It’s a cold Saturday morning as Border Patrol prepares to target the city of Anaheim from San Pedro’s Terminal Island.
Community watchers stay on the ground on Terminal Way, wearing their jackets and yellow safety vests, standing ready to photograph and notify the network of known Border Patrol vehicles that are leaving the island.
This responders' network, which has been evolving over the last 220 days, doesn’t know the target just yet, but they’re ready and waiting to send an alert to all community watch teams in the region.
It's an exhaustive routine in which neither side will let up. Responders will do their best to save people, but Border Patrol will still succeed in kidnapping at least 20.
On this particular weekend, the taken include a minor separated from his father.
The day begins with Border Patrol agents leaving Terminal Island in San Pedro. Today, responders observe them heading towards the cities of Torrance, Gardena, Compton, and Carson.
Community-watch teams preemptively flood into the vulnerable areas of the cities, alerting food vendors, jornaleros, and car wash workers. Border Patrols coming from Torrance are seen attempting to kidnap car wash workers off of 213th Street. They are unsuccessful, but still manage to grab a nearby gardener.
Throughout the morning, Border Patrol agents separate and kidnap food vendors, a recycling center worker, a day laborer, and even make their way near Downtown Los Angeles, where one man is forcibly grabbed and taken away so quickly we still do not know the context of whether it was a Kavanaugh stop or a targeted operation.
On Sunday morning, watch teams are again prepared early to begin alerting the community. Border Patrol agents are seen leaving Terminal Island and exiting Raymond Avenue into Fullerton from the 91 freeway around 8:45 a.m., when the vehicles split up.
One is seen at the swap meet in Cypress, while another is observed at a strip mall on Euclid Street and Romneya Drive.
Around 9:35 a.m., the raids begin, with the earliest sighting of a kidnapping of two to five men from a 7-11 on E. Santa Ana Street and S. East Street. From there, L.A. TACO speaks with several community watchers as they commute from various streets all over eastern Anaheim.
Not too long after the 7-11 operation, community watchers also receive an alert in the city of Placentia, near the Raffas Market at 506 W. Chapman Avenue, about Border Patrol agents chasing a gardener and his son towards the entrance of the market, where agents catch up and apprehend them.
Border Patrol agents handcuff both the gardener and his son, a minor, and take them away. However, after verifying the young boy’s citizenship status and age, he gets dropped off away from the market and left behind without his father.
It is local community watch teams who respond to the alert to assist the family. L.A. TACO was later informed by community responders that they have been provided resources and aid from the community.
Border Patrol continues driving around the city, consistently encumbered by legal observers. Around 9:55 a.m. another trio of Border Patrol agents is seen entering the parking lot of a small recycling center on La Palma Avenue and State College Boulevard, where they kidnap two workers, a patron, and a nearby flower vendor, who is also approached and kidnapped near the crossing intersection by a gas station.
In the very early afternoon, Border Patrol returns to the area where they raid a car wash, and encounter legal observers on scene yelling and alerting the community.
Seemingly frustrated, an agent reaches and grabs a legal observer, taking him away after a brief encounter, during which we see another disgruntled agent lunge at and violently push away the other legal observer, who is recording.
It wouldn’t be an Orange County raid without agents making their way to Santa Ana. Community watchers confirmed the very violent detainment of a flower vendor on Edinger Avenue and Fairview Street in a new tactic we haven’t seen.
While Border Patrol agents handcuff the vendor and legal observers circle to document the ordeal, other agents drive around a man who appears to just be walking on the other side of the street. They knock the man to the ground and take him as well.
In a recent article from MSNow regarding Minneapolis’s ICE siege, a sociologist who studies violence states that, “ICE Watch does not spur violence; it reduces it. It’s based on de-escalation tactics that have long historical roots in American antiviolence and civil rights movements, as well as a strong theoretical foundation in countless scientific studies about why violence happens and how it can be prevented.”
They also say that although Minneapolis is facing about 3,000 agents, who have taken 2,400 people. Meaning less than one person has been grabbed per agent, and these groups conducting raids are in larger sizes of six to twelve agents, as opposed to other cities, which have two to three.
L.A. TACO’s non-stop coverage of raids in Southern California confirms the success of legal observation and community watch teams.
After utilizing legal means to document the agents, we have even seen agents break into anger and push people away, as well as witness community members bring vulnerable individuals to safety before agents attempt to take them—completely legal methods that upon examination highlight an increasing number of opposing public opinions against immigration operations, as well as hurting the agents' morale.
