How LA is uniting to provide mutual aid for those impacted by ICE raids

This article How LA is uniting to provide mutual aid for those impacted by ICE raids was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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At 8 a.m. on July 4, about a dozen people gathered in front of a tamale cart stationed outside an abandoned 99-cent store building in Pasadena, California — some 10 miles outside of Los Angeles. While the tamales were delicious, that wasn’t the only thing drawing out the crowd — they were there for a fundraiser to support 14-year-old Chris Garcia, who started running his mom’s cart after ICE took some of her customers a few weeks earlier. Her business suffered, and she fell behind in bills, so Garcia stepped up. 

An hour after the event started, the lowrider car community came cruising and bouncing down the street in support of Garcia. People started buying tamales by the dozens. By 10 a.m., Garcia had sold 500 tamales and was at the point of needing a second cart. People came to donate to Garcia without buying anything. One person gave Garcia two backpacks, one for him and one for his brother, filled with supplies as they headed into a new school year. By the end of the day, Garcia had enough money for his family to recuperate and stay afloat.

The event was organized by Alex “Tio Joker” Murillo, a formerly incarcerated student at Pasadena City College, after he saw Garcia selling tamales out of the cart a week earlier. When Murillo learned of Garcia’s story, he knew he had to help. He said he felt like the boy should be focused on going into his first year of high school, not having to work to pay the bills. He posted a video about Garcia and promoted the fundraiser; it went viral with over 422,000 views. On top of that, he has a GoFundMe to support several other children whose parents were impacted by the raids in LA.

“Chris is 14, and I think that that impacted the community,” Murillo said. “The community stepped out for Chris. They saw the look on his face. They saw the sadness. Chris doesn’t want to be selling tamales.”

The tamale fundraiser for Garcia’s family is one of the many solidarity and mutual aid efforts Angelenos have joined to support immigrant families. Through fundraisers, grocery deliveries, “adopt a corner” initiatives, rapid response ICE watch committees and more, the community in Los Angeles has been coming together with volunteers to support and uplift their neighbors.

“It’s really a beautiful city that comes together during hard times, and from the fires we’ve seen it, and now with the raids,” said Janet Martinez, co-founder and vice executive director of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, an Indigenous women-led organization that is bringing visibility and resources to the Indigenous migrant communities. 

Martinez said that CIELO has worked with a network of about 30 volunteers to pack and deliver about 1,200 boxes of groceries to Indigenous immigrant families in Los Angeles that are afraid to leave their homes due to the ongoing raids. Her organization has always supported immigrant communities, but their work stepped up following the raids.

CIELO’s outreach team called more than 200 people to check in with them and see if they wanted the organization to drop off groceries. She’s heard from people in the community that they don’t feel like they can go out safely, and that even when they do have to go out, they feel very nervous. Martinez said their grocery delivery initiative has provided relief for people being able to know where their next meal is going to come from.

Primitiva Hernandez, executive director of 805 UndocuFund in the central coast of California, said that local food banks have reported a decrease in participation following the raids. As a result, she has also been working with many volunteers in the area to gather groceries, diapers and other necessities from donations and the food banks, and distribute them to community members who are afraid to leave their house.

“There’s a lot of anxiety, because it just doesn’t feel safe to be on the streets of Los Angeles with the systematic eradication and attack against Indigenous communities, migrant communities,” Martinez said.

Palmira Figueroa, communications director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, or NDLON, said that undocumented, low-income workers have been targeted under every administration, but she feels attacks on the community are more robust and violent since President Donald Trump returned to power.

As a response, the NDLON created an “adopt a day laborer corner” that trains and encourages non-vulnerable people to support their local day laborers who are at risk of being targeted and kidnapped by ICE. Their trainings have been attended by more than 800 volunteers across the country who would reach out to NDLON asking how they can help. 

While NDLON has only worked with day laborers in the past, they are realizing that solidarity is needed, especially at a time when day laborers, including those at Home Depot corners and worker centers, are being kidnapped by ICE. She said they have more than 25 corners in the different Home Depots in Los Angeles where groups of people go almost every day to support their neighbors and create community by physically standing with them, alerting them of nearby ICE activity and bringing them food and coffee.

The importance of this was underscored when Carlos Roberto Montoya, a 52-year-old day laborer from Guatemala who worked to provide for his family, was killed by a car after running from an ICE raid in a Home Depot in Monrovia, California on Aug. 14. The following day, the community held a vigil to honor Montoya’s life and held a protest that more than 1,000 people in the community attended. The event was organized by Monrovia High School Students Against Fascism and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. 

Advocates organized a GoFundMe to support Montoya’s family, saying: “This is not an accident. This is a deadly consequence of DHS’s reckless raids — and it cannot continue.”

“We go by a saying ‘solo el pueblo salva al pueblo’ — ‘only the people save the people,’” Figueroa said. “We haven’t worked with non-vulnerable people before, but we are realizing that that is really needed. This attack is actually intense and unprecedented, so we are listening to people that want to step up and support, and then trying to work with them too.”

Garcia’s mother was not the only street vendor impacted by the raids. Many more have either been detained or fear going to work. However, many people have stepped up to do vendor buyouts, in which community members pay for all of their products so the vendors can go home safely without losing any money. On the day of the fundraiser for Garcia, Murillo spent $900 to buy out a raspado vendor.

In addition to vendor buyouts, the Los Angeles community has also been donating to a GoFundMe organized by the LA Street Vendor Coalition, which has been working alongside street vendors for several years, including their work to get street vending legalized. The campaign, which is meant to give street vendors cash assistance in order for them to stay afloat while they stay in hiding from ICE, has raised more than $180,000 in community donations. So far, they have helped more than 200 vendors.

“A lot of vendors were having to make the very terrible decision of whether to continue working and face potential risks encountering immigration enforcement, or stopping work or cutting back on their time outside in order to protect themselves,” said Shannon Camacho, senior associate of policy at Inclusive Action for the City in Los Angeles, which is part of the LA Street Vendor Coalition. “But they would then have to face other financial hardships. That money is immediately used to supplement what they lost.”

The LA Street Vendor Coalition launched similar fundraisers during the COVID-19 pandemic and following the fires in LA earlier this year. They have also been pushing LA County to create cash assistance for workers affected by the raids. They are trying to find other long-term solutions as well, as the vendors can only apply for assistance once.

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“ICE has been targeting street vendors because they know that these people weren’t able to close a door or deny access to these agents like a brick and mortar,” Camacho said. “We’re really glad that LA has stepped up and really understood that we need to all come together to protect our vendors.”

Hernandez said that the organization has done mutual aid and rapid response work with more than 600 volunteers. They patrol the streets looking for ICE, uplift GoFundMe pages, organize fundraisers, provide financial assistance to families impacted by ICE and operate a 24/7 hotline where community members can report ICE. 

The organization was formed in response to the Thomas fire in 2018, but has expanded to help the community following Trump winning the 2024 election.

“We knew that mass deportation was going to be a focus of this administration,” Hernandez said. “That’s when we knew we were going to need to have some strategies on how to combat the mass deportation and attacks on the immigrant and migrant communities that we serve.” 

Fundraisers have been a big part of the Los Angeles community’s effort to rebuild. There are many GoFundMe pages set up to help families impacted by the raid, especially when the breadwinner of the family is taken by ICE. 

805 UndocuFund launched an emergency assistance program at the end of March to provide financial assistance for families impacted by ICE enforcement to pay for attorney fees, rent or other basic necessities. They have been able to provide more than $200,000 in support for families.

“What we are seeing is that most of the time, it is the main income earner who is removed from the household,” Hernandez said. “Now you have a single-parent household trying to provide for the family. You also have children that now have to stay behind with friends of the family, and their needs are great, so we started this emergency assistance fund specifically to support the families.”

While most of the funds for this emergency assistance come from individual donations, the community has also been holding fundraisers to contribute. Hernandez said that small business owners like food trucks, artists, jewelry stores and restaurants have been hosting one-day sales to support the families by selling whatever they have. 

Hernandez said that on Aug. 2, there was a boy who had a cart full of water, granola bars and Gatorades that he was selling at the protest, and all of those proceeds were donated to 805 UndocuFund, which totaled more than $500. 

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“People are doing whatever they can, and that makes a difference for a family that may not have income, still has to pay rent, still has to feed their family, and are just really afraid of being taken themselves,” Hernandez said.

During this dark time, these actions highlight the resiliency of the community in Los Angeles. According to Martinez, most of CIELO’s volunteers are young adults and highschoolers. She said that it is very impactful to see the next generation spending their summer packing food boxes and making change in the world.

“I think that it really shows that no matter your age, there’s always a way to support your community, and there’s always a way that you can make a change in the world, even though it seems really difficult during these dark times,” Martinez said. “The people that make up LA step up for each other, and they’re here to help and to be in solidarity with each other.” 

Figueroa said that the “adopt a corner” initiative has been successful in protecting day laborers from ICE. On July 29, volunteers were at the entrances of a Home Depot in Los Angeles when they saw an unmarked van approaching. The volunteers alerted the workers that ICE may be in the area, and they went inside the Home Depot for protection. The manager of the Home Depot closed the doors and didn’t allow ICE in, Figueroa noted.

“We know that no one is going to come to save us, that’s why we are trying to do this in these hard times,” she said. “Our main concern is to keep the workers safe, protected and in places where, even if they’re vulnerable, at least they have a community down there that is caring for them and that sees them.”

This article How LA is uniting to provide mutual aid for those impacted by ICE raids was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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