Memo Torres breaks down ICE-related news in Southern California today. Below, you'll find links and references to everything discussed in the video, allowing you to take a closer look at each topic.
It’s day 102.
ICE RAIDS
[Fri. 9/12/25]
- [Update] Wilmington: More footage was released of the detention of Jose Antonio Campollo Caceres in Wilmington. Footage shows a federal immigration agent pointing an assault rifle at Campollo Caceres and then kicking him before detaining him. He is being held at the Downtown Los Angeles Detention Center.
[Sat. 9/13/25]
- Long Beach, 577 E. Wardlow Rd, Bixby Knolls Car Wash: More than half a dozen federal immigration agents raided Bixby Knolls Car Wash last Saturday. A woman fainted during the operation, falling to the ground, and was then dragged into the vehicle by agents. The video did not show the woman receiving medical care. The Long Beach Post spoke with Ramón Paz, the car wash manager, who said that at least five of the workers had legal status, and he witnessed federal immigration agents who were presented documentation, throw the papers away, call them “fake”, or confiscate them. In video footage, a man can be heard telling agents that one of the men they detained is a U.S. resident. The agent replies, “We’re gonna check, and if he's good, we’ll bring him back.” In a statement to CBS Los Angeles, DHS said they “[conducted a] targeted immigration enforcement operation in Long Beach.”
- Garden Grove Home Depot: 1 person was taken.
- Lennox, S. Freeman & Lennox Blvd: 1 person was taken who was on his bike. The bike was left abandoned.
[Sun. 9/14/25]
- Santa Ana, 2402 S. Bristol, Bristol Car Wash: When federal immigration agents arrived at the car wash, several of the workers ran inside the establishment. Workers told immigration activists that the agents did not show a warrant. Two people were taken.
- Huntington Beach Home Depot on Goldenwest & Warner: Unsure
- Illinois, Cicero: Children were left in a vehicle after federal immigration agents took their older siblings and parents.
[Mon. 9/15/25]
- Downey, Muller St. & Clancey Ave: One person was taken out of their vehicle by federal immigration agents.
- Panorama City, Van Nuys Blvd & Arminta St, Home Depot: Video footage shows a Border Patrol agent inside the Home Depot. Footage from the Home Depot parking lot shows an agent seemingly reviewing an individual's documentation. Federal immigration agents took one person.
- Cypress Park, Home Depot: Several ICE vehicles were scouting and patrolling the area.
OTHER NEWS
- The death of Estela Ramos Baten
- Estela Ramos Baten, the mother of honor student and star athlete Nory Sontay Ramos — who was deported with her on July 4 to Guatemala following a routine immigration appointment in Los Angeles — died on Sept. 8 in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. She was 45.
- On a phone call, Nory explained that her mother had been “overwhelmed” with stress since their deportation and terrified to be back in Guatemala, the country she had fled in 2015 after allegedly receiving threats from members of the 18th Street Gang.
- MSNBC reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to clarify whether medications were confiscated. The agency said that “during her short stay [at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center], she was given a medical evaluation and prescribed the medications she needed.” But Estela claims her medications were confiscated in Los Angeles, where she was first detained, not in Texas, and that at the time of her deportation, they were not returned.
- ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police for Abusing Day Laborers
- Willian Gimenez, a day laborer, was reportedly abducted outside of a barbershop in Little Village, a neighborhood in southwest Chicago, by ICE agents on Friday.
- Gimenez, who is in his late 30s and is from Venezuela, is one of five migrant day laborers involved in a federal lawsuit claiming that, among many other things, they “endured physical violence at the hands of off-duty Chicago Police Department officers” who were working as security officers for Home Depot, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also alleges “a conspiracy to criminalize day laborers’ attempts to find work in Chicago.”
- ICE ‘Unwilling’ to Share Details After Agent Killed Suburban Man During Immigration Operation, Pritzker Says
- He said state and local authorities don’t have the resources to investigate federal law enforcement, and if ICE is unwilling to share additional details, it’s possible “we may never really know what the truth is.
- Trump’s Reversals on Immigration Mount Over Economic Concerns
- Mr. Trump last week faced an uproar after immigration agents arrested nearly 500 workers, most of them South Korean citizens, at the construction site of an electric vehicle battery plant in Georgia. The raid caused deep anger in South Korea — a key U.S. ally and trading partner — and had the potential to discourage exactly the kind of foreign investment in U.S. manufacturing that Mr. Trump is trying to achieve.
- Even though the Trump administration had argued the workers were in the United States illegally, Mr. Trump temporarily paused the deportations to consider allowing the South Korean workers to stay in the United States and help finish the factory, according to officials in Seoul. Most of the workers did end up returning to South Korea.
- Mr. Trump similarly appeared to pull back on his hard-line approach to student visas when it risked upending the finances of American colleges and universities. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, and that the administration would “enhance scrutiny” of future applicants from China.
- Trump threatens to take over D.C. police again for immigration enforcement
- Trump’s emergency order, which took over the local police force, expired last week. Hours before it elapsed, Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the city would not cooperate with Immigration Customs and Enforcement in its continued operations in the nation’s capital. Earlier, she had said the city would work with other federal agencies even after the emergency order expired.
- More African nations are receiving third-country immigrants deported by the U.S. Here are 5 things to know
- Ghanaian authorities said on Monday that the 14 deportees received last week have been returned to their home countries. They defended the decision on humanitarian grounds, although lawyers for the migrants say the deportation violated international human rights law and rights of the deportees.
At L.A. TACO
- Supreme Court Gives ICE License to Hunt Mexicans
- For years, conservatives on the court have claimed to be “colorblind.” They struck down affirmative action, insisting that race has no place in education or public policy. Yet when it comes to criminalizing our communities, suddenly race matters. This is the contradiction at the heart of the Roberts Court: no race in college admissions, but race is admissible in immigration stops.
