FEATURING FREDID TOLEDO & LUANA LOPEZ - Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested nearly 3,000 people in the Los Angeles area since June 2025, wreaking havoc on the city’s inhabitants. ICE agents also went after farmworkers in central California, in Camarillo and Carpinteria, rounding up and snatching about 300 people. One farm worker named Jaime Alanís Garcia died during the raid from injuries sustained after he fell off the roof of a greenhouse.
Meanwhile, a federal judge on July 11 issued a temporary restraining order against ICE raids in Southern California saying they violate people’s constitutional rights.
What has it been like for people in the Los Angeles area to survive these dark times when the Trump administration appears determined to make an example of the city?
I spoke recently with Fredid Toledo, Youth Development Coordinator at Homies Unidos, and Luana Lopez, a student at Cal State Northridge, whose mother Ana Franco Galdamez who was arrested by ICE agents.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Sonali Kolhatkar: Let me start with you, Luana. You are a student at Cal State Northridge, as I mentioned. Tell me what happened to your mother.
Luana Lopez: So my mom was attending work like a regular day and um, there was an ICE raid, like a big ICE raid where she was at, and she was one of the people who got taken that day. I think it was June 19 at 7:30 in the morning.
Kolhatkar: So it was soon after they first started the raids?
Lopez: Yeah.
Kolhatkar: And she was working and, and she was rounded up with, with others or was it just her individually?
Lopez: No, other people got taken as well that day.
Kolhatkar: Where were you when this happened?
Lopez: I was actually at home with my sister and um, my older sister had called me saying that ICE was in the area my mom was working at and we tried calling my mom and she wasn't answering. And that's when we…
Kolhatkar: Is it just you and your sister and your mother, your is a family of three?
Lopez: Yeah, it's just us three. Tell me where your family's from. I understand that your mom is from El Salvador?
Lopez: Yeah, my mom's Salvadorian. So my mom came here to the United States because she was suffering a lot of domestic violence by her ex-husband in El Salvador. And she took the chance that when she had put him in jail, she took the chance to come to the United States and I was born here in California.
