Fear and loathing on the streets of LA

The man wore a New York Yankees cap, a beard and an oversized shirt, and he strode purposefully towards me while I stood on the pavement, watching the protestors gathered outside the Glendale Hilton Hotel. 

As our eyes met, my heart sank. I sensed the impending attention of an incensed GAA referee forced to lower his standards to officiate at a Junior ‘B’ North Mayo football match and just being plain sick of everybody present.

“You with them?” he sternly asked, jerking his thumb toward the boisterous, eclectic group of demonstrators spilling from the sidewalk onto the grass median, encouraging passing cars to beep their support. A police helicopter buzzed noisily overhead.

“No…” I replied and his face quickly fell in disappointment with my lack of elaboration.

“F**king losers," Mr Yankee spat, clearly expecting me to share his disdain. 

He looked about to continue his theory when a fresh wave of car horns drowned him out. Scowling at an electric SUV that had enthusiastically joined the cacophony, he turned away and wandered off, engaging next with a couple waving a large American flag and a cardboard poster that baldly exclaimed 'Hilton Harbors Fascists'.

The protest had been growing since Monday. Each evening, around 60 people gathered outside the Glendale Hilton after learning that officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were staying at the hotel. Laura, the protestor with the homemade fascist sign, told me ICE had moved there after being driven out of Pasadena by similar raucous demonstrations. She hoped they’d keep them on the run, forcing them out of Los Angeles altogether.

It was a loose but lively crowd, with handmade signs reading 'Immigrants are Americans', 'ICE out of L.A.' and more bluntly, 'Fuck ICE'. One small sign simply asked 'Whose Side Are You On?'. 

Many protestors wore masks (“So the government can’t identify us!”, I was told) and a vibrant young woman with a loudhailer led chants of “Say it once, say it twice, we will not put up with ICE!” The mood was energetic and mostly friendly, buoyed by the constant honking of sympathetic drivers at the busy intersection - while no-one impeded traffic.

The noise often carried all the way into nearby homes, including our own apartment, past midnight when calm returned - traffic from the nearby motorway notwithstanding. At 1.15am on Tuesday, I spoke live on Tommy Marren’s Midwest Radio morning show back in Mayo. By then, both ICE officers and their adversaries had gone to bed, leaving only a homeless man wrapped in a brown sleeping bag and a puzzled night-shift nurse to witness my attempts to find adequate cell-phone coverage outside the local Catholic church and explain to Tommy that, no, we weren’t on the verge of an American civil war.

A former federal security official I know expressed some sympathy for ICE officers. 

“They’ve been underfunded and politically hamstrung for years,” he said, pointing the finger at both Republicans and Democrats for ignoring illegal criminals. Now, under pressure to meet quotas, they’re targeting “low-hanging fruit” - a strategy that has ignited widespread public outrage.

What began as a low-profile immigration operation has since erupted into one of LA’s most intense recent political firestorms. On June 6th, ICE agents conducted coordinated local raids. Dozens were arrested on suspicion of undocumented employment. As word spread, so did the resistance. Union leaders, community activists and families turned up in protest, facing off against heavily armed federal agents who used pepper balls, tear gas, and flash-bangs. Footage of unarmed protesters clashing with ICE in riot gear went viral - even though these protests were essentially confined to a few blocks in downtown Los Angeles, but burning cars never look good.

By the weekend, demonstrations had spilled into Compton and Paramount. Downtown LA was placed under curfew. In an extraordinary move, President Trump deployed National Guard troops - and even US Marines - into the city, bypassing state officials entirely. California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass called the deployment unconstitutional, but by then, Trump had again succeeded in commanding the media cycle, diverting attention from his public spat with Elon Musk.

Despite mostly peaceful gatherings, vandalism and looting added fuel to the fire. Storefronts were smashed, graffiti appeared on public buildings, and some self-driving cars were torched. Over 20 businesses reported break-ins. Mayor Bass imposed curfews and described the damage as “extensive” and city crews continue the cleanup. Many ‘protesters’ were clearly exploiting the unrest for their own ends even as sympathetic demonstrations - like this one at the Hilton Glendale - sprang up.

Meanwhile, the scope of ICE’s mission has come into sharper focus. In a late-May meeting led by Trump adviser and Dracula-look-alike Stephen Miller, ICE was reportedly given a target of 3,000 arrests per day - aiming for around 1.1 million deportations a year. Officials have been ordered to arrest anyone without legal status, regardless of their criminal record. Up to 1.4 million of these liable individuals already have final removal orders.

Yet what complicates the narrative is this: Trump’s hardline stance resonated deeply with a surprising share of Hispanic voters. In the 2024 election, nearly half of Latino voters cast their ballot for Trump and his promise of mass deportations -up significantly from 28% in 2016. Many legally residing Hispanic Americans are frustrated by what they see as a system that turns a blind eye to unlawful presence while offering little clarity or justice for those who followed the rules.

It’s a divisive issue. The people ICE is rounding up may have overstayed visas or crossed the border unlawfully, but many have also lived here for years, paid taxes, worked jobs others wouldn’t take, and raised families. Americans, like the man in the Yankees hat, see illegal entry as the original sin, demanding correction. But others point to a system that effectively allowed undocumented immigrants to live in limbo, with both political parties failing to act.

The painful truth is that when once allowed to stay and build lives, many of these individuals now face the trauma of being torn from the only home they’ve known. Democrats like Gavin Newsom - lauded recently for his eloquent rebuke of Trump - have done little to fix a system that has long used real human beings as pawns in a brutal political game. What is the point of an immigration system if not everyone is fairly, humanely and efficiently held to account by it? Whether they be Mexican or indeed Irish. Neither side is likely to persuade the other with protests - in fact, it can only inflame the situation - and there lies the danger.

Perhaps I should have answered Mr Yankee’s “You with them?” in the old Irish way by a question to a question:

“Why?— whose side are YOU on?”