LA Under Siege, Resistance in My Heart
Dear friends,
This is truly an unprecedented time, and things on my end are difficult. I’m grateful to do the work I do, and grateful that y’all opened/reading this post even though there’s so much else competing for our attention.
This includes what’s happening in Los Angeles, which is the subject of today’s post.
There’s a war against Iran and people still dying in Gaza. I encourage everyone to donate to Kinder USA, which provides direct relief to Palestinian children.
I hope by the time you finish this post, the wars and occupations in our world will have de-escalated.
Vivek.
I can’t remember the last time LA was under siege like this. But I’m also not from the city, even though I’ve lived here for nearly twenty years. I do know, however, that communities have always felt under pressure here — undocumented, Black, Latinx, Asian, Queer, unhoused; just as communities are occupied around the globe. But if there’s anything I know about LA is that we always fight back.
But I know that I started identifying with the Los Angeles and its energy when I first heard Rage Against the Machine and later organized with labor unions here in the summer of 2002.
Despite my past work, I don’t often go to protests or get involved with much organizing these days. I didn’t go to the “No Kings” protest on Saturday June 14, 2025 because my children have a piano class with an amazing teacher that I don’t want them to miss. But I mostly haven’t gone because the Trump administration has been too much lately; my capacity feels so limited because of the sheer number of anti-immigrant, and generally anti-people, attacks happening throughout this country.
It’s all so deliberate, and mean, and wasteful, and exhausting. And so tiring.
I especially feel this as an immigration attorney working for an organization that provides legal services across California, particularly around the recent ICE pogrom to disappear people here in Southern California. This is what triggered the recent LA uprising, and what led to the media painting what’s happening as a riot, as a dangerous fringe movement that needs to stop. This led to the deployment of the National Guard (which looks more like they are just standing around near Federal buildings because that is all they can do under existing law).
All of this has led to a climate of anxiety and fear. I say heightened because since the 2024 election, people have been scared of what could happen, because since January 20, 2025, peoples’ fear amped up and our offices got many more calls from anxious students, and since June 6, 2025, those fears turned real. U.S. Citizens are being forcefully thrown into ICE vehicles despite ICE not having any jurisdiction over U.S. Citizens. ICE is being spotted in or at or near universities, schools, churches. Families are getting hauled back into Immigration Court after years of building full lives in the United States. Babies are being taken and separated from their parents.
And just this past week, ICE trucks were spotted in our neighborhood park, just a short walk away from my kids summer camp.
Even though we couldn’t make it to the No Kings action, I did spend some time talking with my kids about the protest. We talked about what “no kings” meant, and why we don’t want them. And we talked about ICE’s occupation of LA, and why that was bad. They had some questions, which led to some hilarious hypotheticals that ebbed and flowed the conversation into more prosaic topics.
But the day after, we did attend another action that a friend organized in South LA. And that protest against ICE’s practice of disappearing people was small, powerful, and beautiful.
And disappeared is an accurate term; people have been using this to describe atrocities all over the world, from Palestine to Argentina, Chile to India, New York City to Los Angeles. As an immigration attorney I have dealt with detained clients. In the process, I have to do a lot of story reconstruction with the family, and eventually with the person who is detained (assuming they can be located in the first place). Where did they go? What did the agents say to them when they got detained? Did they sign any paperwork? Do they have any medical issues? Who is the officer managing their case? Are they going to be transferred? If so, to where?
Although there is a way to look up where immigration detainees could be located, many times there is a significant lag from the time of detention to the time that person can be found in the system. But if they are detained with Customs and Border Protection, they cannot be found without calling individual CBP offices, channeling your rage into a soothing and sycophantic voice, hoping officers feel up to telling you where your client is.
But not knowing where someone is, where their body lies, creates a dissonance that a loved one feels when someone isn’t there anymore. When they go somewhere and someone lies in wait for them, and then they’re gone.
It is against this dissonance that is leading to the uprising in LA. And why the administration is scared. And for that reason, I’m proud to play a role, no matter how small it is, or how excruciating things get.