Washington, DC — In a new guest post for America’s Voice Substack, Charting a New Narrative on Immigration, immigrant rights advocate and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHRILA) Director of Communications Jorge-Mario Cabrera reflects on the one-year anniversary of the LA ICE raids and the impact Trump’s mass deportation and expanded militarization operations have had on the Los Angeles community.
Read “Stronger Than Yesterday Because Angelenos Choose Each Other” in full on AV’s Substack and find key excerpts below:
For decades, Los Angeles has been described as a city of dreams, contradictions, struggle, and reinvention. But in the face of an upsurge in militarized immigration raids in the spring and summer of 2025 perpetrated by masked federal agents, and the abduction of thousands of Angelenos from workplaces, homes, and neighborhoods, Los Angeles revealed something even more profound: its soul.
As an immigrant rights advocate for more than 25 years, I have witnessed unimaginable pain over the years. As a member of the leadership team at CHIRLA, our organizers, lawyers, service staff, and I have stood next to wives and mothers searching for their husbands and sons taken in unmarked vehicles. I have listened to children ask why armed agents came for their father before sunrise. I have seen workers disappear from street corners, car washes, and Home Depot parking lots, not because they posed any danger, but because cruelty had become policy of the Trump administration. The fear was deliberate. The disruption was intentional. The division was manufactured.
The Trump administration attempted from Day 1 to turn immigrant communities into permanent targets — communities forced to live under surveillance, racial profiling, intimidation, and constant uncertainty. Federal agents arrived heavily armed and masked, as though they were entering a war zone instead of neighborhoods filled with caregivers, day laborers, street vendors, students, and families pursuing dignity and survival. The militarization – one blatant example was the storming of MacArthur Park – was meant to send a message: you do not belong here.
But Los Angeles answered with its own message.
We belong to each other.
When federal policies tried to isolate our communities through fear, Los Angeles responded with solidarity. When cruelty attempted to paralyze families, neighbors stepped forward to protect their neighbors. When the federal government weaponized detention and intimidation, Angelenos organized with courage, discipline, and compassion.
The response was immediate and powerful. Immigrant rights organizations such as CHIRLA did what we have always done for four decades: we mobilized and organized. Mutual aid networks formed overnight. Faith leaders opened churches as sanctuaries. Labor unions mobilized resources for impacted workers and families. Teachers, students, healthcare workers, legal advocates, and community organizers coordinated support systems that reached deep into every corner of the region. Volunteers drove families to court hearings, delivered groceries to homes where breadwinners had disappeared, raised bond funds, and accompanied terrified residents to immigration check-ins.
At the center of this resistance stood the LA Rapid Response Network — started in 2001, now staffed by thousands of volunteers, legal observers, hotline responders, organizers, and advocates who refused to allow our communities to suffer alone. They documented raids, verified enforcement activity, trained communities on their rights, and created a lifeline for families navigating chaos and trauma. Alongside them, the Labor, Immigrant, and Faith Table, also led by CHIRLA and started in November 2024, united some of the region’s most powerful moral voices into a coordinated force for justice, dignity, and accountability.
This coalition was not built on politics alone. It was built on values.
On the belief that human dignity is not dependent on immigration status.
On the understanding that workers deserve protection, not persecution.
On the conviction that diversity is not a threat to Los Angeles — it is the reason Los Angeles thrives.
What emerged during these painful months while raids were ravaging our neighborhoods was not only resistance, but transformation. Communities that had once operated separately came together with unprecedented coordination and urgency. Labor leaders stood beside immigrant youth. Clergy marched alongside street vendors. Black, Latino, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Jewish, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ organizations strengthened relationships rooted in shared struggle and collective liberation.
And while the federal government attempted to criminalize immigrant existence, Los Angeles fought back in the courts as well as in the streets.
Lawsuits by Public Counsel, ImmDef, ACLU of Southern California, and CHIRLA were filed to challenge the constitutionality of the raids and the inhumane conditions inside detention camps. Advocates exposed the targeting and arrest of vulnerable individuals protected under U visas, T visas, Violence Against Women Act protections, and those with deferred action, and humanitarian parole. Legal teams demanded accountability for due process violations, unlawful detention practices, and racial profiling disguised as enforcement. These legal battles were not abstract policy debates; they were fights for the humanity of our neighbors.
One year later, and with a monotonous drumbeat of ongoing raids, there is still pain. Families continue to heal from trauma that cannot simply be erased. Many live with the scars of separation, detention, and fear. But there is also something else now embedded deeply within Los Angeles: a strengthened sense of collective responsibility.
“Los Angeles, Más Fuerte Que Ayer — Los Angeles, Stronger Than Yesterday” is not a catchy slogan created for a rally banner or press conference. It is the lived reality of a city that chose courage over silence and solidarity over surrender.
It means understanding that resilience is not passive endurance. Resilience is organized. It is strategic. It is rooted in love for community and belief in one another. It means preparing not only to survive attacks on our communities, but to continue building a region where every person can thrive without fear.
Los Angeles remains one of the most diverse and welcoming places in the world because generations of people fought to make it so. Immigrants built this city. Workers sustained it. Organizations such as CHIRLA have helped organize it. Communities defended it. And when forces of authoritarianism and bigotry attempted to fracture it, Los Angeles responded not with cowardice, but with collective power.
That is our aspiration moving forward: not merely to resist cruelty, but to create a city worthy of the people who call it home. A city where compassion defeats fear, where belonging defeats exclusion, and where justice is not reserved for the privileged, but extended to all.
Los Angeles is stronger than yesterday because its people chose each other. And that choice continues every single day.
