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Jose Rodriguez stocked his food cart with fewer fresh fruit cups Sunday, figuring many in Santa Ana’s Latino community might stay home for fear of much-touted immigration raids.
But his sales were brisk.
Immigration arrests were not.
“I wasn’t expecting any crowds,” said Rodriguez, who has worked his cart at the same corner for 26 years, selling fresh fruits, cold drinks and Mexican treats. “There’s been so much fear in the community.”
That fear, for a day at least, seemed to be unfounded.
Immigration rights advocates from around the region said Sunday they hadn’t heard of any large operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. And while some arrests occurred in Los Angeles, Riverside and Lake Elsinore over the past few days, it’s unclear if those were related to the announced sweeps or part of typical ICE work.
President Trump this month announced, initially on Twitter, that on Sunday, July 14, ICE agents would pick up some 2,000 immigrants around the country who are living in the United States illegally and have deportation orders.
He’d made a similar claim in June, saying “millions” of people would be removed from the country. The June raids never happened.
The plan slated for Sunday would focus on criminals and recent arrivals from Central America. They could also include “collateral” arrests of people who happen to be in the area of the intended targets, according to news reports.
The publicized sweeps were supposed to take place in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Miami, New York and San Francisco. Two other cities originally on the list, Houston and New Orleans, were reportedly postponed because of tropical storm Barry.
It’s possible the raids were only delayed, not abandoned.
Instead of a large, simultaneous sweep, immigration officials created a secondary plan for a smaller and more diffuse scale of apprehensions to roll out over roughly a week, the New York Times reported Sunday. Individual ICE field offices were given the discretion to decide when to begin those sweeps.
Immigration officials have declined to say what their plans are, saying it could threaten the safety of agents and jeopardize their operation.
In Southern California, immigration arrests, they pointed out, are made every day.
“This is what we are. We are a law enforcement agency,” Lori Haley, an ICE spokeswoman based in Orange County, said Friday.
Many immigrant-rights advocates said they were not surprised by the low-key rollout of the so-called sweeps.
“I think they’ll do their usual ops today. They want that element of surprise,” said Jennaya Dunlap, deportation defense coordinator for the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.
Even through 2,000 arrests or so – spread across Los Angeles and the other cities – are not necessarily unusual for ICE raids, the president’s words and the media’s coverage of his plan have created considerable anxiety, advocates said.
“It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the fear,” said Guillermo Torres, who spearheads the immigration campaigns of the Los Angeles-based Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice.
“Words are powerful and they impact families. And that’s what this president has done, for political purposes, because he’s running for re-election,” Torres said.
In downtown Santa Ana, the number of visitors appeared typical. Some said business was a little slow, but most said it was about the same.
In other heavy Latino locations, some residents were reportedly keeping a low profile.
“We were in Lake Elsinore yesterday (Saturday, July 12,) and the stores were empty. People were telling us they don’t come out until evening,” said immigration rights advocate Dunlap.
“That’s the kind of fear people are living” with, she added.
On Sunday, Dunlap was at a swap meet in Winchester, a small town close to Hemet in Riverside County. Normally, the swap meet would be very crowded – but not this Sunday.
“We’ve come here before and given out a couple of thousand hotline cards,” Dunlap said. “But I’m standing here and literally no one is walking past.”
Another swap market that had much lower attendance Sunday was one outside Cypress College, said Anaheim resident Dariana Diaz, whose father has a stand. “People are scared of the raids.”
In Indio, Coachella and Moreno Valley, advocates noted that local supermarkets frequented by Latino customers had considerably fewer shoppers on Sunday, according to Luz Gallegos, community programs director for the Training Occupational Development Educating Communities (TODEC) Legal Center.
Yet, at least 160 people turned out Sunday for information forums in Perris, Coachella and Victorville, she said. A few attendees had deportation orders.
“People were very interested in identifying the official documents and understanding the difference between an ICE warrant and a search and seizure warrant signed by U.S. magistrate judge,” Gallegos said.
In recent weeks, starting after Trump initially tweeted about deportations, local groups have held numerous seminars, sometimes called “know your rights” forums, telling immigrants how to handle potential contact with ICE officials and how to prepare their families, legally, in case adults are removed from the country without their children.
