As the showdown between the Trump Administration and California’s government escalates, E. Tammy Kim is on-the-ground in Southern California. Plus:
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Photograph by Jeff Gritchen / The Orange County Register / AP
Caroline Mimbs Nyce
Newsletter editor
Much of the reporting from Los Angeles has focussed on the protests and military presence downtown. But elsewhere, in surrounding counties, another type of drama is unfolding, one that isn’t so easily captured by sensational imagery that has been circulating online. Enforcement agents with the Department of Homeland Security continue to conduct raids as part of the Trump Administration’s national deportation efforts—doubling down on the very actions that sparked the recent demonstrations in L.A.
A flurry of such raids took place yesterday in Santa Ana, a city in Orange County, not far from Disneyland. The New Yorker contributing writer E. Tammy Kim was on site as protesters gathered outside a federal building, waiting to see if the next vanful of detainees would be brought in. I spoke to Kim about what she saw—and about why the L.A. area, in particular, has become such a flash point. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Talk to me a little bit about what you saw yesterday. How bad is it?
Around lunchtime, I heard about raids in Santa Ana. A few hundred protesters were assembled outside a federal building, holding signs and chanting. A line of federal agents in mixed uniform stood some yards away. They were holding machine guns and wearing full military-style outfits.
What was it like? How did it compare to downtown?
It was much smaller, of course. Also much more Latino—more than three-fourths of Santa Ana’s population is Latino—and seemingly every passing vehicle honked and yelled. Nearly everyone in this area has immigrants among their family and friends. The protesters had been expecting vans full of detainees to arrive. They had planned to hold up signs providing support and information to detainees who were brought inside.
When the vans didn’t arrive for a while, the crowd moved down toward where federal agents were positioned. At that point, a line of Santa Ana Police Department officers streamed in to where the protesters had been, blocking off one side of the street. When the protesters confronted the federal agents down the block, things got heated. There was yelling and more chanting. A couple of people threw plastic water bottles. They landed very far from the officers, but it was enough to prompt the officers to start shooting what appeared to be pepper-spray balls and flash-bang grenades. While the protesters were distracted, two vans, presumably transporting detainees, entered the driveway of the federal building, right by the line of Santa Ana police.
By early evening, there were only about a dozen officers and a couple hundred protesters still there. The crowd moved into a nearby park to avoid further trouble.
Do you have any sense of why these raids in particular have become such a flash point?
Raids are a constant in many immigrant communities. But, yesterday morning, federal agents showed up outside Home Depot locations; there were federal vehicles clustered in a parking lot. There was a sense that Homeland Security wanted to pick up a lot of people at once.
Officials say these detainees are the “worst of the worst.” Does that track with what you’re hearing?
The head of ICE, Tom Homan, pointed out that a criminal warrant was the basis for a workplace raid in L.A. But, in Southern California and across the country, federal agents have started to detain immigrants in courthouses who are just trying to fulfill their legal appointments. They’re picking up people in public spaces who they suspect are immigrants without papers. Trump likes to say that he’s targeting bad, criminal immigrants. But, in many raids, agents seem to be making no distinction between criminal and civil immigration violations.
Why L.A.? And why now?
Trump has been battling California for some time. Even before his Inauguration, when Southern California was on fire, he attacked the governor, Gavin Newsom, for his water-management policies, and later held a testy press conference with L.A.’s mayor, Karen Bass. Last week, Trump threatened to pull more federal funding from the state.
