Donald Trump’s agenda will never win Los Angeles—at least not in the traditional sense, and certainly not through votes or on the ideological terrain. But the campaign of terror being unleashed upon the city is not about a conventional victory. Instead, Trump intends to terrorize Los Angeles into submission, creating a spectacle and inflicting chaos in an attempt to break the political and moral backbone of a city that refuses to submit to authoritarian ethnonationalism. Faced with extreme federal overreach, which has taken the form of ICE abductions and the deployment of militarized forces, Los Angeles now finds itself at a crossroads. We are witnessing in Los Angeles an authoritarian attempt to undermine the mandate of the people to retain the city as a longtime sanctuary for immigrants. To be more precise, what is taking place now is a retaliatory campaign—a punishment for Los Angeles’ defiance and a message to every city that dares to resist Trump’s ethnonationalist agenda.
But Los Angeles is not just any city. It has always been a locus of struggle and resistance.
My aim in this essay is twofold. First, I outline the dominant narrative about what is happening in Los Angeles, offering some context that shows that framing the issue as a question of “national security” is misguided. Second, I propose an alternative framework: rather than a battle between “law and order” and so-called lawlessness (framed through the twin tropes of “illegal” immigration or anarchic unrest), I argue that we are seeing the righteous resistance to defend the sovereignty—and the soul—of Los Angeles.
Not Law and Order versus Lawlessness
In a recent speech at Fort Bragg, Trump declared that “generations of Army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness,” adding that “what you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order, and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags.”1“Trump vows to ‘liberate Los Angeles’ during Fort Bragg speech,” YouTube video, 1:35, posted by “Associated Press,” June 10, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD7D2ppxCRY. In subsequent speeches, he explained that his deployment of national troops represents a mission to “liberate Los Angeles.” But what, exactly, does he mean to “liberate Los Angeles” from? The answer lies in a disinformation campaign: a bizarre, gaslighting alternate reality that severs Los Angeles from its own history and from the broader nation. It attempts to recast California (and Los Angeles in particular) as a white MAGA ethnostate, which it never was and never will be.
The narrative of “law and order versus lawlessness” is an attempt to harness narrative power in a distorted reality and to rewrite LA’s reality and history. The narrative being spun by the Trump administration is one we’ve heard before: immigrants are criminals, protestors are anarchists, and real Americans are under siege. The federal response has been couched in terms like “law and order,” “public safety,” and “national security,” but such a framing collapses under scrutiny.
The reality is that Los Angeles has never been—and will never be—a white-majority city, much to the dismay of figures like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the current regime. From its founding in 1781 by the original Pobladores—a group of Black, Indigenous, mestizo, and Spanish settlers—Los Angeles has always been a multicultural city. By 1850, roughly 75 percent of its population was of Mexican descent. Even after the so-called Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, when close to one million people (including thousands of US birthright citizens) were forcibly removed and deported, Los Angeles has continued to be a majority minority city.
In a place like this, immigrants are essential to the economic and social fabric, even as they continue to be politically disenfranchised. Of the approximately ten million residents in the county, around 33 percent are foreign-born. Immigrants make up more than half the workforce in sectors like manufacturing, food services, and healthcare. The impact of federal immigration raids is already being felt in the form of labor shortages in these industries, and the agricultural sector has yet to see the full fallout. That these raids coincide with graduation season in the Los Angeles Unified School District and other area districts should also not be lost on anyone.
Thus, to borrow the words of the prolific borderlands thinker Gloria Anzaldúa:“This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is. And will be again.”2Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La frontera, 4th edition (Aunt Lute Books, 2012), 3. To say this is not some sort of radical threat against the United States. It’s simply a historical fact. Los Angeles stands as a constant reminder of the incomplete nature of the settler colonial project. Founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles toward the end of the eighteenth century, the city has since then changed hands many times, from Tongva land, to Spanish mission control, to Mexican governance, to Anglo annexation. Seen through this lens, calls to “liberate Los Angeles” are exposed as nothing more than thinly veiled ethnonationalist dog whistles.
What is unfolding in Los Angeles is also a serious violation of state sovereignty. On this point, even some Democrats, like Governor Gavin Newsom (who is believed by many to be setting the state for a Democratic run for the presidency in 2028), appear to be finding their backbone after being threatened with arrest by “border czar” Tom Homan. The federal overreach not only undermines constitutionally protected civil and labor rights but openly defies states’ authority and mandates like sanctuary city policies.
And Los Angeles is currently under siege. Federal agencies including ICE, CBP, DHS, Border Patrol, HSI, FBI and even the DEA have descended upon the city in an unprecedented show of force….At the time of this writing, more troops are stationed in Los Angeles than in Iraq and Syria combined. This is hardly “enforcement.” It’s quite literally an occupation.
But while Trump and the broader project of white supremacist ethnonationalism cannot and will not win in a place like Los Angeles, this doesn’t mean that they are not currently undertaking a brutal effort to injure and incapacitate the city—quite literally, in many cases—into submission. Knowing full well that the ideological battle is unwinnable here, their aim instead is to brutalize and terrorize the population into compliance. This explains the violent spectacle we are currently witnessing.
Southern California has long served as a laboratory for such authoritarian, anti-immigrant experiments. As Juan De Lara notes in Inland Shift, programs like Secure Communities (SComm) transformed local jails into immigrant-catching machines.3Juan D. De Lara, Inland Shift: Race, Space, and Capital in Southern California (University of California Press, 2018). Under this system, local police would scan detainees through a Department of Homeland Security database and hand over anyone flagged as undocumented to ICE. In Riverside County, supervisors even framed these collaborations as “crime reduction” despite the absence of any data showing that deportations reduce crime. These programs are very clearly not about safety from lawless hordes, but about instilling fear. They discourage people from seeking work, accessing healthcare, or simply existing in public life. They circumvent due process and corrode trust. They are campaigns of terror designed to make life unlivable for immigrants.
At every turn, the community has pushed back.
Make no mistake: what we are seeing in Los Angeles is a retaliatory agenda in motion. Los Angeles’ commitment to sanctuary, formalized in the City Council’s unanimous vote last November, has become the target of federal ire. This is because sanctuary cities fly in the face of executive orders (like the Executive Order Protecting the American People Against Invasion) that have expanded enforcement priorities to include anyone who committed “illegal” entry, overstayed a visa, or received a removal order. This paves the way for mass deportations and criminalizes the mere presence of undocumented people. Trump has also issued executive orders that challenge birthright citizenship and threaten those who offer aid to immigrants, including churches and nonprofits. The current measures represent political warfare against the very concept of sanctuary, which both threatens the administration’s draconian federal policy and is widely popular.4Fernando J. Guerra, Brianne Gilbert,and Berto Solis, Sanctuary Cities: 2017 Los Angeles Public Opinion Survey Report (Los Angeles: Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles, Loyal Marymount, 2017), available at https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/studyla-reports/2/#:~:text=More%20than%20two%2Dthirds%20of,by%20Loyola%20Marymount%20University%20researchers.
From this vantage point, we can see the current militarized siege of Los Angeles for what it truly is: a punitive effort, with narrative cover, to undermine sanctuary cities with decades of local precedent. In 2017, Executive Directive 20 reaffirmed that no city resources could be used for federal immigration enforcement. Even the LAPD has had to issue a statement asserting that, under its Special Order 40 from 1979, local police are barred from initiating contact based solely on immigration status.
And Los Angeles is currently under siege. Federal agencies including ICE, CBP, DHS, Border Patrol, HSI, FBI and even the DEA have descended upon the city in an unprecedented show of force. Two thousand National Guard troops and seven hundred marines have been deployed to roam neighborhoods and assist the feds in carrying out their orders. Undercover agents operate in civilian clothes and unmarked vehicles, snatching people off the streets, at their workplaces and their homes. At the time of this writing, more troops are stationed in Los Angeles than in Iraq and Syria combined.5Sharon Zhang, “Trump Has Deployed More Troops in LA Than Syria and Iraq, Per US Counts,” Truthout, June 11, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/trump-has-deployed-more-troops-in-la-than-syria-and-iraq-per-us-counts/. This is hardly “enforcement.” It’s quite literally an occupation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, as of June 11, an estimated 330 people had been detained by ICE (or, as many suspect, individuals posing as federal agents), and that number is expected to rise dramatically as ICE continues to escalate its operations in greater Los Angeles and surrounding counties, in an effort to meet egregious quotas set by the federal government.6Andrea Castillo, “330 immigrants detained in Southern California since Friday, White House spokesperson says,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-06-11/330-immigrants-detained-in-l-a-since-friday-white-house-spokeswoman-says. Workplace raids have intensified at Home Depot parking lots, garment factories, car washes, warehouses, and more. ICE agents are posted outside of neighborhood grocery stores. One of the most chilling tactics involves targeting people at their immigration appointments or near federal buildings. Elementary, middle, and high schools have been placed on lockdown to prevent plainclothes ICE agents from abducting children.
We are also witnessing a crackdown on organized labor.7Alejandra Quintero, “Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is a Crackdown on Unions,” Jacobin, June 10, 2025, https://jacobin.com/2025/06/trump-immigration-crackdown-unions-labor. The arrest of SEIU-USWW president and revered labor leader David Huerta is a case in point. His detention was marked by a kind of brutality more commonly reserved for those outside U.S. borders, for the “subjects” of empire. At the press conference following his release, Huerta appeared exhausted and physically shaken, but remained firm in his conviction in the power of working people standing united. This, at the same time that labor and community organizations at the forefront of community self-defense efforts were made aware of a HUAC-like investigation led by MAGA Senator and Josh Hawley of the “Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism.”
It is hardly hyperbole, then, to say that Los Angeles is also in a battle for its soul. Day after day, hour after hour, we are witnessing new raids and more people being taken. Repeated images and stories of our loved ones being taken are heartbreaking. With close to one million undocumented immigrants living in Los Angeles, the pain is widespread, and it cuts especially deep for those with long-standing ties to these communities. Each deportation (or more acutely, kidnapping) slowly chips away at the social fabric of our communities. These raids seek to shatter our collective spirit.
Defending the LAnd: Solo el Pueblo Salva al Pueblo
So how are we to understand what is unfolding in Los Angeles? Los Angeles today is what it looks like when a city refuses to surrender its sovereignty and its soul. Rapid response networks have mobilized to confront federal agencies and local police directly, with the aim of disrupting and preventing the execution of this campaign of terror. These networks represent the city’s urgent commitment to protecting its undocumented residents who, at nearly 10 percent of the population, are our neighbors, coworkers, family members, classmates and, in some cases, even our adversaries—immigrants who are part of the social fabric of Los Angeles.
Racialized Angelenos…are living a coordinated assault on our everyday life. But what is emerging is an even deeper, city-wide commitment to community self-defense. Angelenos are acting decisively, collectively, and with the clear understanding that only the people will save the people.
Los Angeles is also battle-tested. Just earlier this year, wildfires tore through the city’s eastern and western edges. Many residents were left to fend for themselves, abandoned by the state. From this came a renewed sense of collective responsibility embodied in the slogan solo el pueblo salva al pueblo (“only the people save the people”). Armed with the sense that no one is coming to rescue us, it has become a moral imperative for many Angelenos to show up for one another however they can.
Throughout the vast cityscape, rapid response networks have formed and were already active before June 6, but on that day, the struggle reached a boiling point. What followed might rightly be called the Los Angeles Anti-Raid Revolt: a mass, mostly nonviolent uprising that unfolded between June 6 and 8. Thousands took to the streets, with rapid response networks swelling in size. Frontline defenders mobilized in person while secondary and tertiary networks offered remote support organizing legal aid, supplies distributions, and sharing real-time updates. The resistance was decentralized, strategic, and deeply rooted in the spirit of mutual care.
Direct action to obstruct ICE operations has taken many creative and confrontational forms. Activists have physically blocked ICE vehicles, deflated their tires, and made it impossible for agents to stay at hotels, with many of these tactics continuing in the days after. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) implemented lockdown protocols to prevent federal agents from entering campuses and detaining students, with community members acting as human shields at graduation ceremonies, many of which were poorly attended. These tactics aren’t merely symbolic but strategic. By obstructing roads and immobilizing vehicles, activists have sought to delay or outright halt federal operations, with some successes: to name a few, an ICE van was turned around in Chinatown, warehouse workers were locked down long enough for ICE to give up and leave, and teachers trained in LAUSD protocols prevented their young students from being picked up by ICE in their classroom.
Over the weekend, some of the most high-profile actions included the burning of five self-driving Waymo cars and the use of Lime scooters to immobilize police vehicles—what one tweet aptly described as “a riot against transportation startups.” Protesters also repurposed everyday materials to disrupt ICE operations, like building makeshift barricades out of metal chairs in Grand Park, an act that has since been praised by the chair’s designers for its ingenuity.8Diana Budds, “How these hot pink chairs became a symbol of the L.A. protests,” Fast Company, June 10 2025, https://www.fastcompany.com/91349730/how-these-hot-pink-chairs-became-a-symbol-of-the-l-a-protests. These interventions served multiple purposes: wasting agents’ time and resources, protecting vulnerable community members, and exposing the absurdity and impotence of elected Democrats who, obsessed with “optics,” continue to issue tone-deaf condemnations of “riots and looting.”
Angelenos are not only resisting but organizing a deep infrastructure that includes legal observers, street medics, rapid response hotlines, and mutual aid networks. These have been in full operation, delivering groceries, fielding calls, sharing know-your-rights information and generalizing the moral courage necessary to defend the LAnd and protect one another. Organized labor is showing up, too. Though some responses have been cautious, like the relatively tame protest following the arrest of David Huerta, union members and supporters from across the city and beyond nevertheless turned out in the thousands in solidarity.
The current assault, which is threatened to last thirty or even sixty days, has specifically targeted workplaces in Latino majority areas of the city: Home Depot parking lots, car washes, garment factories like Ambiance Apparel in the heart of the Fashion District (known to many as los callejones), grocery stores, school graduations, and even federal buildings (where immigrants arrive for scheduled appointments only to be detained). Racialized Angelenos, especially Mexican, Chicano, and Latino regardless of citizenship status, are living a coordinated assault on our everyday life. But what is emerging is an even deeper, city-wide commitment to community self-defense. Angelenos are acting decisively, collectively, and with the clear understanding that only the people will save the people.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many in the Democratic Party have failed to meet the moment. Mayor Karen Bass, who has sought collaboration with ICE and the Secret Service ahead of the 2028 Olympics, condemned protesters, issuing a curfew while conveniently obscuring the deep roots of sanctuary policy in Los Angeles.9For Karen Bass’ collaboration with ICE, see the recent post by Nolympics LA. Instagram post by NOlympics LA (@nolympicsla), Instagram, June 11, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/nolympicsla/p/DKv5NFQOfE8/?img_index=1. During the next round of elections, they will surely try to rebrand themselves as champions of resistance, offering a “kinder, gentler” version of deportation, but their cowardice must not be forgotten.
The spectacle of mass raids is not about “national security.” This moment is revealing the profound, bottomless cruelty of the current regime. It is making clear the poverty of the bipartisan “broken” immigration system and the ever-deepening crisis of an American empire rotting from within after decades of neoliberal extraction; after all, the scapegoating of migrants is always a telltale sign of a state in grave crisis.
In light of this, calls to Abolish ICE are not simply a demand to dismantle an agency, but a demand to build a world where housing, education, healthcare, and dignity are guaranteed. Like other abolitionist movements, the demand to Abolish ICE is a demand to replace fear with solidarity, scarcity with abundance, and punishment with care.
In the battle to protect and defend the LAnd, we are not fighting alone. As the struggle expands to other cities the myth of “law and order” must be buried once and for all. It is a trap that distracts us from the real crisis: a government using its power to scapegoat and terrorize the most vulnerable among us, forcefully and against the will of the people. With counterinsurgency efforts already underway, the people of Los Angeles will not be broken. We will continue to fight back porque solo el pueblo salva al pueblo.