angry about gas prices.

Still, Democratic leaders were all smiles Friday, citing the minimum wage increase and funding included in the bill for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery and agriculture disaster aid.

California is also expected to receive a good deal of money to shore up its system of its levees and combat drug trafficking on federal lands.

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Brian Gavidia had stepped out from working on a car at a tow yard in a Los Angeles suburb Thursday, when armed, masked men — wearing vests with “Border Patrol” on them — pushed him up against a metal gate and demanded to know where he was born.

“I’m American, bro!” 29-year-old Gavidia pleaded, in video taken by a friend.

“What hospital were you born?” the agent barked.

“I don’t know, dawg!” he said. “East L.A., bro! I can show you: I have my f—ing Real ID.”

His friend, whom Gavidia did not name, narrated the video: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks.”

In a statement Saturday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said U.S. citizens were arrested “because they ASSAULTED U.S. Border Patrol Agents.” (McLaughlin’s statement emphasized the word “assaulted” in all-capital and boldfaced letters.)

When told by a reporter that Gavidia had not been arrested, McLaughlin clarified that Gavidia had been questioned by Border Patrol agents but there “is no arrest record.” She said a friend of Gavidia’s was arrested for assault of an officer.

As immigration operations have unfolded across Southern California in the last week, lawyers and advocates say people are being targeted because of their skin color. The encounter with Gavidia and others they are tracking have raised legal questions about enforcement efforts that have swept up hundreds of immigrants and shot fear into the deeply intertwined communities they call home.

Agents picking up street vendors without warrants. American citizens being grilled. Home Depot lots swept. Car washes raided. The wide-scale arrests and detainments — often in the region’s largely Latino neighborhoods — contain hallmarks of racial profiling and other due process violations.

“We are seeing ICE come into our communities to do indiscriminate mass arrests of immigrants or people who appear to them to be immigrant, largely based on racial profiling,” said Eva Bitran, a lawyer at ACLU of Southern California.

When asked about the accusations of racial profiling, the White House deflected.

Calling the questions “shameful regurgitations of Democrat propaganda by activists — not journalists,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson chided The Times reporters Saturday for not reporting the “real story — the American victims of illegal alien crime and radical Democrat rioters willing to do anything to keep dangerous illegal aliens in American communities.”

She did not answer the question.

McLaughlin said in a statement, “Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE.”

She said the suggestion fans the flames and puts agents in peril.

“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence,” she said. “We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” she said.

Customs and Border Protection officers are stationed at the federal building in Los Angeles on Friday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The unprecedented show of force by federal agents follows orders from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration plan and a Santa Monica native, to execute 3,000 arrests a day. In May, Miller reportedly directed top ICE officials to go beyond target lists and have agents make arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not answer specific questions about the encounter with Gavidia and said that immigration enforcement has been “targeted.” The agency did not explain what is meant by targeted enforcement.

But a federal criminal complaint against Javier Ramirez, another of Gavidia’s friends, said Border Patrol agents were conducting a “roving patrol” in Montebello around 4:30 p.m. when they “engaged a subject in a consensual encounter” in a parking lot on West Olympic Boulevard. The complaint noted that the parking lot is fenced and gated, but that, at the time of the interaction, the gate to the parking lot was open.

The enforcement was part of a roving patrol in what John B. Mennell, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said was a “lawful immigration enforcement operation” in which agents also arrested “without incident” an immigrant without legal status.

Gavidia said he and Ramirez both rent space at the tow yard to fix cars.

On video captured by a security camera at the scene, the agents pull up at the open gate in a white SUV and three agents exit the car. At least one covers his face with a mask as they walk into the property and begin looking around. Shortly after, an agent can be seen with one man in handcuffs calmly standing against the fence, while Ramirez can be heard shouting and being wrestled to the ground.

Gavidia walks up on the scene from the sidewalk outside the business where agents are parked. Seeing the commotion, he turns around. An agent outside the business follows him and then another does.

Gavidia, whom Mennell identified as a third person, was detained “for investigation for interference (in an enforcement operation) and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.”

“Video didn’t show the full story,” he said in a statement.

But it is unclear from the video exactly what that interference is. And Gavidia denies interfering with any operations.

CBP, the agency that has played a prominent role in the recent sweeps, is also under a federal injunction in Central California after a judge found it had engaged in “a pattern and practice” of violating people’s constitutional rights in raids earlier this year.

U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino, who oversaw raids that included picking people up at Home Depot and stopping them on the highway, has emerged as a key figure in L.A. He stood alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday at a news conference where Sen. Alex Padilla — the state’s first Latino U.S. senator — was handcuffed, forced to the ground and briefly held after interrupting Noem with a question.

“A lot of bad people, a lot of bad things are in our country now,” Bovino said. “That’s why we’re here right now, is to remove those bad people and bad things, whether illegal aliens, drugs or otherwise, we’re here. We’re not going away.”

Bovino said hundreds of Border Patrol agents have fanned out and are on the ground in L.A. carrying out enforcement.

A federal judge for the Eastern District of California ordered Bovino’s agency to halt illegal stops and warrantless arrests in the district after agents detained and arrested dozens of farmworkers and laborers — including a U.S. citizen — in the Central Valley shortly before President Trump took office.

The lawsuit, brought by the United Farm Workers and Central Valley residents, accused the agency of brazenly racial profiling people in a days-long enforcement. It roiled the largely agricultural area, after video circulated of agents slashing the tires of a gardener who was a citizen on his way to work, and it raised fears that those tactics could become the new norm there.

The effort was “proof of concept,” David Kim, assistant chief patrol agent under Bovino, told the San Diego investigative outfit Inewsource in March. “Testing our capabilities, and very successful. We know we can push beyond that limit now as far as distance goes.”

Bovino said at the news conference that his agents were “not going anywhere soon.”

“You’ll see us in Los Angeles. You’ll continue to see us in Los Angeles,” he said.

Bitran, who is working on the case in the Central Valley, said Miller’s orders have “set loose” agents “with a mandate to capture as many people as possible,” and that “leads to them detaining people in a way that violates the Constitution.”

In Montebello, a 78% Latino suburb that shares a border with East Los Angeles, Border Patrol agents took Gavidia’s identification. Although they eventually let him go, Ramirez, also American and a single father of two, wasn’t so lucky.

Tomas De Jesus, Ramirez’s cousin and his attorney, said authorities are accusing him of “resisting arrest, assaulting people” after agents barged into a private business, “without a warrant, without a probable cause.”

“What is the reasonable suspicion for him to be accosted?” De Jesus questioned. “What is the probable cause for them to be entering into a private business area? … At this moment, it seems to me like they have a blanket authority almost to do anything.”

Ramirez has been charged in a federal criminal complaint with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer. Authorities allege that Ramirez was trying to conceal himself and then ran toward the exit and refused to answer questions about his identity and citizenship. They also allege he pushed and bit an agent.

Montebello Mayor Salvador Melendez said he’d watched the video and called the situation “extremely frustrating.”

“It just seems like there’s no due process,” he said. “They’re going for a specific look, which is a look of our Latino community, our immigrant community. They’re asking questions after. … This is not the country that we all know it to be, where folks have individual rights and protections.”

A third individual was detained on the street for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.

Even before the video was looping on social media feeds, Angelica Salas — who heads one of the most well-established immigration advocacy groups in Los Angeles — said she was getting reports of “indiscriminate” arrests and American citizens being questioned and detained.

“We have U.S. citizens who are being asked for their documents and not believed when they attest to the fact that they are U.S. citizens,” said Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “They just happen to be Latino.”

The Supreme Court has long held that law enforcement officers cannot detain people based on generalizations that would cast a wide net of suspicion on large segments of the law-abiding population.

“Some of the accounts I have heard suggest that they’re just stopping a whole bunch of people, and then questioning them all to find out which ones might be unlawfully present,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA Law School.

An agent can ask a person about “anything,” he said. But if the person declines to speak, the agent cannot detain them unless they have reasonable suspicion that the individual is unlawfully here.

“The 4th Amendment as well as governing immigration regulations do not permit immigration agents to detain somebody against their will, even for a very brief time, absent reasonable suspicion,” he said.

Just being brown doesn’t qualify. And being a street vendor or farmworker does not, either. A warrant to search for documents at a work site also is not enough to detain someone there.

“The agents appear to be flagrantly violating these immigration laws,” he said, “all over Southern California.”

Gavidia said the agents who questioned him in Montebello never returned his Real ID.

“I’m legal,” he said. “I speak perfect English. I also speak perfect Spanish. I’m bilingual, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be picked out, like, ‘This guys seems Latino; this guy seems a little bit dirty.’

“It was the worst experience I ever felt,” Gavidia said, his voice shaking with anger as he spoke from the business Friday. “I felt honestly like I was going to die.”

On Saturday, Gavidia joined De Jesus in downtown L.A. for his first-ever protest.

Now, he said, it felt personal.

In March, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, allegedly for membership in the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, these men were “terrorists” and “heinous monsters.” President Trump echoed her, calling them “monsters” on his social media platform, Truth Social. In May, ProPublica reported that the White House knew that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S., and earlier reporting indicated that more than 50 of them had entered the U.S. legally and had not violated immigration law.

“Monster” conjures a threat distinct from “foreign,” “different,” “other” or even “alien.” Here it implies that the deportees are different from “normal” people (read “white, Anglo, native-born Americans”) in ways that go beyond merely committing a garden-variety crime. Their transgression of the social contract seemingly even exceeds the violent crimes of which they are accused, because U.S. citizens suspected of being “rapists, murders, kidnappers” — the administration’s allegations about these “monsters” — don’t get trafficked to gulags overseas.

Monstrifying these people was part of a strategy to justify deporting them by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without proof of any crime or gang membership. By doing so the administration threatens to normalize not just the deportation of a handful of individuals but also depriving all residents (legal and undocumented) and U.S. citizens of the right to challenge the legality of their detention or imprisonment. Because one cannot prove legal residence or citizenship without due process, deporting people without legal proceedings is to deny rights that must be extended to all if they are to exist for anyone — a violation all the greater when individuals are sent to a prison from which, in the words of the Salvadoran president, “the only way out is in a coffin.”

Monstrifying individuals and groups is nothing new. The 11th-century chronicler Gerald of Wales, descended from Norman conquerers and Welsh nobility, dismissed the English as “the most worthless of all peoples under heaven … the most abject slaves” and Ireland as an island inhabited by werewolves, ox-humans and other human-animal hybrids. In 1625, an English Puritan travel editor published a claim (without having set foot in North America) that the Algonquians had “little of humanitie but shape … more brutish than the beasts they hunt.”

In 1558, the Scottish Protestant and firebrand preacher John Knox published a pamphlet against the rule of Mary I of England, arguing that a woman who ruled in her own right was “a monster of monsters,” her country a monstrous body politic, unlikely to survive for long. In the age of Atlantic slavery, legal instruments known as “black codes” invented Black Africans transported to the colonies as a new category: the chattel slave who served for life and had fewer rights than white Christian servants.

The current president’s history of monstrifying people extends to U.S. citizens. In August 2016, Trump called Hillary Clinton “a monster”: supposedly “weak,” “unhinged,” “unbalanced,” someone who would be “a disaster” as president and who allegedly threatened “the destruction of this country from within.” In October 2020, Trump twice called Kamala Harris “this monster.”

The distinctions drawn by people in power trying to divide a population are often unworkable. How do you tell a law-abiding person from a terrorist gang member? From their tattoos, according to this administration. Neither citizenship nor immigration status is visible on a person’s body or audible in their voice, yet people of color of every immigration and citizenship status have long faced racial profiling. Attempts to define visible signs of the monster are not new either; nor is the fact that monster-making sweeps up an immense number of people in its dragnet.

But monsters are never hermetically sealed from the group whose borders they were invented to define. This ham-fisted attempt at an evidence-based reason for trafficking people to El Salvador echoes earlier attempts to identify distinct groups in a population where human variety existed on a continuum. Notorious among these examples was the monstrification and mass slaughter, in Nazi Germany, of Jewish, Roma, Sinti, LGBTQ+, disabled and neurodiverse individuals as well as political dissidents.

In the U.S. today, to tolerate, permit or encourage the monstrification of any non-citizen and consequently deny them due process is to tolerate, permit and encourage this to happen to U.S. citizens.

The category of the human is shrinking as politicians, tech bros and right-wing pundits monstrify everyone who isn’t a cis-het white man. Today’s dehumanizing language extends beyond the Venezuelan deportees that this administration labeled as “monsters.” It extends to women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people by questioning their right to bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity. It extends to people who are unhoused, poor, disabled or elderly, as social services are cut.

These narratives hail back to a broader, centuries-long Western tradition of gazing at other people and framing them as monstrous: as beings who supposedly broke the category of “human” and could be legitimately denied of fundamental rights.

Monster-making campaigns always serve a purpose. For European colonizers, claiming that Indigenous people were less than human disguised European land grabs. Laws defining enslaved Black Africans as chattel property legalized their enslavement and broke the labor solidarity between white servants and enslaved Africans. And the Nazis claimed that Jews and other minorities had caused Germany to lose the First World War and were responsible for the nation’s economic collapse.

Again today, the goals of monstrification serve the myth of white supremacy, including the notion that the U.S. was meant to be a white ethnostate. Thus while the Trump administration terminated a program for refugees fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it welcomed white Afrikaners from South Africa by calling them refugees.

Furthermore, by exploiting Jews’ proximity to whiteness, this administration is monstrifying Palestinians in order to justify the Israeli government’s human rights violations. By declaring that protesters, including those who are Jewish, calling for an end to the Gaza slaughter are antisemitic, and by withholding research funds from and interfering with universities by calling them hotbeds of antisemitism, the administration attempts to convince people that Palestinian civilians do not deserve food, homes, safety or even life — and that recognizing the humanity of Jews requires denying that Palestinians are human and have human rights. Yet the administration’s own antisemitism is clear: Trump has pardoned leaders of antisemitic and white supremacist organizations and hosted prominent antisemites as dinner guests.

This multi-pronged campaign of monstrification strengthens the personal loyalty of white supremacists and Christian nationalists towards Trump and sows discord and poisons solidarity among his targets and critics.

Monstrifying narratives have been undermining the possibility of a more inclusive body politic for millennia. But there’s an antidote to us-them messages of hate, fear and exclusion that claim that only a tiny minority of people are truly human. That antidote is to realize that by recognizing the humanity of others we don’t disavow our own humanity: We demonstrate it. It behooves us to demand that all people receive equal protection under the law, and to call out monstrifying narratives that, in the end, dehumanize us all.

Surekha Davies is a historian, speaker and monster consultant for TV, film and radio. She is the author of “Humans: A Monstrous History” and writes the newsletter “Strange and Wondrous: Notes From a Science Historian.”

This will strike the literal-minded as illogical, but I think Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had a righteous point when he declared at a news conference with Southern California mayors that immigrants being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in communities like his “are Americans, whether they have a document or they don’t.”

“The president keeps talking about a foreign invasion,” Flores told me Thursday. “He keeps trying to paint us as the other. I say, ‘No, you are dealing with Americans.’”

California’s estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who have lived among us for years, for decades, who work and pay taxes here, who have sent their American-born children to schools here, have all the responsibilities of citizens minus many of the rights. Yes, technically, they have broken the law. (For that matter, so has President Trump, a felon, and he continues to violate the Constitution day after day, as his mounting court losses attest.)

But our region’s undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants are inextricably embedded in our lives. They care for our children, build our homes, dig our ditches, trim our trees, clean our homes, hotels and businesses, wash our dishes, pick our crops, sew our clothes. Lots own small businesses, are paying mortgages, attend universities, rise in their professions. In 2013, I wrote about Sergio Garcia, the first undocumented immigrant admitted to the California Bar. Since then, he has become a U.S. citizen and owns a personal injury law firm.

These Californians are far less likely to break the law than native-born Americans, and they do not deserve the reign of terror being inflicted on them by the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pointlessly but theatrically called in the Marines.

“So we started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons gang members, drug dealers,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ news conference last week, “but when you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”

And please, let’s not forget that when Congress came together and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform bill under President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it because he did not want a rational policy, he wanted to be able to keep hammering Democrats on the issue.

But it seems there is more going on here than rounding up undocumented immigrants and terrorizing their families. We seem to have entered the “punish California” phase of Trump 2.0.

“Trump has a hyperfocus on California, on how to hurt the economy and cause chaos, and he is really doubling down on that campaign,” Flores told me. He has a point.

“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor placed on this country,” Noem told reporters Thursday at a news conference in the Westwood federal building, during which California Sen. Alex Padilla was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed face down for daring to ask her a question. “We are not going away.”

So now we’re talking about regime change? (As former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, the use of military force aimed at displacing democratically elected leaders “is the very definition of a coup.”)

Noem’s noxious mix of willful ignorance and inflammatory rhetoric is almost too ludicrous to mock. It goes hand in hand with Trump’s silly declaration that our city has been set aflame by rioters, that without the military patrolling our streets, Los Angeles “would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years,” and that “paid insurrectionists” have fueled the anti-ICE protests.

What we are seeing play out in the news and in our neighborhoods is the willful infliction of fear, trauma and intimidation designed to spark a violent response, and the warping of reality to soften the ground for further Trump administration incursions into blue states, America’s bulwark against his autocratic aspirations.

For weeks, Trump has been scheming to deprive California — probably illegally — of federal funding for public schools and universities, citing resistance to his executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, on immigration, on environmental regulations, etc.

And yet, because he is perhaps the world’s most ignorant head of state, he seems to have suddenly realized that crippling the California economy might be bad politics for him. On Thursday, he suggested in his own jumbled way that perhaps deporting thousands of the state’s farm and hospitality workers might cause pain to his friends, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for example, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)

“Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years,” Trump said. “They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that.”

Like a lot of Californians, I feel helpless in the face of this assault on immigrants.

I thought about a Guatemalan, a father of three young American-born children, who has a thriving business hauling junk. I met him a couple of years ago at my local Home Depot, and have hired him a few times to haul away household detritus. Once, after I couldn’t get the city to help, he hauled off a small dune’s worth of sand at the end of my street that had become the local dogs’ pee pad.

I called him this week — I have more stuff that I need to get rid of, and I was pretty sure he could use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two workers. He said hadn’t been able to work in two weeks but was hopeful he’d be able to return to Home Depot soon.

“How are your kids doing?” I asked.

“They worry,” he said. “They ask, ‘What will we do if you’re deported?’”

He tells them not to fret, that things will soon be back to normal. After he drove off, he texted: “Thank you so much for helping me today. God bless you.”

No, God bless him. For working hard. For being a good dad. And for still believing, against the odds, in the American dream.

@rabcarian.bsky.social @rabcarian

She was attending her first protest, driven to be seen with thousands of others at a “No Kings” demonstration Saturday morning in El Segundo, eager to make a statement.

But she was there for her father, as well.

The sign she held aloft as car horns honked in support said: “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”

Her father would have loved to join her, Jennifer told me. But with ICE raids in Los Angeles and arrests by the hundreds in recent days, her 55-year-old undocumented dad couldn’t afford to take the risk.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

Jennifer is 29. I hadn’t seen her in nearly 20 years, when I wrote about her father and visited her home in Inglewood to deliver $2,000 donated by readers who read his story.

Here’s the back story:

In December of 2005 I got a tip about a shooting in the front yard of an Inglewood home. Two men approached a landscaper and demanded money. He resisted, and in the tussle that ensued, a shot was fired.

Paramedics rushed the man to the emergency room at UCLA, where doctors determined that a bullet had just missed his heart and was lodged in his chest. Although doctors recommended he stay at least overnight for observation, he insisted he felt fine and needed to get back to work.

The landscaper, whom I referred to as Ray, insisted on leaving immediately. As he later explained to me, the Inglewood job was for a client who hired him to re-landscape the yard as a Christmas gift to his wife.

Ray was shot on Dec. 23.

Demonstrators at a “No Kings” event at Main Street and Imperial Highway in El Segundo on Saturday.

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

He finished the job by Christmas.

I’ve been thinking about Ray since ICE agents began the crackdown ordered by President Trump, whose administration said its goal was to deport 3,000 people a day. Hundreds have been arrested in the Fashion District, at car washes and at building supply stores across Los Angeles.

That’s led to clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators, and to peaceful protests like the one along Imperial Highway and Main Street on Saturday in El Segundo.

I thought of Ray because Trump generally speaks of undocumented immigrants as monsters, and no doubt there are criminals among them.

But over the years, nearly all my encounters have been with the likes of Ray, who are an essential part of the workforce.

Yes, there are costs associated with undocumented immigrants, but benefits as well — they’ve been an essential part of the California economy for years. And among those eager to hire them — in the fields, in the hospitality industry, in slaughterhouses, in healthcare — are avid Trump supporters.

On Friday, I called Ray to see how he was doing.

“I’m worried about it,” he said, even though he has some protection.

Demonstrators at the “No Kings” event in El Segundo raise their signs, including one that read, “Real men don’t need parades.”

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

Several years ago, an immigration attorney helped him get a permit to work, but the Trump administration has vowed to end temporary protected legal status for certain groups of immigrants.

“I see and hear about a lot of cases where they’re not respecting documents. People look Latino, and they get arrested,” said Ray, who is in the midst of a years-long process to upgrade his status.

Ray is still loading tools onto his truck and driving to landscaping, tree-trimming and irrigation jobs across L.A., as he’s done for more than 30 years. But he said he’s being extra careful.

A protester at a “No Kings” event in El Segundo prepares a sign on Saturday.

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

“You know, like keeping an eye out everywhere and checking my telephone to see where checkpoints are,” he said.

Ray’s ex-wife has legal status, and all three of their children were born here and are U.S. citizens. The marriage ended and Ray has remarried, but he remains close to the three kids I met in the spring of 2006, when they were 9, 10 and 11.

The younger son, who is disabled, lives with Ray. His older son, a graphic designer, lives nearby. Jennifer, a job recruiter, lives next door and has been on edge in recent days.

“Even though he has permission to be here … it’s scary, and I wasn’t even letting him go to work,” Jennifer said. “On Monday I was getting into the shower and heard him loading up the truck.”

She ran outside to stop him, but he was already gone, so she called him and said, “Oh my God, you shouldn’t be going to work right now. It’s not safe.”

“No Kings” was the theme of the day during a demonstration in El Segundo on Saturday.

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

Jennifer works from home but couldn’t concentrate that day. She used an app to track her father’s location and checked the latest information on ICE raids. So far, Ray has made it home safely each day, although Jennifer is hoping he slows down for a while.

Twenty years ago, when I wrote about Ray getting shot and his insistence on going back to work immediately, one of the readers who donated money — $1,000 — to him was one of his landscaping clients, Rohelle Erde. When I checked in with her this week to update her on Ray’s situation, she said her entire family came to the U.S. as immigrants to work hard and build a better life, and Ray did the same.

“He has been working and making money and helping people beautify their homes, creating beauty and order, and this must be so distressing,” Erde said. “The ugliness and disorder are exactly the opposite of what he represents.”

The evening before Saturday’s rally in El Segundo, Jennifer told me why she wanted to demonstrate:

“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said. “The girl who takes care of my kids is undocumented and she’s scared to leave the house. I have a lot of friends and family in the same boat.”

Jennifer attended with her son, who’s 9 and told me he’s afraid his grandfather will be arrested and sent back to Mexico.

“He’s the age I was when you met me,” Jennifer said of her son.

She took in the crowd and said it was uplifting to see such a huge and diverse throng of people stand up, in peaceful protest, against authoritarianism and the militarization of the country.

Mother and son stood together, flashing their signs for passing motorists.

His said, “Families belong together.”

Jennifer told me that her father still has the bullet in his chest.

[email protected]

WASHINGTON — President Trump has long bet that he can scare allies into submission — a gamble that is increasingly being tested ahead of the Group of Seven summit beginning Monday in Canada.

He’s threatened stiff tariffs in the belief that other nations would crumple. He’s mused about taking over Canada and Greenland. He’s suggested he will not honor NATO’s obligations to defend partners under attack. And he’s used Oval Office meetings to try to intimidate the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa.

But many world leaders see fewer reasons to be cowed by Trump, even as they recognize the risks if he followed through on his threats. They believe he will ultimately back down — since many of his plans could inflict harm on the U.S. — or that he can simply be charmed and flattered into cooperating.

“Many leaders still seem intimidated by Trump, but increasingly they are catching on to his pattern of bullying,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “In places as diverse as Canada, Iran, China and the EU, we are seeing increasing signs that leaders now recognize that Trump is afraid of anything resembling a fair fight. And so they are increasingly willing to stand up to him.”

In the 22 instances in which Trump has publicly threatened military action since his first term, the U.S. only used force twice, according to a May analysis by Shapiro.

World leaders feel comfortable standing up to Trump

Ahead of the G-7 summit, there are already signs of subtle pushback against Trump from fellow leaders in the group. French President Emanuel Macron planned to visit Greenland over the weekend in a show of European solidarity. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the U.S. is no longer the “predominant” force in the world after Trump’s tariffs created fissures in a decades-long partnership between the U.S. and its northern neighbor.

“We stood shoulder to shoulder with the Americans throughout the Cold War and in the decades that followed, as the United States played a predominant role on the world stage,” Carney said this past week in French. “Today, that predominance is a thing of the past.”

The new prime minister added that with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the U.S. became the global hegemon, a position of authority undermined by Trump’s transactional nature that puts little emphasis on defending democratic values or the rule of law.

“Now the United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony: charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contributions to our collective security,” Carney said.

Israel’s attack on Iran has added a new wrinkle to the global picture as the summit leaders gather to tackle some of the world’s thorniest problems.

A senior Canadian official said it was decided early on that the G-7 won’t be issuing a joint communiqué as it has at past summits — an indication of how hard it can be to get Trump on the same page with other world leaders. The White House said individual leader statements will be issued on the issues being discussed.

Speaking last month at a conference in Singapore, Macron called France a “friend and an ally of the United States” but pushed back against Trump’s desire to dominate what other countries do. Macron said efforts to force other nations to choose between the U.S. and China would lead to the breakdown of the global order put in place after World War II.

“We want to cooperate, but we do not want to be instructed on a daily basis what is allowed, what is not allowed, and how our life will change because of the decision of a single person,” Macron said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba pushed back against Trump’s agenda of levying higher tariffs on imported goods, arguing it would hurt economic growth. The Japanese leader specifically called Trump ahead of the summit to confirm their plans to talk on the sidelines, which is a greater focus for Japan than the summit itself.

“I called him as I also wanted to congratulate his birthday, though one day earlier,” Ishiba said.

Trump cares about being tough, but G-7 is a chance to reset relations

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the summit was an opportunity for Trump to “mend” relationships with other countries so China would be unable to exploit differences among the G-7.

She said other foreign leaders are “not intimidated” by Trump’s actions, which could be driving them away from tighter commitments with the U.S.

“The conversations that I’ve had with those leaders suggest that they think that the partnership with the United States has been really important, but they also understand that there are other opportunities,” Shaheen said.

The White House did not respond to emailed questions for this story.

Many leaders feel more confident that they can sidestep Trump’s threats

Having originally made his reputation in real estate and hospitality, Trump has taken kindly to certain foreign visitors, such as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Starmer has sought to keep Trump in line with Europe in supporting Ukraine and NATO instead of brokering any truces that would favor Russia. He has echoed the president’s language about NATO members spending more on defense. But in his Oval Office visit, Starmer also pleased Trump by delivering an invite for a state visit from King Charles III.

The German government said it, too, wanted to send a public signal of unity, saying that while Trump’s recent meeting with Merz at the White House went harmoniously, the next test is how the relationship plays out in a team setting.

There will also be other world leaders outside of the G-7 nations attending the summit in mountainous Kananaskis, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Trump dressed down in the Oval Office.

Italy’s Meloni has positioned herself as a “bridge” between the Trump administration and the rest of Europe. But Italy’s strong support of Ukraine and Trump’s threatened tariffs on European goods have put Meloni, the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration, in a difficult position.

Mark Sobel, U.S. chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, an independent think tank, said Trump’s “trade policies, backing for right wing European movements, seeming preference for dealing with authoritarians and many of his other actions are alienating our G-7 allies,” even if the U.S. president is correct that Europe needs to do more on defense.

But even as other G-7 leaders defuse any public disputes with Trump, the U.S. president’s vision for the world remains largely incompatible with they want.

“In short, behind the curtains, and notwithstanding whatever theater, the Kananaskis summit will highlight a more fragmented G-7 and an adrift global economy,” Sobel said.

Boak writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Rob Gillies in Toronto, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Jill Lawless in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

BLAINE, Minn. — Minnesota’s House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in a politically motivated assassination, Gov. Tim Walz announced Saturday. A second lawmaker and his wife were shot and wounded.

“We must all, in Minnesota and across the country, stand against all forms of political violence,” Walz said at a news conference Saturday. “Those responsible for this will be held accountable.”

The wounded lawmaker was identified as state Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, who was first elected in 2012. He runs Hoffman Strategic Advisors, a consulting firm. He previously served as vice chair of the Anoka Hennepin School Board, which manages the largest school district in Minnesota. Hoffman is married and has one daughter.

Hortman was the top House Democratic leader in the state Legislature and is a former House speaker. She was first elected in 2004.

Both Hoffman and Hortman represented districts north of Minneapolis.

Drew Evans, superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said that authorities were actively searching for a suspect. Hortman and her spouse died from gunshot wounds, Evans said.

Public Safety Commissioner Bob Johnson said at the news conference with Walz that the suspect was posing as a law enforcement officer.

The “suspect exploited the trust of our uniforms, what our uniforms are meant to represent. That betrayal is deeply disturbing to those of us who wear the badge with honor and responsibility,” Johnson said.

The shootings happened at a time when political leaders nationwide have been attacked, harassed and intimidated amid deep ideological divisions.

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, leader of Giffords, a national gun violence prevention group, said in a statement: “I am horrified and heartbroken by last night’s attack on two patriotic public servants. My family and I know the horror of a targeted shooting all too well. An attack against lawmakers is an attack on American democracy itself. Leaders must speak out and condemn the fomenting violent extremism that threatens everything this country stands for.”

Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was shot in the head in 2011 by a gunman who killed six people and injured 12 others. She stepped down from Congress in January 2012 to focus on her recovery.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government.

L.A.’s Little Tokyo neighborhood was a mess on Monday. Windows were shattered in multiple locations. Graffiti seemed like it was everywhere. State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles) had had enough.

Gonzalez, who took office in December, had already voiced outrage over the immigration raids being conducted in his downtown district. But this time, he took aim at the people he called “anti-ICE rioters,” portraying them as narcissists and urging them to stay far away from the demonstrations happening downtown.

“Causing chaos, damaging neighborhoods, and live-streaming for likes helps no one,” he said in a lengthy press release. “Our elders, small businesses, and public spaces deserve better.”

Gonzalez did not stop there. He chided demonstrators for spray-painting historic landmarks and pointing fireworks at police, telling them that “terrorizing residents is not protest.”

“If you’re out here chasing clout while our neighbors are scared and storefronts are boarded up — you’re not helping, you’re harming,” said Gonzalez, a former chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. “You’re playing right into Trump’s hands and undermining the very movement you claim to support.”

Politicians in L.A. have been reacting all week to the reports of violence, theft and vandalism that accompanied a week of anti-ICE protests. But each has had a somewhat different way of naming the perpetrators — and summing up their actions.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, whose district also includes much of downtown, was more muted in her description of the people who created mayhem this week, referring to them as “agitators” and “opportunists.”

“Look, for the most part, this has been a peaceful protest,” she said in an interview. “But there are definitely some other folks that join that are not here to support immigrants and peacefulness, but are taking this as an opportunity to do something else. And I definitely condemn that.”

Jurado has spent the last few days highlighting her efforts to secure small business loans for struggling downtown businesses, especially those that were vandalized or had merchandise stolen. She is also pushing for city leaders to find another $1 million to pay for the legal defense of immigrants who have been detained or face deportation.

At the same time, the events of the past week have put Jurado in an awkward spot. Luz Aguilar, her economic development staffer, was arrested last weekend on suspicion of assaulting a police officer at an anti-ICE protest.

Normally, an aide like Aguilar might have been tasked with helping some of the downtown businesses whose windows were smashed or wares were stolen. Instead, Jurado faced questions about Aguilar while appearing with Mayor Karen Bass at the city’s Emergency Operations Center.

The LAPD has repeatedly declined to provide specifics on the allegations against Aguilar, whose father is Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, said in an email to its members that Aguilar has been accused of throwing a frozen water bottle at officers.

Neither Cole nor Jurado’s staff would confirm or refute that assertion. Jurado, in an interview, also declined to say whether she sees her staffer as one of the agitators.

“She is on unpaid leave, and we’ll see what happens,” she said.

The search for the right words has not been limited to downtown politicians.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson offered a lengthy soliloquy, saying police in recent days had encountered “looters coming out of stores with merchandise in their hands” who are using the ongoing protests as cover.

“Someone at midnight running around looting, even though there was a protest earlier, that person’s not a protester,” Harris-Dawson told his colleagues Tuesday. “That person’s a looter. That person’s a criminal.”

The same terms apply after Dodgers victories, Harris-Dawson said, when someone in a street celebration decides to set things on fire. “We don’t say Dodger fans burned a building. We say criminals burned a building,” he said.

Bass declared a local state of emergency in the wake of the downtown chaos, citing the violence against police, the vandalism and the “looting of businesses.” The declaration, issued Tuesday, simply refers to the perpetrators as criminals.

The mayor sounded genuinely frustrated, telling The Times on Thursday that she was “horrified” by the graffiti that covered the Japanese American National Museum, which highlights the struggle of immigrants, and other buildings in Little Tokyo.

“Anybody that is committing vandalism or violence does not give a crap about immigrants,” she told another news outlet.

Gonzalez, for his part, said he produced his anti-rioter screed after hearing from senior citizens in Little Tokyo who were terrified to leave their homes and walk into the melee on the street.

“They were literally throwing fireworks at cops’ faces at San Pedro and 3rd,” he said.

Other downtown residents sounded unfazed, telling The Times that the disruptions were “kind of the usual.” In recent years, major sports victories have been just as likely to end with illegal fireworks, graffiti and burning or vandalized vehicles downtown — even when the games aren’t played there.

Jurado said she is searching for “creative solutions” to prevent such crimes in the future, such as promoting the fact that downtown businesses are in “full support of the protests.”

“There were Little Tokyo businesses that weren’t graffitied on because they had a sign on the window that was pro-actively ‘Know your Rights,’ or against ICE,” she said. “So they didn’t get graffitied on. At least that’s from my anecdotal evidence.”

“So I think if we put that at the forefront, we can help educate our community members to keep our neighborhoods safe and beautiful,” she said.

State of play

— CITY IN CRISIS: The crisis sparked by the immigration sweeps reverberated throughout the week, with Bass urging President Trump to end the raids, ordering a curfew for downtown and Chinatown and speaking out against the tackling of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla by federal agents. By the time the week ended, City Hall and surrounding government buildings were being guarded by scores of law enforcement officers from around the state — Hermosa Beach Police, San Fernando Police, Riverside County Sheriff, Santa Barbara County Sheriff, just to name a few. Amid the heavy police presence, Friday’s city council meeting was canceled.

— TAKING OFF THE GLOVES: For most of her time at City Hall, Bass has avoided public confrontations with other elected officials, including President Trump. But with ICE fanning out across L.A. and her city engulfed in protest, those days are over. As she navigates the crisis, Bass has also gained the opportunity for a crucial reset after the Palisades fire.

— CHAFED AT THE CHIEF: Earlier in the week, members of the City Council grilled LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell over his agency’s handling of anti-ICE protests. Harris-Dawson bristled at the idea that the LAPD would refer to federal immigration authorities as “law enforcement partners.” “If we know somebody is coming here to do warrant-less abductions of the residents of this city, those are not our partners,” he said. “I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners.”

— PADILLA PUSHBACK: City Councilmember Imelda Padilla, in a separate line of questioning, asked if the LAPD could warn city officials when it hears from federal law enforcement that immigration raids are coming. McDonnell said such actions would amount to obstruction of justice. “That would be completely inappropriate and illegal,” he said.

— A ‘MIX OF EMOTIONS’: McDonnell has been offering support to LAPD officers who may have mixed feelings about the ongoing federal crackdown. In one message, he acknowledged that some in the majority-Latino department have been “wrestling with the personal impact” of the immigration sweeps. “You may be wearing the uniform and fulfilling your duty, but inside, you’re asked to hold a complex mix of emotions,” the chief wrote.

— WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS: Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee broke his silence on the pivotal 2017 Las Vegas trip that later resulted in the criminal conviction of his onetime boss, Councilmember Mitchell Englander. Lee took the virtual witness stand last week in his own Ethics Commission case, repeatedly denying allegations that he accepted gifts in Vegas — food, drink, travel — in violation of city laws. At one point in his Zoom testimony, Lee said he stuffed $300 into the pocket of businessmen Andy Wang, a key witness in the proceedings, in an attempt to cover his share of the expenses at a pricey nightclub.

— RAPID RESPONDERS: Faced with an onslaught of ICE raids locally and threats from politicians nationally, L.A.’s immigrant rights groups are in the fight of their lives. Those groups have been participating in the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, a coalition of 300 volunteers and 23 organizations formed last year to respond to ICE enforcement.

— COUNTING THE BEDS: We told you last week that City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo was the city’s star witness in its court battle with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, which is seeking to place the city’s homelessness programs in receivership. On Wednesday, Szabo filed a declaration in federal court that pushes back on assertions that the city may have massively double counted the homeless beds it included under a pair of legal settlements. Szabo said city officials identified 12 instances of double counting in an agreement requiring 12,915 beds, and would appropriately correct the record.

— DEAL FOR MORE COPS? It seems like a lifetime ago, but last weekend Bass announced that she had struck a deal with Harris-Dawson, the council president, to find the money to restore her plan for hiring 480 police officers next year. Bass said Harris-Dawson has committed to identify the funding for those hires within three months. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who sits on the budget committee, said he is open to finding the money but was not part of any promise to do so within 90 days.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature initiative to combat homelessness did not launch operations in any new locations this week. However, the council did go behind closed doors to confer with its lawyers on the legal battle with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.
• On the docket for next week: The City Council is set to take up the mayor’s latest declaration of a local emergency, this one in response to “violence against first responders, vandalism of public and private property, looting of businesses, and failure to follow” LAPD dispersal orders.

Stay in touch

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Despite a stinging rebuke from a federal judge Thursday, military forces deployed in Los Angeles will remain under presidential control through the weekend, setting up a series of high-stakes showdowns.

On the streets of Los Angeles, protesters will continue to be met with platoons of armed soldiers. State and local officials remain in open conflict with the president. And in the courts, Trump administration lawyers are digging deep into case law in search of archaic statutes that can be cited to justify the ongoing federal crackdown — including constitutional maneuvers invented to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Many legal scholars say the current battle over Los Angeles is a test case for powers the White House has long hoped to wield — not just squelching protest or big-footing blue state leaders, but stretching presidential authority to its legal limit.

“A lot rides on what happens this weekend,” said Christopher Mirasola, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

By staying the order that would have delivered control of most troops back to California leaders until after the weekend, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals left the Trump administration in command of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines ahead of the nationwide “No Kings” protests planned for Saturday.

The Trump administration claimed in court that it had the authority to deploy troops to L.A. due to protesters preventing ICE agents from arresting and deporting unauthorized immigrants — and because demonstrations downtown amounted to “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

But U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco wrote Thursday that Trump had steamrolled state leaders when he federalized California’s troops and deployed them against protesters.

“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Breyer wrote.

While ICE “was not able to detain as many people as Defendants believe it could have,” it was still able to uphold U.S. immigration law without the military’s help, Breyer ruled. A few belligerents among thousands of peaceful protesters did not make an insurrection, he added.

“The idea that protesters can so quickly cross the line between protected conduct and ‘rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’ is untenable and dangerous,” the judge wrote.

The 9th Circuit stayed Breyer’s ruling hours after he issued a temporary restraining order that would have allowed California leaders to withdraw the National Guard soldiers from L.A.

The pause will remain in effect until at least Tuesday when a three-judge panel — made up of two appointed by President Trump and one by former President Biden — will hear arguments over whether the troops can remain under federal direction.

The court battle has drawn on precedents that stretch back to the foundation of the country, offering starkly contrasting visions of federal authority and states’ rights.

The last time the president federalized the National Guard over the objections of a state governor was in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma to Montgomery March in defiance of then-Gov. George Wallace.

But sending troops in to assist ICE has less in common with Johnson’s move than it does with President Millard Fillmore’s actions a century earlier, Mirasola said. Beginning in 1850, the Houston law professor said, Fillmore sent troops to accompany federal marshals seeking to apprehend escaped slaves who had fled north.

Trump’s arguments to deploy the National Guard and Marines in support of federal immigration enforcement efforts rely on the same principle, drawn from the “take care” clause of Article II of the Constitution, Mirasola said. He noted that anger over the military’s repeated clashes with civilians helped stoke the flames that led to the Civil War.

“Much of the population actively opposed enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act,” the professor said.

Some analysts believe Trump strategically chose immigration as the issue through which to advance his version of the so-called “unitary executive theory,” a legal doctrine that says the legislature has no power and the judiciary has no right to interfere with how the president wields control of the executive branch.

“It’s not a coincidence that we’re seeing immigration be the flash point,” said Ming Hsu Chen, a professor at the UCSF Law School. “Someone who wants to exert strong federal power over immigration would see L.A. as a highly symbolic place, a ground zero to show their authority.”

Chen, who heads the Race, Immigration, Citizenship, and Equality Program at UCSF Law, said it’s clear Trump and his advisers have a “vision of how ICE can be emboldened.”

“He’s putting that on steroids,” Chen said. “He’s folding together many different kinds of excesses of executive power as though they were the same thing.”

Some experts point out that Judge Breyer’s order is limited only to California, which means that until it’s fully litigated — a process that can drag on for weeks or months — the president may attempt similar moves elsewhere.

“The president could try the same thing in another jurisdiction,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“President Trump’s memorandum to deploy troops in Los Angeles made it very clear he thinks it’s appropriate … wherever protests are occurring,” Goitein said. “He certainly seems to think that even peaceful protests can be met with force.”

Experts said Breyer’s ruling set a high bar for what may be considered “rebellion” under the law, making it harder — if it is allowed to stand on appeal — for the administration to credibly claim one is afoot in L.A.

“It’s hard to imagine that whatever we see over the weekend is going to be an organized, armed attempt to overthrow the government,” Goitein said.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, hasn’t budged from its insistence that extreme measures are needed to restore order and protect federal agents as they go about their work.

“The rioters will not stop or slow ICE down from arresting criminal illegal aliens,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release this week, which included mugshots of several alleged criminals who had been arrested. “Murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers. These are the types of criminal illegal aliens that rioters are fighting to protect.”

Even after the 9th Circuit decision, the issue could still be headed to the Supreme Court. Some legal scholars fear Trump might defy the court if he keeps losing. Others say he may be content with the havoc wrought while doomed cases wend their way through the justice system.

“It’s a strange thing for me to say as a law professor that maybe the law doesn’t matter,” Chen said. “I don’t know that [Trump] particularly cares that he’s doing something illegal.”

Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.

Giovanni Garcia pulled up to a dusty intersection in South Gate and scoped the scene. It was quiet, just folks walking home from work, but Garcia was among several people drawn there in hopes of bearing witness to one of the federal raids that have unfolded across Los Angeles County in recent days.

Just minutes before, several Instagram accounts had posted alerts warning that white pickup trucks with green U.S. Customs and Border Protection markings had been seen near the intersection.

With friends loaded into his white Grand Cherokee and a large Mexican flag flying out of the sunroof, this was the sixth day in a row that Garcia, 28, had spent up to 10 hours following such alerts through South L.A.’s immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

Fueled by sodas and snacks he picked up at a Northgate Market, Garcia’s goal, he said, was to catch Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other immigration agents in the act of detaining people on the street.

So far, it had been a fruitless chase.

“I’ve been doing this for six days. It sucks because I get these alerts and go, but I never make it in time,” said Garcia, a Mexican American U.S. citizen who lives in South Central.

Monitoring ICE activity has become a grim pastime for some Angelenos. Apps dedicated to the purpose have popped up, which combine with Citizen, Nextdoor, X and other platforms to create a firehose of unverified, user-generated information about federal movements and operations.

Trying to keep up in real time can prove equally exhausting and frustrating. The reports sometimes turn out to be false, and immigration enforcers seem to strike and depart with swift precision, leaving the public little opportunity to respond.

It’s impossible to determine how many people are engaged in this Sisyphean chase. But they have become a frequent sight in recent days, as anger has grown in response to viral videos of swift and violent apprehensions. A Times reporter and photographer crisscrossed the southern half of L.A. County, encountering Garcia and other ICE chasers in hot pursuit of federal agents who constantly seemed one step ahead.

Giovanni Garcia, 28, drives through South Gate with a Mexican flag. He spent six days trying to witness an ICE raid with little luck.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A new notification popped up on Garcia’s Instagram feed Thursday afternoon: ICE agents had been spotted in a nondescript residential area of South Gate, a city of about 90,000 people, of which more than 40% are foreign-born, according to the U.S. census. So Garcia put his SUV in gear and sped over.

He and his crew were late again. They arrived on a corner about 15 minutes after witnesses say immigration agents with green bulletproof vests and gaiters over their faces had jumped out of vehicles, handcuffed and taken away a man who had sold flowers in front of a ranch-style house there for years.

“I keep doing this because they’re messing with my people,” Garcia said. “It’s no longer about immigration. Trump’s no longer targeting criminals; he’s targeting Hispanics.”

It was one of many such raids in South L.A. in recent days at homes, parks and businesses ranging from a car wash to grocery stores.

The people whisked away in incidents captured in photos and videos that bystanders shared online ran the gamut: One man plucked out of a diverse crowd for no discernible reason while walking in South Gate Park. Another handcuffed on the curb outside a Ross clothing store in Bell Gardens. Two men in Rosemead snatched from the parking lot of a bakery.

Workers at a Fashion Nova clothing warehouse in Vernon told The Times that ICE trucks had been spotted in the area and that they had heard agents planned to confront employees during a shift change.

From senior citizens to children, nobody was safe from the federal enforcement effort.

Jasmyn Vasillio, 35, said she first became concerned when she saw on social media that ICE agents had raided a car wash in South Gate, then an hour later saw a post about the flower seller’s apprehension.

“I knew that flower guy is always there and I live nearby so I drove right over,” she said as she stood on the corner where he had been standing 20 minutes earlier. “I think they’re just picking people up and leaving.”

“I’m just another frustrated person in L.A. that wants to see an end to this. Not all of us are criminals,” said Manolo, who runs a candle-making business in Vernon.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A 20-year-old Latino man who declined to provide his name out of fear of reprisal said that he has been doing everything he can to spread awareness of what immigration enforcement agents are doing in his South Gate neighborhood and across South L.A.

“I’m a U.S. citizen, so I’m good. I’m worried about other people. It’s been heartbreaking,” he said as he streamed live from a street in South Gate where CBP agents had been spotted minutes before, according to posts he had seen on Instagram.

“They’re here to work and being torn apart from their families,” he said. “It’s sad. They came here for the American dream and this is what happens.”

Teenagers Emmanuel Segura and Jessy Villa said they have spent hours over the past week scrolling through social media and despairing at the seemingly endless stream of videos of people being aggressively detained. They felt helpless in the face of the crackdown, so they planned a protest in the heart of their own community.

On Thursday, they took to Atlantic Avenue and Firestone Boulevard in South Gate, where Villa waved a flag pole with both American and Mexican flags affixed to it. They were joined by more than 30 other protesters who chanted slogans and hoisted anti-ICE posters. Drivers honked in support as they passed by.

Jessy Villa, 14, protests the recent ICE raids in the Southland at Atlantic Avenue and Firestone Boulevard in South Gate.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s kind of scary. They’re taking anyone at this point. I just saw that ICE went to a car wash and took two people. And those are hard-working people — they are not criminals,” Segura, a 15-year-old South Gate resident, said. “So we planned the protest to go against ICE, Trump and his administration.”

Villa, 14, lives in nearby Lynwood, where he says everyone he knows is terrified they or someone they care about will be the next person swept up in an ICE raid.

“The streets are empty. Nobody wants to come outside. And kids don’t want to go to school, especially kids who migrated here,” Villa said. “They’re scared going to school in the morning, and worried they’ll come home and find out their parents were deported.”

Five miles away in Vernon, Manolo stood Thursday morning on the loading dock of the candle-making business he owns as employees loaded boxes of candles into the back of a black SUV. He said he has been following news and rumors of the raids online, and that the fear generated by them and the protests in response have been devastating for his company and other small businesses.

“Everybody’s worried about it,” Manolo said, recounting how he had heard that earlier that day ICE had raided a business two doors over from his. His company received zero calls for orders Thursday morning, down from the 50 to 60 it typically receives per day. If the immigration raids and protests haven’t wound down by the end of the month, he said he might have to shut down his business.

Family members of STG Logistics employees wait to hear word of their relatives’ whereabouts after an ICE raid at the company’s facility in Compton.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“This whole snatching people on the street — they have you on the floor in handcuffs, traumatize you, why? It makes me nervous, of course,” said Manolo, a U.S. citizen who moved to the U.S. from Guatemala 33 years ago and declined to give his last name out of fear he and his company could be targeted by law enforcement.

“And it’s not just that, it’s affecting businesses, it’s affecting people’s lives. It affects the economy, law enforcement. It affects your daily routine. When’s it going to end?”

After she was assaulted by her romantic partner in 2000 while living in Los Angeles County, Maria Gutierrez Saragon turned to a family friend who said he could help her secure immigration papers.

Because she had been the victim of a crime, the friend said, he could help her obtain authorization to stay in the U.S.

While it’s true that immigrant crime victims qualify for special benefits in some instances, the promise to get Gutierrez Saragon citizenship within three months at a discount dragged on for more than a decade. A housekeeper with a modest income, she was slowly bled for more than $100,000 through a mix of false assurances and threats.

“I had to give him all my money instead of being able to buy my children what they need,” she said between sobs in an interview. “It was like torture. Every time the phone rang or every time a paper arrived for me, they were asking for more money.”

She was a victim of so-called notario fraud, in which scammers acting as lawyers extract large sums from vulnerable immigrants.

The swindle is not a new one. But despite longstanding campaigns to raise awareness, advocates and law enforcement officials say they are concerned about a resurgence under the second Trump administration. Sweeps by federal agents and the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, they say, have created a climate of fear ripe for exploitation.

The hundreds caught up in the recent raids will be seeking affordable legal help as they fight to keep the lives they have built in the United States. Compounding matters, attorneys who specialize in immigration law say there is a shortage of qualified people working in the field. Unless separately appearing in state or federal court on criminal charges, people in civil immigration proceedings are typically not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer.

The scam that bilked Gutierrez Saragon, a native of Mexico, hinges on confusion over what a notary public does in the U.S., and how it differs from Latin America and elsewhere, where “notarios” have far more legal standing.

A notary public in the U.S. serves as an impartial witness when important documents are signed. But in other parts of the world, the term refers to an attorney with special credentials who has received the equivalent of a law license and who is authorized to represent others before the government, according to Victor D. Lopez, a professor of legal studies at Hofstra University.

The type of fraud can vary. Some victims pay money to notarios who promise to represent them in hearings with immigration officials and never show up. Others see valid asylum claims end with deportation orders because the information submitted was false, bearing no resemblance to the harrowing experiences that forced them out of their home countries.

“It’s the type of crime that preys upon the most needy and desperate people,” Lopez said, adding that few places outside of Colorado have taken meaningful steps to crack down on immigration-related abuses.

Because of underreporting, he and others said, there is little reliable data on how many fraud victims there are each year. Many who have suffered losses are afraid to contact law enforcement because of their immigration status.

Gutierrez Saragon recounted in Spanish how she was duped by her notario, whom she and an attorney she found to help unravel the scheme identified as Fidel Marquez Cortes.

It started small, Gutierrez Saragon recalled: A few hundred dollars to process her fingerprints. Several hundred more for background checks. Trips to New York and Washington, D.C., which he claimed he needed to take to collect her passport. Each time, she gave him money to pay for the flight, hotel, rental car and gas, she said, but he always came back with an excuse for why he needed more time and cash.

Whenever she pushed back, she claimed, Marquez Cortes warned that she’d lose her chance at citizenship. She recalled how he would show her official-looking documents that he claimed were from a law firm in Orange County — all written in English and full of legal jargon she didn’t understand.

Only later did she learn that he had created a fake letterhead for the law firm, and was using the money she gave him to pay for his back taxes, child support and even a speeding ticket, she said.

Eventually, in February 2011, Gutierrez Saragon found a lifeline in the Immigrants Rights Project, a Los Angeles nonprofit that offers pro bono services for people seeking a path to citizenship or permanent residency. She came into their office terrified that it was her last day in the country, attorney Gina Amato Lough recalled.

“She was trembling,” Lough said.

Her new client’s first words, Lough said, suggested she thought she was turning herself in to the authorities rather than seeking free legal counsel: “I know that you’re the immigration service and you have the power to deport me. But the day has come where I just have to know what’s happened to my case.”

Lough encouraged her to file a police report the following day at Olympic Division station. But an officer at the front desk turned her away, saying it wasn’t a crime and that she needed to go to a courthouse to file a civil complaint. Lough accompanied her the following day and was told by another officer that they didn’t take reports for such cases “because it’s so common in L.A. that we couldn’t possibly prosecute it.”

After Lough protested, police agreed to take a report and eventually, the man was charged with grand theft and convicted.

Despite what Lough described as “a lack of reputable immigration attorneys” to help people through the labyrinthine U.S. immigration process, her group fought against a proposal by the state bar association to help bridge the justice gap by creating a paraprofessional classification, which would lower the bar to entry in the field.

Lough worried such a change would create more confusion and lead to more fraud. She called for local authorities to take seriously an issue that is often overlooked.

Most district attorneys are reluctant to prosecute unless there are “multiple cases and hundreds of dollars in losses,” she said. “There is a huge lack of enforcement within L.A. County.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis echoed that sentiment.

Solis said she has fought for stronger regulations for a problem that isn’t confined to the Latino community, pointing to recent cases in the county involving immigrants from Asian and European countries.

“How do you deter the behavior if there is no teeth in the law?” Solis asked.

Some attorneys who practice immigration law say they are coming across scams that play out entirely online, allowing perpetrators to vanish before authorities even have a chance to investigate.

Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said she recently had a client arrive saying they were expecting to collect a green card after sending money to someone they had been communicating with on WhatsApp.

The person on WhatsApp told the client they could pick up the proof of permanent residency status with Toczylowski’s organization, which was a lie.

“Essentially that person was masquerading as a nonprofit organization,” Toczylowski said, adding that her group is preparing a public service announcement to warn about the scam.

Other times, immigration consultants aren’t out to defraud their clients, but still sometimes “make promises that they can’t keep,” she said.

Toczylowski’s center relies on local, state and federal funding, the latter of which has been threatened — a troubling development that comedian John Oliver highlighted on his show “Last Week Tonight.” After the episode aired, Toczylowski said the center received a flood of online donations, but not nearly enough to offset potential cuts to federal funding.

The center is also a plaintiff in an ongoing federal lawsuit out of Northern California against the Department of Human Services over slashed funding, she said.

When the case involving Marquez Cortes, the man who defrauded Gutierrez Saragon, finally went to trial, he was found guilty and a superior court judge ordered him to pay three installments totaling $66,000 in restitution or face a two-year prison sentence.

He eventually fled to Mexico, where a bail bondsman tracked him down and he was arrested by local police, according to Lough.

Lough said she pushed for the man to be extradited back to the U.S. to serve out his sentence, but to this day she’s not sure what his fate was. Gutierrez Saragon hasn’t recovered her losses.

“She’s never seen a dime,” Lough said. “And he’s never spent not a day in jail.”

Heading into the final stretch of the 2024 election, it seemed every cable news program had a segment dedicated to this one question: What will Black men do?

Progressives on the ground were voicing concerns about Black male voter turnout long before the 2022 midterms. But because the overturning of Roe vs. Wade enabled Democrats to avoid a “red wave” then, the urgency regarding Black men was muted. That quickly changed once former Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee and media personalities such as Stephen A. Smith and Charlamagne tha God began questioning her qualifications without a hint of irony.

In the end, nearly 75% of Black men voted for Harris, and all of those cable news segments about the concerns of that voting bloc went away. That’s unfortunate because in many ways the question at the center of it all — “What will Black men do?” — is more relevant today than it was seven months ago. Since President Trump has retaken office, federal civil rights offices have been gutted, grants for minority business programs canceled and the names of enslavers are making a comeback on military bases. Cable news may be waiting until the next election to talk about the concerns of Black men, but the Black community can’t wait that long. Khalil Thompson and Bakari Sellers agree.

The pair are part of the leadership team for Win With Black Men, a political advocacy group that began in 2022. Thompson said he was inspired to start the group by Win With Black Women, which started after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Both organizations were key to jump-starting the enthusiasm for Harris, especially financially, with each raising millions of dollars within days of her campaign’s launch.

Now, with the election behind us and three years of a hostile White House administration ahead of us, Thompson’s group has announced an 18-city listening tour starting in July to strategize about ways to help the community outside of the political system. The goal is to reach 3,500 Black men in person and another 25,000 through a national survey in hopes of building a database to better serve the community. Thompson said it’s particularly important to keep people engaged now that the election is over because of how the White House continues to test the limits of both presidential power and the support from his party.

“There has to be a moment where right is right,” said Thompson, a former operative for President Obama. “We raise our children to understand the basic tenets of being a good person. … We need to build a system that can adequately accommodate and support the vast majority of people in this country who just want to enjoy this small amount of time we have on this planet. I see the protests happening and the raids and I’m reminded of Ruby Bridges or the lunch counter in Greensboro. What is happening now in our cities — ripping parents away from their children — doesn’t speak to our better angels.”

Sellers added: “Democracy is participatory, and a lot of time people forget that. The choices are to be on the sideline or get engaged — either way, you are involved.”

He made that choice at a young age, becoming the youngest Black person in elected state office across the country in 2006, as a 22-year-old state representative in South Carolina. His early social justice work echoes that of his father, Cleveland Sellers, who was part of the leadership for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement.

“I’d rather get in the fight, be knocked around a little bit, face terror head on, knowing I’m doing it for a just and righteous cause,” Sellers said.

Thompson said that in addition to engagement, Win With Black Men is looking to be a vessel for helping people financially with their utility and grocery bills, as the steep federal cuts and job losses threaten to send millions of Americans into poverty. The current fundraising goal is $2.5 million. And while the organization is nonpartisan, Sellers said a prominent Democrat is the unofficial North Star: “We need to get back to the politics of Jesse Jackson. Meet people where they are, focus on the working class and facilitate conversations that uplift people, not demean them.”

Few things are more demeaning than feeling like your voice matters only once every four years. If nothing else, this upcoming listening tour is a reminder to Democrats that Black men are more than a vote.

@LZGranderson

WASHINGTON — Miles of fencing and concrete barriers lace the nation’s capital ahead of President Trump’s military parade along the National Mall on Saturday night — an event intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army, but which also coincides with the president’s birthday.

The event is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of attendees, the Secret Service said, drawn to the rare spectacle of military hardware and soldiers filing down American streets. It is an event that Trump has sought ever since his first term, when he fawned over the sight of a military march down the Champs-Élysées during a Bastille Day celebration in Paris. Trump’s event, according to an Army spokesperson, will cost between $25 million and $45 million, depending on how much damage the tanks inflict on D.C. roads.

Dozens of U.S. aircraft, hundreds of military vehicles, and thousands of soldiers are expected to take part in the parade, followed by a fireworks show. Both uniformed and plainclothes officers were seen practicing their march through the city on Friday morning. But the extent of Trump’s participation is not entirely clear in light of the emerging crisis in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.

While a handful of counter-protests are expected within the district itself, dozens are planned around the country. The “No Kings” protests, according to their organizers, are meant to counter-program Trump’s “made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday.”

“Real power isn’t staged in Washington,” the group’s website reads. “It rises up everywhere else.”

The Trump administration has said it welcomes peaceful protests throughout the country on Saturday. But that White House commitment was called into question earlier this week, when a federal judge in California ruled that Trump had violated the law by federalizing the National Guard in response to largely peaceful demonstrations in Los Angeles protesting its immigration enforcement tactics.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said he was “troubled by the implication” inherent in the Trump administration’s argument that “protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”

Trump wrested control over the National Guard troops from California from Gov. Gavin Newsom to deploy 2,000 to Los Angeles after less than 24 hours of protests across the city.

Thousands more were later called to Los Angeles, as were hundreds of Marines.

Late Thursday, following an appeal by the administration, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put Breyer’s decision on hold, leaving the forces in L.A. under Trump’s control as the litigation continues.

A U.S. Army sign is positioned in front of the White House for Saturday’s parade.

(Eric Thayer / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The deployments of troops to march in D.C. were not challenged, though critics of the current administration have similarly criticized their presence in an American city — blasting the parade as the sort of spectacle more expected from a country such as North Korea.

On Friday, downtown Washington was a maze of metal barriers surrounding monuments, museums and other landmarks such as the National Mall, where crowds are expected to gather beginning Saturday morning.

Constitution Avenue, where the parade will be held, was closed to traffic. Tourists wandered through openings in the gates, some lamenting the lengthy detours the barriers required — especially given the humidity and heat that pressed down on the city.

City road closures and flight delays from nearby Reagan National Airport are expected throughout much of Saturday. There is also a chance it will rain on the president’s parade, with thunderstorms, lightning and flash flooding forecast for the district. High chances of lightning, an Army spokesman said, could result in a cancellation of the festivities.

It was unclear to what extent protesters might target the parade itself. Trump has warned that “any” protesters at the event would be handled with “heavy force,” though the White House said that peaceful protests are fine.

Small signs of protest against the Trump administration were already apparent around the Mall Friday, though it was unclear when they’d been put up. One sign stuck to a utility box read, “Immigrants are not the enemy,” while another read, “All You Fascists Bound to Lose.”

A man road a bicycle along 14th Street near the Washington Monument holding up a large sign calling the president a “creep” and “unfit” — among other things.

The security measures were similar to those put in place during other major events in Washington’s downtown core — at least since Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to keep Trump in office after his 2020 loss to President Biden.

The insurrection caused widespread damage to the Capitol and put many lawmakers at risk, but drew a decidedly different response from Trump than the recent protests in L.A. Shortly after he was reelected, Trump pardoned all of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

Los Angeles lawyer Michael Avenatti was indicted Wednesday on charges of stealing from his former client Stormy Daniels by skimming money from her deal to write a memoir detailing her alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump.

It was the third time in two months that federal prosecutors have charged the celebrity attorney with criminal wrongdoing. Daniels is the sixth Avenatti client whose money he is accused of embezzling.

A federal grand jury in New York accused Avenatti of forging Daniels’ signature on a document instructing her literary agent to wire nearly $300,000 of her money to him.

Avenatti “blatantly lied to and stole from his client to maintain his extravagant lifestyle,” said Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“Far from zealously representing his client, Avenatti, as alleged, instead engaged in outright deception and theft, victimizing rather than advocating for his client,” Berman said.

Avenatti spent roughly half the money on personal expenses, including the lease of a Ferrari, according to prosecutors.

On Twitter, Avenatti denied the charges. “No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled,” he said.

The indictment charges Avenatti with wire fraud and aggravated identify theft. If convicted on both counts, he faces up to 22 years in prison. Combined with previous criminal charges brought against Avenatti over the last two months, he now faces a maximum penalty of 404 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Daniels’ new attorney, Clark Brewster of Tulsa, Okla., said he brought the case to the FBI and federal prosecutors earlier this year after she showed him the documentation cited Wednesday in the indictment.

“What I witnessed here was just the most base of criminality,” Brewster said. “It really does take a calculated criminal mind to have done what he did over such a long period of time with such dishonesty — and all the while posing as her champion.”

Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Clark Brewster.

(Brandi Simons / Associated Press)

Under an April 2018 contract that Avenatti helped negotiate with Daniels’ publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and literary agent, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Daniels was to receive an $800,000 advance in four installments for her memoir, “Full Disclosure.”

The book featured graphic details of her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe resort. It was published in October.

The publisher sent the first two installments — a total of $425,000 — to Daniels’ agent, which forwarded the money to her after taking a fee, according to the indictment.

But Avenatti embezzled the third and fourth installments, the grand jury alleged. They say he did it by emailing a letter to Janklow & Nesbit on Aug. 1, 2018, instructing the agent to wire the remaining money to a bank account that Avenatti controlled. The letter purported to be from Daniels, with her signature.

But Daniels neither authorized nor signed the “false wire instructions,” the indictment says.

When Avenatti received the two remaining installments, he spent the money on hotels, airline tickets, car services, restaurants, dry cleaning, a $3,900 lease payment on the Ferrari and various business expenses, according to the indictment.

Avenatti repeatedly lied to Daniels to cover up the theft, the grand jury alleged.

“When is the publisher going to cough up my money?” she asked him in December, according to the indictment.

Avenatti did not tell her he’d already received and spent the money, saying instead that he was threatening to sue the publisher for failing to pay her.

“They need to pay you the money as you did your part and then some,” he allegedly told her.

In January, the indictment says, Avenatti told her falsely that St. Martin’s Press was resisting making the payment due to purportedly poor sales.

Avenatti accused of embezzling nearly $2 million that NBA player paid ex-girlfriend »

Daniels made Avenatti famous last year by hiring him to sue President Trump to void a nondisclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election. In exchange for her silence, the adult-film star was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign finance felony for orchestrating the deal. Prosecutors say Trump directed Cohen to pay the hush money to Daniels, a stripper who has performed in more than 150 pornographic movies over the last two decades.

When the scandal broke in early 2018, Avenatti fueled the media frenzy in scores of interviews with Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, George Stephanopoulos and other television news personalities.

Avenatti, who relished bashing Trump on television, explored a run for president, but his career in politics effectively died last fall when Los Angeles police arrested him on suspicion of domestic violence. Prosecutors declined to charge him.

Tensions between Avenatti and Daniels spilled into public view in November.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told the Daily Beast that Avenatti treated her with disrespect, ignored requests for an accounting of her crowdfunding money and, against her wishes, filed a second suit against Trump for defamation. Avenatti denied her allegations.

Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announces Michael Avenatti’s arrest on extortion charges in March.

(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

A federal judge dismissed both of Daniels’ lawsuits against Trump. He ordered Daniels in December to pay Trump $292,000 to cover the president’s legal fees. Two months later, Daniels and Avenatti parted ways for reasons neither disclosed.

“He knew that I was unhappy and looking for new counsel,” Daniels told a crowd at a book promotion event in Washington.

The FBI arrested Avenatti in New York on March 25 after secretly recording what prosecutors allege was an attempt to extort sportswear giant Nike in conversations with the company’s lawyers. He was formally indicted in that case, too, on Wednesday.

Prosecutors say Avenatti threatened to hold a news conference that would take billions of dollars off Nike’s market value unless it paid a client $1.5 million and hired Avenatti and L.A. lawyer Mark Geragos for as much as $25 million to conduct an internal investigation.

Geragos, identified by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator, was not charged with any crimes.

Avenatti’s life of luxury hangs by a thread as IRS comes calling »

Still, the most serious legal threat to Avenatti is in California, where he faces a separate 36-count federal indictment.

In August, he is scheduled to be tried in Santa Ana on charges of embezzling millions of dollars from clients, dodging taxes, defrauding a bank by submitting fake financial papers to get loans and concealing assets from creditors and the federal court that oversaw his law firm’s bankruptcy.

Avenatti denies wrongdoing.

Makeup artist Michelle Phan.

(Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

The clients whose money prosecutors say he stole include Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, a mentally ill paraplegic man on disability, and Michelle Phan, a makeup artist popular on YouTube.

He is also charged with embezzling most of a $2.75-million payment that Miami Heat basketball center Hassan Whiteside intended for an ex-girlfriend, Alexis Gardner, who was an Avenatti client.

NEW YORK — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he abruptly dismissed earlier this week.

They include a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and became a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns, and a professor of operations management.

Kennedy’s decision to “retire” the previous 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was widely decried by doctors’ groups and public health organizations, who feared the advisers would be replaced by a group aligned with Kennedy’s desire to reassess — and possibly end — longstanding vaccination recommendations.

On Tuesday, before he announced his picks, Kennedy said: “We’re going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel — not anti-vaxxers — bringing people on who are credentialed scientists.”

The new appointees include Vicky Pebsworth, a regional director for the National Assn. of Catholic Nurses. She has been listed as a board member and volunteer director for the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that is widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

Another is Dr. Robert Malone, the former mRNA researcher who emerged as a close adviser to Kennedy during the measles outbreak. Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed. He has appeared on podcasts and other conservative news outlets where he’s promoted unproven and alternative treatments for measles and COVID-19.

He has claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the COVID-19 shots and has suggested that those vaccines cause a form of AIDS. He’s downplayed deaths related to one of the largest measles outbreaks in the U.S. in years.

Malone told the Associated Press he will do his best “to serve with unbiased objectivity and rigor.”

Other appointees include Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter maintaining that pandemic shutdowns were causing irreparable harm. Dr. Cody Meissner, a former ACIP member, also was named.

Abram Wagner of the University of Michigan’s school of public health, who investigates vaccination programs, said he’s not satisfied with the composition of the committee.

“The previous ACIP was made up of technical experts who have spent their lives studying vaccines,” he said. Most people on the current list “don’t have the technical capacity that we would expect out of people who would have to make really complicated decisions involving interpreting complicated scientific data.”

He said having Pebsworth on the board is “incredibly problematic” since she is involved in an organization that “distributes a lot of misinformation.”

Kennedy made the announcement in a social media post on Wednesday.

The committee, created in 1964, makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC directors almost always approve those recommendations on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. The CDC’s final recommendations are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

The other appointees are:

• Dr. James Hibbeln, who formerly headed a National Institutes of Health group focused on nutritional neurosciences and who studies how nutrition affects the brain, including the potential benefits of seafood consumption during pregnancy.
• Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies business issues related to supply chain, logistics, pricing optimization and health and healthcare management. In a 2023 video pinned to an X profile under his name, Levi called for the end of the COVID-19 vaccination program, claiming the vaccines were ineffective and dangerous despite evidence they saved millions of lives. Levi told the AP he would try to help inform “public health policies with data and science, with the goal of improving the health and wellbeing of people and regain the public trust.”
• Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles.
• Dr. Michael Ross, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist who previously served on a CDC breast and cervical cancer advisory committee. He is described as a “serial CEO and physician leader” in a bio for Havencrest Capital Management, a private equity investment firm where he is an operating partner.

Of the eight named by Kennedy, perhaps the most experienced in vaccine policy is Meissner, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who has previously served as a member of both ACIP and the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel.

During his five-year term as an FDA adviser, the committee was repeatedly asked to review and vote on the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines that were rapidly developed to fight the pandemic. In September 2021, he joined the majority of panelists who voted against a plan from the Biden administration to offer an extra vaccine dose to all American adults. The panel instead recommended that the extra shot should be limited to seniors and those at higher risk of the disease.

Ultimately, the FDA disregarded the panel’s recommendation and approved an extra vaccine dose for all adults.

In addition to serving on government panels, Meissner has helped author policy statements and vaccination schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

ACIP members typically serve in staggered four-year terms, although several appointments were delayed during the Biden administration before positions were filled last year. The voting members are all supposed to have scientific or clinical expertise in immunization, except for one “consumer representative” who can bring perspective on community and social facets of vaccine programs.

Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official, has accused the committee of being too closely aligned with vaccine manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. ACIP policies require members to state past collaborations with vaccine companies and to recuse themselves from votes in which they had a conflict of interest, but Kennedy has dismissed those safeguards as weak.

Most of the people who best understand vaccines are those who have researched them, which usually requires some degree of collaboration with the companies that develop and sell them, said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher.

“If you are to exclude any reputable, respected vaccine expert who has ever engaged even in a limited way with the vaccine industry, you’re likely to have a very small pool of folks to draw from,” Schwartz said.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Kennedy in February after he promised he would not change the vaccination schedule. But less than a week later, he vowed to investigate childhood vaccines that prevent measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

Kennedy has ignored some of the recommendations ACIP voted for in April, including the endorsement of a new combination shot that protects against five strains of meningococcal bacteria and the expansion of vaccinations against RSV.

In late May, Kennedy disregarded the committee and announced the government would change the recommendation for children and pregnant women to get COVID-19 shots.

On Monday, Kennedy ousted all 17 members of the ACIP, saying he would appoint a new group before the next scheduled meeting in late June. The agenda for that meeting has not yet been posted, but a recent federal notice said votes are expected on vaccinations against flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV and meningococcal bacteria.

A HHS spokesman did not respond to a question about whether there would be only eight ACIP members, or whether more will be named later.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press reporters Matthew Perrone, Amanda Seitz, Devi Shastri and Laura Ungar contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The U.S. population includes an estimated 65.2 million Latinos, nearly a quarter of whom call California home. For over a century, Latinos were absent from the state’s two U.S. Senate seats. In 2022, Sen. Alex Padilla reversed the willful neglect of Latino senatorial candidates by both major political parties, winning 61.1% of the vote, more than any other statewide candidate, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

On Thursday, in the midst of the Trump administration’s largest immigration raids to date, Padilla was forcibly removed at a Department of Homeland Security press conference in his hometown, Los Angeles. Manhandled, for daring to exercise his congressional responsibilities. Pushed out of a job-related meeting for asking a question. For many Latinos, the abhorrent treatment of Padilla by the Trump administration is emblematic of a shared grievance: being pushed out of conversations about our lives, our families and our futures.

The Trump administration’s immigration raids are squarely a Latino issue. Not because immigration is a Latino issue — all issues are Latino issues — but because Trump’s immigration enforcement is and has always been racially motivated. From Trump’s campaign announcement in 2015, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, to his fixation with building a wall across our southern border and having Mexico pay for it, to his 2024 campaign focused on falsehoods about immigrants and criminality, the central narrative has been “us” versus “them.”

Immigration is a concern in every city and state, yet Trump’s immigration enforcement seems to be exclusively focused on Latino communities. In Los Angeles, Trump’s raids are explicitly targeting Latino-majority neighborhoods and cities including Westlake, Paramount and Compton, going beyond data-informed enforcement actions to the racial profiling of Latinos near schools, tending to errands like getting a car washed or sitting in a church parking lot.

Over the last week, Los Angeles has been ground zero for Trump’s federal overreach. Padilla’s silencing and removal follow refusals to admit four U.S. House representatives at the Los Angeles federal detention center on Saturday and three representatives to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Adelanto on Sunday.

While immigration raids raise serious policy and human rights concerns, the unequal treatment of Latino congressional leaders by the Trump administration represents a different kind of hazard: a test for control of our democratic republic.

America has three co-equal branches: legislative, executive, judiciary. This system of separation of powers and checks and balances is designed to prevent tyranny and ensure a balanced government. For the last five months, the Trump administration has upended our system of governance.

The Trump administration bypassed Congress’ budgetary actions by eliminating foreign aid. Trump officials willfully ignored judicial orders. They’ve blocked sitting members of the House and Senate from entering federal buildings, obstructed them from conducting oversight and undermined their inquiries.

Like Trump’s immigration enforcement actions, the administration’s overreach is racially motivated. Latinos have long expressed that no one is listening to their needs — that they are left out of the conversation and never at the table where decisions are being made. Research has made clear that Latinos bear the brunt of underrepresentation across important societal institutions such as academia, private enterprise, philanthropy and news media. The list goes on.

Unfortunately, when Latinos achieve positions that ought to wield power — such as Padilla’s ascent to the Senate — the positions themselves tend to be diminished, so that — again, like Padilla being silenced at a press conference — the Latinos who gain prominence are denied the power that non-Latinos enjoy in parallel positions. This week’s events provide a new chapter in the diminishment of Latino agency and dignity; members of Congress were denied entry to do their jobs, and in the case of Padilla, forcibly removed and detained.

One thing is consistent: the repeated dehumanization of Latinos and their needs. Latinos are not a monolith, but the Trump administration is surely treating us as such. His administration has rolled out a carte blanche attack on Latinos. From Latino community members being stalked and apprehended in Home Depot parking lots, at places of worship or their children’s school graduations, to targeted attacks on the sustainability and operations of Latino-led nonprofit organizations, to the physical assault of a U.S. senator. The subjugation of Latinos is currently on full display in Los Angeles, a region that fuels the world’s fourth-largest economy (California) and is the global epicenter of media and entertainment. The absence of meaningful Latino participation in shaping narratives, trends and the public imagination is cause for concern.

Any conversation on the fragility of American democracy, the resurgence of fascism and authoritarianism and the future of the Constitution is, inherently, a discourse about Latinos — and about all Americans. So long as Latinos remain silenced, ostracized and relegated to the periphery in conversations about the future of this nation, that future remains bleak. The test of how America responds in real time to the wholesale attack on its second-largest demographic group is now a shared assignment. And the group’s leader is Padilla.

Sonja Diaz is a civil rights attorney and co-founder of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab and UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute.

Pacific Palisades will reopen to the general public Saturday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell told The Times Friday afternoon.

The affluent coastal enclave has remained closed to the public since the devastating January wildfires, months after other fire-damaged neighborhoods reopened. Access to the neighborhood was limited to residents and workers with passes. Dozens of LAPD officers have been staffing 16 checkpoints on major streets into the community, according to the mayor’s office.

Those checkpoints will no longer be staffed as of Saturday, but there “will still be a heavy police presence for the foreseeable future there,” McDonnell said.

The decision was made in conjunction with Mayor Karen Bass, with input from members of the community, McDonnell said. Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city is bracing for widespread demonstrations against the Trump administration on Saturday that will include a heavy law enforcement presence. The need to shift personnel to other parts of the city ahead of the protests was “a factor” in McDonnell’s decision, but he said it was also a necessary evolution months after the fires.

The status of the checkpoints will be reassessed after this weekend, LAPD spokesperson Jennifer Forkish said.

Brian Gavidia was at work on West Olympic Boulevard in Montebello at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday when he was told immigration agents were outside of his workplace.

Gavidia, 29, was born and raised in East Los Angeles and fixes and sells cars for a living. He said he stepped outside. And saw four to six agents.

Within seconds, he said, one of them — wearing a vest with “Border Patrol Federal Agent” written on the back — approached him.

“Stop right there,” he said the agent told him. Then the agent questioned whether Gavidia was American.

“I’m an American citizen,” Gavidia said he told the agent at least three times.

Despite his responses, the agent pushed him into a metal gate, put his hands behind his back and asked him what hospital he was born in, Gavidia said.

Rattled by the encounter, he said he couldn’t remember the hospital.

Video taken by a friend shows two agents holding Gavidia against a blue fence. He tells them they are twisting his arm.

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“I’m American, bro!” Gavidia said in the video.

“What hospital were you born?” the agent asked again, this time recorded in the video.

“I don’t know dawg!” he said. “East L.A. bro! I can show you: I have my f—ing Real ID.”

His friend, who Gavidia did not name, narrated the video. As the incident continued, he said: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks. “

Gavidia said he gave the Border Patrol agent his Real ID, but the agent never returned it to him. The agent also took his phone and kept it for 20 minutes, he said, before finally returning it.

Even after the agent saw his ID, Gavidia said, he never apologized.

In a response to questions from the Times, U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not answer questions about the encounter with Gavidia.

The agency said in a statement that it is “conducting targeted immigration enforcement in support of ICE operations across the Los Angeles area. Enforcing immigration law is not optional — it’s essential to protecting America’s national security, public safety, and economic strength.”

The statement continued: “Every removal of an illegal alien helps restore order and reinforce the rule of law.”

Pressed by The Times for answers about that specific encounter, a CBP spokesperson said: “The statement provided is the only info available about the operation at this time.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gavidia said another friend was arrested that afternoon at the same location. His name is Javier Ramirez, and he, too, is an American citizen. Tomas De Jesus, Ramirez’s cousin and his attorney, said immigration agents had entered a private business, “without a warrant without a probable cause, to warrant entering into a place like that.”

De Jesus said his cousin began alerting people to the presence of the agents. He said he only learned of his cousin’s whereabouts on Friday afternoon and said authorities are accusing him of “resisting arrest, assaulting people.”

“We’re still conducting an investigation to really understand and ascertain the facts of the case,” De Jesus said. De Jesus said he called the Metropolitan Detention Center and identified himself as an attorney wishing to speak with his client, but he was told attorneys were not allowed to see their clients at the moment.

“I was not given permission, I was not given access to even speak to him on the phone,” he said.

Montebello Mayor Salvador Melendez, who watched video of the encounter with Gavidia, called the situation “just extremely frustrating.

“It just seems like there’s no due process,” he said. “They’re just getting folks that look like our community and taking them and questioning them.”

Melendez said he got a call from a resident when immigration agents were on Olympic Boulevard. Melendez said he heard they were going out to other locations in the city, too.

“They’re going for a specific look, which is a look of our Latino community, our immigrant community,” he said.

Gavidia said his mother is Colombian and his father is Salvadoran. They are American citizens.

“He violated my rights as an American citizen,” Gavidia said, his voice shaking with anger as he spoke over the phone from his business Friday. “It was the worst experience I ever felt. I felt honestly like I was going to die. He literally racked a chamber in his AR-15.”

Gavidia‘s clothes were dirty from work, and he said he figured that’s partly why agents questioned him.

“I’m legal,” he said. “I speak perfect English. I also speak perfect Spanish. I’m bilingual, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be picked out, like ‘This guys seems Latino; this guy seems a little bit dirty.’ I’m working, guys. I’m an American. We work. I’m Latino. We work.”

He added: “It’s just scary, walking while brown, walking while dirty, coming home from work, there’s a high chance you might get picked up.”

Gavidia said he still doesn’t have his Real ID back. He went to the Department of Motor Vehicles Friday morning and said immigration agents had stolen his ID. He said he was told he would need to reapply for another one.

“He took my ticket to freedom,” Gavidia said.