The ICE Burnout is real.
Many folks are avoiding our daily content, but not because they don’t care. We see it, and we feel it. That's why we are creating a free, easy-to-digest newsletter called ICE Watch to keep readers with the strength to not look away informed once a week with our original reporting.
A friend recently broke down in tears and had to walk away when two of our friends were venting their frustrations with Trump. As I calmed her down and hugged her, she let out a wave of tears that were filled with the fears that she had been bottling up.
“They just don’t get it,” she says. “They can argue and bitch all day about Trump, but people like me have to live with this every day. I have to worry about my dad every time he leaves through that front door, and people just don’t fucking get what it’s like to be us right now.”
Everywhere I go, I’m not surprised anymore when someone walks up to me as I’m finishing eating and eventually starts to cry when they ask to shake my hand, apologizing for getting emotional. They pretend they don’t know why they teared up, but I know why. Unless you’re in it, you don’t feel it. And they know I’m in it with them. With ICE around, there aren’t many safe spaces in L.A. for many people who call Los Angeles home; my face and ears have become one for many.
In the last month, these conversations have become normal, where people with immigrant loved ones tell me they can’t watch another video on their social media feed or even hear a conversation about ICE or Trump without it stirring up the fear-laced anxiety they bottle up every day.
People with immigrant loved ones aren’t scrolling past the videos and stories because they don’t care. They’re scrolling past because they just can’t take it anymore. They are living in constant fear of learning of, or worse, witnessing as their mother, father, wife, child, or friend gets violently kidnapped, tortured, and imprisoned in a concentration camp to wither away. This daily mental strain is causing real PTSD.
The community watch groups and rapid response teams have also been feeling the burnout. Many volunteers at Home Depot hubs have not come back. Patrol teams have lamented to me about losing volunteers. I had a chat with CHIRLA and the L.A. Rapid Response group who also noticed a drop in calls and reports while seeing detention cases go up. An Instagram page dedicated to posting alerts on ICE activity recently suggested following other pages “due to lack of volunteers.”
Meanwhile, as volunteers burn out and ICE keeps escalating, the last two months DHS has posted record numbers of arrests nationwide: 43,000 in June and 49,571 in July.
For others who do not have immigrant loved ones, they’ve been bombarded by another authoritarian strategy, flooding the zone with chaos. Right now, social media feeds have everyone wondering if we’re going to be eating slaughtered wild horses and/or mystery meats that Trump is shipping in (so much for “America First”).
The list of foods being recalled under RFK Jr. is as long as ICE’s court-order violations. Flock cameras watch your every move, with AI predictive surveillance running from data centers that are taking over neighborhoods, your jobs, and your water supplies.
Sailors are abandoned at sea during a war they are losing while the parents of those soldiers are getting arrested by ICE. A judge told a one-year-old baby to apply for asylum while another five-year-old named Liam is deported with his father, and a two-year-old is in detention with her pregnant mother. Meanwhile, the lynchings of young Black innocents are becoming common again while Trump is working on sabotaging the next elections and building a $400-$600 million ballroom.
These are real stories that happened just within the last week. Which crisis are people supposed to focus on?
So I understand why people are looking away, preferring guides to comfort foods like dumplings and pancakes while scrolling past the horrors in our immigration coverage. But we are not giving up on ICE coverage; we are adapting like we always do.
The Daily Memo, as we knew it, did its job when it was most needed. For that, I will always cherish that project as one of my most important accomplishments and services I could give.
The Daily Memo will continue in video format, just not daily anymore; no more recaps of the daily raids as they continue, fading into the background of major news cycles like mass shootings have.
The new solution: this new newsletter called ICE Watch that goes right to your inbox every Wednesday—far away from the shadows the tech billionaires cast with their algorithms and the chaos they promote on your feeds.
Through all this, Izzy, Aisha, and I have worked through the burnout, becoming close friends, trauma-bonded while having to console each other at times, vent our emotions and frustrations, but, more importantly, always support each other, help each other report, and always have each other's backs. And honestly, not just with each other, but with every one of you too.
We hope you subscribe to the free newsletter and help us keep reporting, even if you are feeling the burnout. It’s understandable.
Thank you, and remember to stay safe and stay vigilant.
