Today, Explained - Fire and ICE in Los Angeles

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

President Trump sent in the National Guard to quell protests caused by ICE raids. LA Times reporter Rachel Uranga covered the chaos, which Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies defends. This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz and Denise Guerra with help from Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi with help from Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Victoria Chamberlin and Avishay Artsy, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. National Guard troops in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday. Photo by Denise Guerra/Vox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was quite a weekend in Los Angeles. Ice showed up in LA's Fashion District to deport undocumented workers. People immediately started protesting, some peacefully, some less peacefully. Some protesters chose to set fire to Waymo robot cars. This guy told CBS News that the tear gas tasted like fascism. Tasted like fascism. Donald Trump sent in the National Guard

against California Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes. Newsom says he's gonna sue Trump today. Trump's borders are a Tom Homan threatened to arrest Newsom. And on MSNBC, Newsom said, go ahead. Come after me, arrest me. let's just get it over with. Tough guy. You know, I don't give a damn.

What happened in Los Angeles on Today Explained? This is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about what happens when media and tech collide. This week I'm talking to Jay Graber, the CEO of Blue Sky. That's the increasingly popular social network that's also kind of a science experiment. Blue Sky is really part of this moment where me and other people are all saying, let's preserve these early principles of the open web and let's bring that back for the next generation of applications.

That's this week on channels wherever you get your favorite podcasts. There are fewer than 1 000 billionaires in the us. Why do they matter so much? The solution is not to talk about wealth as a target. It's to talk about unfairness and corruption and self-dealing. I'm Preet Bharara. And this week, New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos joins me on my podcast. Stay tuned with Preet to discuss wealth disparity, the ultra rich and his new book, The Haves and the Have Yachts. The episode is out now.

Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. Can I ask you guys a question? Today Explained from Vox.com, I'm Sean Romsperm here with Rachel Uranga who spent her weekend covering the immigration unrest in Los Angeles for the LA Times. We asked her how it all got started. President Trump has made clear that he wants to execute mass deportations. And so over the past week, maybe a little bit more than a week, we've really started to see it ramp up in the Los Angeles area. we hadn't seen it before. The Trump administration escalating immigration enforcement with ICE arrests now topping 100,000 this year. Some of the latest operations

are happening outside of courthouses. Federal agents picking them up when they showed up for their scheduled immigration hearings. Another raid unfolded at a clothing store along Town Avenue in the Fashion District, where agents hauled off multiple workers in handcuffs, loading them into vans, as other agents in riot gear clashed with onlookers in what could be described as a tense standoff. There was arrests in courthouses, there was arrests when people were doing their immigration

check-ins, and stories started to trickle out that we had seen in other parts of the country but really haven't seen here. And that was like children who got caught up in this, families that got caught up in this. And then on Friday, there was a distribution center, a clothing distribution warehouse center. distribution center, it's clothing distribution warehouse center, there was actually a couple, and advocates and protesters showed up and they started shouting out on the bullhorn, you know, legal advice, family showed up as their, I talked to one woman whose father was inside and being arrested, he had been in the country for 20 years.

And so people were really upset. I mean, this is, this happened in a largely immigrant community. Not only is it a city that's largely Latino, many with roots, you know, immigrant roots, and, you know, also like all kinds of other immigrants, it's a very diverse city. And on Friday, at one of the other sites, which I was not at, that had been raided, a top union official was arrested. He's a detective in a lab! He's a detective in a lab! He's a detective in a lab! He runs a lab! So, you know, the unions are highly organized here, and so, you know, word is spreading through those networks about what's happening. Word is spreading on social media with activists, advocates, and just like general people.

I mean, the population. I think California, I have to check the numbers here. But families, it's like one in five families is a mixed immigrant status. So it really resonates. And that's when we really started to see this thing grow. I believe it's on Saturday that the president decides to call in the National Guard.

What exactly does he say is his reasoning for doing that? Well that California is out of control and he wants to bring order back. I have a little statement they say, they spit, we hit. I told them Nobody's gonna spit on our police officers. Nobody's gonna spit on our military Which they do is a common thing. They get up to them this far away and then they start spitting in their face. That happens, they get hit very hard. And there's a lot of pushback from local officials. I talked to Mayor Bass on Sunday morning,

who said the city is not out of control. Because I don't want the situation to be conflated to appear as though everything is going awry in our city. That is just not the case. I mean, certainly Los Angeles has a lot of experience with unrest and riot control and so forth. So these protests, when you look at it on camera, they look widespread, but these are really isolated to a few small areas downtown, that there was a store that

was ransacked, the Adidas store was ransacked downtown and a few others. But certainly we've seen this before, like during the George Floyd protest. And it seemed to me that during that time, there was a lot more destruction of businesses. If you go out there, there's a lot of people protesting. Yes, there was a Waymo cars set aflame and so forth. But a lot of the protesters came out there peacefully because they feel personally attacked by what the administration has done and they fear is going to continue happening and the administration has said they will continue happening. And certainly a lot of local officials feel that this is fanning the flames with

not only the enforcement actions but also by bringing out the National Guard who may have very different tactics than the LAPD and the LA Sheriff's Department when it comes to crowd control. Is this gonna continue throughout the week, or was this like a weekend thing? Was it isolated? I mean, certainly today, a lot of things are happening.

We're gonna find out if Mr. Huerta, the union official, is charged today. We're gonna find out if Mr. Huerta, the union official, is charged today. We're gonna see the charges, if there's charges against any of the individuals who are arrested in the raids on Friday. There's flyers circulating about walkouts in schools. You know, teachers and principals, administrators that I talked to, a lot of high schoolers, elementary

kids, they're talking about this. Their parents are affected by this. So it's in the schools as well. And people are saying that, you know, it's affecting the children because people are afraid to go out if they're going to get arrested and detained. You hear about it from the family members, things like that, you know? People scared to come out of the house, pick up their kids from school? I know one of my friends, I think their mom was taken when they went to work on Saturday.

And I'm pretty sure that their mother hasn't responded. And I just feel so bad for them. My mom and stuff called us and they talked about how they got taken, like kind of like on the way to dropping their children at school. So I'm not doing good. Like, they're just ripping families apart, bro. Like, it's not okay. Yes, my neighbor from when I was a little kid, she used to take care of me, she got taken, yes.

What happened? They caught her when she was picking up her kids from school, they took her away from her kids. Yeah, it was really bad. And the administration has said that this is a criminal crackdown and they've made a big point of that, but people really feel now that this is not about criminals on the ground here.

People feel that it may be about their, you know, sisters or cousins, etc. And that they're that they may be impacted by this. So there's a chance this continues to escalate. What would that mean for Los Angeles? I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. I mean, the administration is not backing down. Immigration officials says they're going to continue with enforcements.

I was getting texts last night from people said they're seeing immigration agents out there. I mean, you have to be kind of careful with that. But I think they're going to continue with their enforcement efforts. That certainly is not going to slow down. And one of Trump's top advisors, Stephen Miller, is from Los Angeles, you know, he grew up in this area and, and seems to, to be continuing to push the line on that with administration. Now that we have achieved the mission of sealing the border, you're going to see more and more

resources and priorities put into the mass deportation program. And so on a day-to-day basis, you're going to see exponentially larger numbers of illegal aliens being arrested and removed from the interior. You can get the latest from Los Angeles at LAtimes.com. The Trump administration started with people they said were criminals, then their focus shifted to international students, now they're going after workers. What that's gonna look like when we return on Today Explained comes from Quince, which rhymes with Prince, don't you forget it. It's summertime soon, now, depends when this runs. And you're ready to embrace a sublime carefree life in the sun amongst friends.

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There's stories that can't be found anywhere else. Listen now to Planet Money from NPR. This is Today Explained. The Trump administration is shifting its attention to undocumented workers in the United States. That's what we saw in Los Angeles this past weekend. Mark Krikorian liked what he saw in Los Angeles this past weekend. Well, I mean, it's a good start.

They have done what they said they were going to do, which is initially follow a worst first strategy. In other words, going after the most obvious low-hanging fruit of criminals and people who'd been ordered, deported, and became fugitives. But they have to expand that beyond the worst first and expand especially to work site enforcement. And so that's going to involve apprehending and deporting non-criminals as well. And so, that's essential if there's going to be any significant reduction in the illegal population because most illegal aliens are not violent criminals. Obviously, those people have to go, but that's just the kind

of the preface to the book, the first chapter, that's not the whole story. And I think a lot of people wanted to think that that's all there was going to be to it. Gregorian is the executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies. The think tank has influenced the president's immigration policy. So we reached out to him to find out what this next chapter might look like. Thinking more broadly about what's going on with these workplace enforcement tactics that the Trump administration seems to be pivoting to right now, I've seen estimates that as much as 17% of

American agriculture employees may be undocumented, 13% of construction workers, 19% of landscapers. Who's going to do this work? I believe you think Americans should. Well, you answered the question yourself. 19% of landscapers. What that means is 81% of landscapers are legally here, either citizens or legal workers in one form or another. There are no such things as jobs Americans won't do. In certain parts of the harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables, there are in fact jobs that you're not going to be able to fill in a modern society.

But those are jobs that only are being done the way they're done because of the presence of cheap foreign labor. For instance, the United Farm Workers, which used to actually advocate for the interest of American farm workers back when Cesar Chavez was running it, before Thanksgiving releases videos on Twitter showing people doing farm work, immigrants harvesting fruit and vegetables and saying, look, the food on your table comes from them and so you should be for amnesty. One of the videos really struck me was a guy in a conical hat protecting him from the sun, kneeling in the dirt, pulling radishes very rapidly and then rubber banding them together. And it was really remarkable.

The guys got this down to an art. But why in a modern society in the 21st century are we relying on foreign workers kneeling in the dirt, pulling plants up with their hands. It's medieval and it only is possible economically because of access to essentially unlimited sources of foreign labor. All of these jobs would be completed one way or another without immigrant workers. Now, if all immigrant farm workers disappeared tomorrow, just magically, there was a kind of a parody movie

made about that. A day without a Mexican. If we don't find them, we'll be in deep. You know what? The name of a car wash, there's angry customers. And life as we know it will never be the same. Yeah, that would be really disruptive, but that's not the way reality works.

By sending the message that the party is over to the employers as well as to the illegal workers and then consistent enforcement over time, what you do is cause these sectors that make heavy uses of immigrants to adapt and evolve. And we've seen that even in agriculture, when the big Mexican guest worker program of the 40s and 50s was ended in the mid 60s at the AFL-CIO's insistence. Illegal immigration didn't just magically switch on. It took a good 10, 15 years to kind of gain momentum.

And during that time was the period of time in agriculture that saw maybe the fastest adoption and development of labor saving technologies. All of this work can and will be done without large scale illegal immigration. The president loves to poke California Governor Gavin Newsom. They've butted heads more times than we can probably name right now. They're making a big show out in California, but if they're really going to pursue what you're saying, going after employers who are letting undocumented workers bypass immigration laws knowingly, that's going to affect red states as well.

If we're really going to get at, you know, the 19% of landscapers, the 17% of agricultural workers. Sure. Do you think Donald Trump has the stomach for that to upset his friends, his base? I don't know. We'll see. I hope so. But that is going to be one of the tests about, you know, the seriousness of the administration's commitment to genuinely reducing the illegal population. And we've seen in the past, every administration, Republican and Democrat, fail that test. One example that has always stuck in my mind from the Clinton administration, and this

was something one of our analysts, now retired Jerry Kammer, Pulitzer Prize winning former reporter wrote a book, Tracing the History of Employer San reporter, wrote a book tracing the history of employer sanctions, which is to say the ban on hiring illegal aliens, which was only enacted in 1986. And during the Clinton administration, word got out that there was going to be an enforcement action in Texas against a Luby's cafeteria, that's a big cafeteria chain down there. And the local congressman got word of it, called the then INS official in charge in the area and said, hey, you know, these are important employers and we don't want to

piss them off and so why don't you call this thing off? Well, the INS guy said, you know, congressman, listen, we're not making this up, this is a real thing, we've got intel and, you know, I'm sorry, but we're gonna making this up. This is a real thing. We've got Intel, and I'm sorry, but we're going to have to go forward with this." Congressman says, okay. Ten minutes later, the attorney general calls up to the INS guy who works for her and said, knock it off. So, they failed that test. The Trump administration, as far as I know, hasn't faced that test yet. I don't think they'll fail, but we'll find out when it happens. And we don't know yet, but you know, my fingers crossed.

A few weeks ago on the show, we talked to some Trump supporters who voted for him just a few months ago, who said that they were all for the president deporting hardened criminals, but they didn't like seeing people who were here working hard getting swept up. The hard workers, he's kicking them out. The ones that don't work, he's letting them be. How does that make sense? It's all right that he picks up the delinquents. I'm all for that. But those that aren't doing anything wrong, leave them alone. That's all I have to say. Do you think the administration risks losing support if they ramp up targeting hardworking

people who are contributing to their communities? Well, working hard doesn't mean you get to be an American. There's plenty of Americans who frankly are lazy slackers. Uhers and that's bad, but they're still Americans. There are people and we're stuck with them. You show up and you say, hi, I'm a hard worker. Let me live in your country in violation of your laws. It's preposterous. Now, will the president lose support, his own base if he

carries out large scale removals of people who aren't raping or murdering anybody, maybe a little bit, but you know, he did promise this. This isn't news. This isn't something that's made up or changed at the last minute. You know, in a short answer is yeah, maybe some people will say,

look, this isn't what I wanted to see, but I don't think that's going to be a significant political problem as long as he follows through. Having seen what we all saw this weekend, if the president continues to follow through, to ramp up the deportation of undocumented workers in factories, on farms, in whatever, landscaping companies across this country. Do you think there's a less disruptive way to go about

it? Because I think you and I both agree that this is unsustainable if they're going to ramp this up throughout the country and there's this much pushback at the same time. Well, and part of the reason there's not this much pushback is because it's Los Angeles specifically. This was, I won't say, I mean, I don't know how organized it was, but clearly these were people and organizations kind of hoping for this fight. I don't think you're going to see that same kind of pushback in, you know, Dubuque or in Dothan, Alabama. But, there are a variety of ways you enforce immigration laws.

Some of them is you do have to do some actual raids on workplaces, especially when you've got intel that there's lots of illegals working there, especially if you have intel that the employers or managers are in on it. Because that's always the issue in holding employers responsible is how do you demonstrate in a court of law that they knew what they were doing? The law makes that difficult to do. Often they'll hire contractors and say, well, you know, I didn't, how would I know? I thought they were legit. They told me they were legit, you know, that kind of thing. And so that's always a problem.

But there are other things you do in conjunction with raids. You do audits, for instance, where you just, you know, you're not there to arrest people. You just want to, you know, they're required to keep the paperwork, show us the paperwork. Also there is something which I expect is going to be starting up again soon, sending out no match letters from the Social Security Administration. This is something that was stopped under Biden, but it's Social Security sending out letters to employers when they submitted payroll information. The information doesn't match with Social Security's own records because of fake or stolen or borrowed Social Security numbers usually.

There's all kinds of things you can do that are both through the mail, as it were, as well as in person, in real life. And you need to do all of those things at the same time. MarkCrocorianCis.org, like cisgendered. Devin Schwartz and Denise Guerra produced our show today. Denise was also out in the streets for us. Thank you, Denise. Amina Alsati, Miles Bryan, Victoria Chamberlain, Avishai Artsy, Patrick Boyd, Andrea Christensdottir, and Miranda Kennedy all pitched in on this episode two.

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