When a group of armed and masked men was seen dragging a woman to a SUV in the fashion district last week, a witness called 911 to report a kidnapping.
But when the officers of the Los Angeles Police Department arrived, instead of arresting, they formed a line to protect the alleged kidnappers from an angry multitude of spectators who demanded the liberation of women.
It turned out that the reporters reported were special agents of immigration and the application of customs.
Police chief Jim McDonnell defended the response of the officers, saying that his first responsibility was to maintain peace and had no authority to interfere with the federal operation.
In political and activist circles, and in social networks, critics criticized LAPD for stopping the crowd instead of investigating why the agents were arrested the woman, which was later discovered that she was an American citizen.
“What happened in the center on Tuesday morning certainly seemed and felt that LapD was supporting ICE,” said Mike Bonin, a former member of the City Council who is now executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs in Cal State
Kimberly Noriega, on the left, talks to her aunt, Anita Neri Lozano, in Venrans Memorial Park in Culver City on Sunday. The family attended a press conference on the arrest of a beloved street seller, Ambrocio Lozano.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The incident was one of the more than half a dozen in the last weeks in which the LAPD responded to federal immigration application actions that were called as kidnappings.
The presence of local police in the scenes, even if they are not actively helping ICE, has led some leaders of the city to question the role of the department in an ongoing repression of the White House that has swept hundreds of immigrants and sown fear in southern California.
The incidents of police disguised in the police have aggravated the situation, together with the rumors, so far not verified, that the federal authorities have enlisted rewards or private security contractors for immigration arrests.
The assistant secretary of the Department of National Security, Tricia McLaughlin, described the coverage of one reported that the kidnapping of a “deception” in a position on Tuesday in X and said: “Ice does not use rewards hunters to make arrests.”
In a letter to the Police Commission last week, the city councilor, Monica Rodríguez, said that the LAPD should ensure that federal agents that were covered and that they often use without marking vehicles are the ones who claim to be.
“Our residents have the right to know who is operating in their neighborhoods and under what legal authority,” Rodríguez wrote, whose district includes the San Fernando Valley. “Allowing unidentified actors to stop people without supervision is not only reckless, but erodes public trust and undermines the same rule of law.”
She said that city leaders could not allow “tactics in the style of rewards hunters to take root in our city”, and urged the commission, the LAPD civil policy formulation body, to “develop a legal and proper legal and safe protocol that provides the safety of officers, transparency and responsibility for our communities.”
Residents support Vernon's police line after an immigration raid in the city of Bell on June 20.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“This lack of identification is unacceptable. Create a mature environment for abuse and impersonation, which allows imitated vigilantes to possess as federal agents,” Rodríguez wrote.
State and local officials have proposed legislation to increase transparency around the identification of officers, but it is not clear if the bills will become law, and if they could really be applied against federal agents.
The president of the Police Commission, Erroll Southers, said on Tuesday that he and another commissioner met with the members of the City Council to discuss the response of the police department to the aggressive sweeps of the Trump administration. Several commissioners interrogated McDonnell about how LAPD officers should respond to the reported kidnappings.
Los Angeles Police officers are guards while community members protest the recent immigration raids in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on June 18.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
McDonnell said the department created new guidelines that require a supervisor to respond and instruct LAPD officers to verify the alleged ice agents are legitimate, preserving a record of interaction in the used cameras.
The boss said that the highest priority for officers is to maintain the security of all present, but ultimately, officers have no authority to interfere with a federal operation.
According to a new Yougov survey, a public opinion investigation firm, almost three quarters of the Californians believe that local police officers should arrest federal immigration agents that “act maliciously or exceed their authority under federal law.”
The same survey also found that the majority of state residents want to completely prohibit California officials collaborating with the application of immigration and facilitating that citizens present demands when “authorities violate the rights of due process of immigrants.”
The LAPD has long stated that it does not have any role in the application of civil immigration, but the department now faces the pressure of the City Council and beyond to go further and protect Angels who are undocumented.
A motion considered this week by the City Council of Los Angeles, among other things, would limit the “support of LAPD to the agencies that carry out the application of immigration.”
Eastside residents and others march in Boyle Heights on Tuesday as part of a series of actions to “claim our streets” that are carried out in protest of federal immigration compliance operations.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
LAPD officials say that the department has responded to at least seven calls in which people contacted 911 to inform a kidnapping that turned out to be an ice operation.
An emergency call came when a group of federal border patrol agents masked in preparation was seen near the Dodgers stadium last week, which caused a wave of online speculation about the possible application of the immigration law in the baseball stadium. LAPD officers responded to the scene and again provided crowd control after a group of protesters appeared.
Several police supervisors said that in the past, it was customary for federal agents to perform surveillance in a Dada Lapd division gave the area's surveillance commander a warning as courtesy. But that long data practice has ended, leaving them largely in the dark on the moment and the location of planned immigration raids.
CMDR. Lillian Carranza said it was irresponsible for people to describe arrests as “kidnappings” and encourage people to call 911, saying that there is erroneous information that circulates online about how and when federal authorities can arrest someone. Authorities do not need to present a court order to find someone on the street, he said; All they need is a probable cause.
“If people have concerns about the conduct of federal agents, they must seek justice in court,” he said. “That is the place to litigate the case. Not the streets.”
In an irritable exchange last month, McDonnell told the City Council that even if he knew about an immigration operation in advance, he would not alert the city leaders.
LAPD's relationship with ICE has been the subject of an intense debate on social media platforms such as Reddit, where some commentators argued that the department's approach in police protesters was a tacit support of the federal government.
Much of the discussion has set an incident that occurred last week in downtown Los Angeles in which a woman named Andrea Guadalupe Vélez was stopped by agents dressed in bulletproof vests with leggings on their faces.
A live broadcasting video showed a man, Luis Hipolito, who was later arrested, asking the agents for their names and badges.
“I'm calling 911 right now,” he told the agents.
“911, I want to inform a crime. I want to inform a crime,” you hear Hipolito say by phone.
“What are you informing?” An operator is heard.
“They are kidnapping children, kidnap people on Nine and Main Street,” he heard. “I need lapd here, right now. Nine and Main Street. They are kidnapping, they are kidnapping people.”
After several agents were seen stacking on Hipolito, LAPD officers arrived at the scene. They formed a line between the agents and the angry crowd, members of which they shouted to free Hipolito.
McLaughlin of national security, said Velez “was arrested for assaulting an agent of the ice law.”
The federal authorities said in judicial presentations that Vélez “abruptly” entered the path of an agent in “an apparent effort to prevent the male subject who was chasing.”
Vélez, a Cal Poly Pomona graduate who has 4 feet 11, supposedly stopped on the road to the agent with extended arms. The agent could not stop over time and was beaten in his head and chest, federal authorities allege.
Vélez's mother, Margarita Flores, was looking in her rearview mirror, after leaving her daughter at the scene.
Flores said he saw a man running towards his daughter and then Vélez falling to the ground. Flores said men had no identification or plates in their car.
Fearing a kidnapping, he told his other daughter, Estrella Rosas, to call the police. When Lapd arrived, said Rosas, his sister “was running to one of the police officers in the hope of helping her.”
“But one of the ice agents returned after her and completely [put] She handcuffed, “Rosas said.” He physically had to take her to put it inside the car and moved away in the car that had no plates. “
Vélez spent two days in a federal detention center. Accused of assaulting a federal officer, he made his appearance in the initial court last week and was released on bail of $ 5,000. She has not yet presented a plea and must return to the Court on July 17.
The Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.
