It’s the middle of June in Los Angeles. ICE and Border Patrol agents are swarming the city, especially its working‑class, Latino neighborhoods. In a small, crowded restaurant on a busy corner, the owner and head chef—let’s call him Mark—is frantically trying to get his employees home.
Some of them are U.S. citizens. Some are legal residents. Some are not. But they are all Latino, and they are all scared of being stopped, questioned, or separated from their families.
Even though it is a beautiful day in a very walkable community, Mark decides he will not take any chances. He calls an Uber for every single employee and sends them home one by one.
He walks each of them out, shielding their faces with his arm the way publicists shield celebrities from paparazzi. Only these are not celebrities. They are line cooks, dishwashers, servers—working‑class Americans trying to make an honest living in a city where federal agents feel ever more free to ignore the basic rights the Constitution is supposed to guarantee.