{"id":14755,"date":"2025-10-23T16:26:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14755"},"modified":"2025-10-23T16:26:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:26:28","slug":"from-l-a-to-new-york-bumbling-aggressive-ice-is-its-own-worst-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14755","title":{"rendered":"From L.A to New York, bumbling, aggressive ICE is its own worst enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Gustavo Arellano<\/a>,<\/em> LA Times<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Like with cigarettes, la migra<\/em> should come with a warning label: Proximity to ICE could be hazardous for your health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Los Angeles<\/a> to Chicago<\/a>, Portland<\/a>and New York, the evidence is ample enough that wherever Trump sends in the immigration agency, people get hurt. And not just protesters and immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That includes 13 police officers tear-gassed in Chicago earlier this month. And, now, a U.S. marshal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us to what happened in South L.A. on Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal agents boxed in the Toyota Camry of local TikToker Carlitos Ricardo Parias \u2014 better known to his hundreds of thousands of followers as Richard LA. As Parias allegedly tried to rev his way out of the trap, an ICE agent opened fire. One bullet hit the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant \u2014 and another ricocheted into the hand of a deputy U.S. marshal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither suffered life-threatening injuries, but it\u2019s easy to imagine that things could have easily turned out worse. Such is the chaos that Trump has caused by unleashing shock troops into U.S. cities<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than take responsibility and apologize for an incident that could\u2019ve easily been lethal, Team Trump went into their default spin mode of blaming everyone but themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the shooting was \u201cthe consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli chimed in on social media soon after: \u201cI urge California public officials to moderate their rhetoric toward federal law enforcement. Encouraging resistance to federal agents can lead to deadly consequences.\u201d Hours later, he called Times reporter James Queally<\/a> \u201can absolute joke, not a journalist\u201d because my colleague noted it\u2019s standard practice by most American law enforcement agencies to not <\/em>shoot at moving vehicles. One reason is that it increases the chance of so-called friendly fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal authorities accuse Parias of ramming his car into agents\u2019 vehicles after they boxed him in. He is being charged with assault on a federal officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time, and hopefully, evidence, will show what happened \u2014 and very important, what led to what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration keeps claiming that the public anger against its immigration actions is making the job more dangerous for la migra<\/em> and their sister agencies. McLaughlin and her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem<\/a>, keep saying there\u2019s been a 1,000% increase in assaults on immigration agents this year like an incantation. Instead of offering concrete figures, they use the supposed stat as a shield against allegations ICE tactics are going too far and as a weapon to excuse the very brutality ICE claims it doesn\u2019t practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, even if what they say is true, there\u2019s only one side that\u2019s making the job more dangerous for la migra<\/em> and others during raids:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

La migra<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that if you send in phalanxes of largely masked federal agents to bully and intimidate people in American cities, Americans tend not to take kindly to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re about to enter the sixth month of Trump\u2019s plan to rid the country of undocumented immigrants. Sycophants are bragging that he\u2019s doing the job, but they\u2019re not caring to look at the mess left in its wake that\u2019s becoming more and more perilous for everyone involved. They insist that those who are executing and planning raids are professionals, but professionals don\u2019t make constant pendejos<\/em> out of themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professionals don\u2019t bring squadrons to chase after tamale ladies<\/a> or day laborers<\/a>, or stage flashy raids of apartments and parks<\/a> that accomplish little else than footage for propaganda videos. They don\u2019t go into neighborhoods with intimidation on their mind and ready to rough up anyone who gets in their way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A ProPublica investigation showed that ICE has detained at least 170 U.S. citizens this year<\/a>, many whom offered proof that they were in this country legally as la migra<\/em> cuffed them and hauled them off to detention centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professionals don\u2019t lie like there\u2019s a bonus attached to it \u2014 but that\u2019s what Trump\u2019s deportation Leviathan keeps doing. In September, McLaughlin put out a news release arguing that the shooting death of 38-year-old Silverio Villegas Gonz\u00e1lez in Chicago by an ICE agent was justified because he was dragged a \u201csignificant distance\u201d and suffered serious injuries. Yet body cam footage of local police who showed up to the scene captured the two ICE agents involved in the incident describing their injuries as \u201cnothing major.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closer to home, a federal jury in Los Angeles last month acquitted an activist of striking a Border Patrol agent after federal public defender Cuauht\u00e9moc Ortega<\/a> screened footage that contradicted the government\u2019s case and poked holes<\/a> in the testimony of Border Patrol staff and supervisors. Last week, ICE agents detained Oxnard activist Leonardo Martinez<\/a> after a collision between their Jeep and his truck. McLaughlin initially blamed the incident on an \u201cagitator group … engaged in recording and verbal harassment,\u201d but footage first published by L.A. Taco<\/a> showed that la migra <\/em>trailed Martinez and then crashed into him twice \u2014 not the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professionals don\u2019t host social media accounts that regularly spew memes that paint the picture of an American homeland where white makes right<\/a> and everyone else must be eliminated, like the Department of Homeland Security does. A recent post featured medieval knights wearing chain mail and helmets and wielding longswords as they encircle the slogan \u201cThe Enemies are at the Gates\u201d above ICE\u2019s job listing website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration has normalized racism and has turned cruelty into a virtue<\/a> \u2014 then its mouthpieces gasp in mock horror when people resist its officially sanctioned jackbootery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This evil buffoonery comes straight from a president who reacted to the millions of Americans who protested this weekend at No Kings rallies by posting on social media an AI-generated video of him wearing a crown and dropping feces on his critics from a jet fighter<\/a>. And yet McLaughlin, Noem and other Trump bobbleheads have the gall to question why politicians decry la migra <\/em>while regular people follow and film them during raids when not shouting obscenities and taunts at them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve written before, there\u2019s never a nice way to conduct an immigration raid<\/a> but there\u2019s always a better way. Or at least a way that\u2019s not dripping with malevolence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, ICE is currently on a hiring spree thanks to Trump\u2019s Bloated Beastly Bill<\/a> and and has cut its training program from six months to 48 days, according to The Atlantic. It\u2019s a desperate and potentially reckless recruitment drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you think rapidly piling more people into a clown car is going to produce less clown-like behavior by ICE on the streets of American cities, boy do I have news for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary and the Mike Royko Award for Commentary and Column Writing and was part of the team that won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gustavo Arellano, LA Times Like with cigarettes, la migra should come with a warning label: Proximity to ICE could be hazardous for your health. From Los Angeles to Chicago, Portlandand New York, the evidence is […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,69],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider","8":"category-immigration"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14758,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14755\/revisions\/14758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}