UNLOCKED: ICE is Coming to a City Near You feat. Memo Torres

All right.

Hello, everybody.

I'm back at it with another bonus interview episode out this week for you.

Right now, I'm joined by a reporter with LA Taco, Memo Torres.

Memo, how's it going?

Going well, man.

As well as it could be with all this ice siege and ice activity all over Los Angeles.

How are you doing, man?

I'm all right.

I mean, it seems like the whole country is under siege right now, and LA has always been at the forefront of it.

And that's why we wanted to get you on to talk about this.

But before we get into that, could you just tell me a little bit about LA Taco and how you guys sort of went from covering food culture in LA to being doing some really indispensable reporting on the ongoing like siege of your city by federal agencies?

Yeah, if you're not familiar with LA Taco out there, Crash Course, we started off as a blog in 2006 that covered graffiti, cannabis, and food, specifically tacos.

In 2018, we relaunched as a publication and started doing more news coverage, culture arts of Los Angeles investigative journalism.

But yeah, we've always been 50% food, 50% news, culture arts.

And then when,

you know, on June 6th, when Trump sent his troops here and they did the first raid at an apparel company in downtown Los Angeles, we immediately knew what was happening and we just jumped to, we took all our resources, all our community connections, and just felt this kind of instinctual reaction to cover ice from now on.

Well, from your perspective in Los Angeles, like, I know this is a broad question, but like, how bad is it?

Like, what have you been seeing?

And like, is it going to get worse?

It's getting worse.

It's definitely getting worse.

It's pretty bad.

I think one thing we have to remind people that Los Angeles is huge.

It's a huge metropolitan area.

So if you're not paying attention to what's going on and, you know, if I'm not reporting on what's happening, it's easy to forget that the ice rates are happening.

So we constantly try to, you know, give voice that like, look, they took 20 people today.

They took 18.

They raided 20 different parts of LA today.

And yeah, and I feel like it's been getting slowly worse and worse and worse.

We've gone from like maybe having one or two days where they took 20 to 25 people to now that's starting to become more common.

We're starting to see that more every day now.

And in your reporting, you say like every day they took another 20 people from here, another 30 people from here.

In covering this, when you say, like, they get taken, what happens to these people once they're taken?

Yeah, that's a good question, man.

A lot of them get taken first to the Metropolitan Detention Center, which shorts for MDC, in downtown LA.

That's where the main federal building is, the main detention center.

The infamous now B18, the basement B18.

They get processed through there, they get held there for maybe a day or two, and then they start getting shipped around.

Some will be sent to Adelanto, some will get sent to Arizona, Some get sent to Texas.

And if you're following any of the coverage, you see that that's one of the tactics the administration is using to keep detainees away from their families, but more importantly, their lawyers.

So it's hard for them to be in touch with lawyers and have their legal help.

And like, what does it feel like?

I know, like, I mean, we're dealing with this in New York right now.

I mean, ICE are assaulting people at the federal building in lower Manhattan right now.

They just sent a journalist to the hospital today.

What's it like for you covering these?

Like, you know, like when you're, you interact with ICE agents and like, it seems to me that like

they have sort of markedly ramped up their assaults on journalists or anyone filming them or just anyone trying to oppose them in any way, not just like the targets of

these arrests.

Yeah, I mean, look, ICE is petty.

First of all, Border Patrol and ICE are super petty.

If anybody's recording them, they turn around and start assaulting them.

And then

we'll file a charge against whoever was recording them and claim that the person recording them assaulted them.

Just this weekend, we had this incident where they raided a Home Depot in the Dera Heights.

And there was one person, a gentleman was coming out from shopping inside a Home Depot and heard this guy screaming because this guy was being taken to the floor and being tortured as he was getting handcuffed.

So he came over to record and try to get his name.

So I say just went after him and they tackled him to the ground.

Just as that was happening, this other woman named Rachel was pulling up and she's part of the rapid response group of that area.

And she started recording as well.

And they got mad and then they grabbed her and they threw her in the van.

So they took two day laborers.

They took a lady that was selling tortillas at a stand just on the corner.

And those two people that were serving, the U.S.

citizen that came out from shopping and just kind of trying to figure out what was going on and the lady that came to try to record and try to get the guys' numbers that were being taken.

They threw her in the van, then they went down the street as they usually do.

They usually run after they do a raid, they rendezvous in the area somewhere else.

They find an empty parking lot, which they did down the street at Buckingham Parkway.

And then they thought it was empty, but there were people inside of the office buildings that came out to screams to also document that.

And they could see that one of the guys was down on the floor.

They beat his legs and beat his knees so that we could get down on his knees.

They tasered him in the ribs.

The other lady, the other observer who's a U.S.

citizen, was screaming for help and she eventually they the they this according to witnesses she was beaten badly and she was beaten unconscious to the point where they need to get an ambulance she got taken to um the cedar sign of medical center in marina del ray and the person that was uh observing that the the third person that was observing that well uh they started chasing her and she started running and as they were chasing her they were like why are you running why are you running now they wanted to arrest her but she was able to get back into her office before they did that um which is one of the mo's ICE.

For them, if anybody runs, they're guilty of something.

So they're going to arrest you.

And they've been doing nothing but like arrest now, verify later policies where people will get dropped off now in the middle of the street somewhere after they verify that they're a permanent resident or U.S.

citizen.

From your perspective, like what is the profile?

I mean, you said of ICE, they're petty, but like what is the profile of the average ICE agent?

Because like, from my perspective of what I see, they look like a gang of otherwise unemployable, peanut-headed thugs.

But like, I know they've like, I mean, like, I know they're offering like student loan forgiveness if you join, you know, the American Gestapo, but like, from what ranks of society are they drawing this huge workforce of like deep, you know, ice just thugs?

Like, I don't know what else to call them.

Yeah, no,

since this has all started, I think I've seen every single video of every raid, every kidnapping, every agent.

And it got to the point where like I had nicknames for a lot of them.

And I sort of got of the, like, half of them look like Buzz Lightyear.

They got their tight masks on and their face are fat.

You know, they're like,

you know,

there's a bunch of dorks.

They're out of shape.

There's a couple dudes that just look like Bane.

You know, they got all roided out.

It's like the weirdest.

Like, you know what I was thinking about this morning?

I was like, this literally feels like we're living in a Mad Max world where you have all these group of like freaks, you know, different sizes, out of shape, dorks, losers, quirky dudes, masked up and going, just going out on raids every single day and grabbing like hardworking people.

Yeah, I mean, it feels like,

I mean, like, I know there's a certain personality type attracted to law enforcement, but these, these people seem like someone who have never had authority in their life and have now been given godlike authority to, I don't know, intimidate, torture, and even kill anyone who stands in their way.

And particularly just,

let's be honest, like anyone who looks Latino walking the streets of Los Angeles or any other major American city.

Like, are there any, for people who are like, like, worried, like, are there any tells for like, how do you, how would, how do you identify an ice agent?

I mean, I know here in New York, like, it used to be like, if you saw a guy milling around just outside the turnstile in the subway and he had like a Jets or Yankees starter jacket was just hanging out there, pretty good chance he's an undercover cop.

Like, what are, like, are there any tells after observing ICE agents for as long as you have?

Um,

yeah, it's so funny.

It's like,

yeah,

I think it's kind of a gut feeling that you develop after a while.

Yeah, they'll wear like,

and

it sounds very simple, but they'll wear t-shirts.

A lot of them are tatted now.

They have a lot of tattoos.

They have these, they're into their haircuts.

They're all into their haircuts, first of all.

So it's like these white dudes trying to dress like they're street people, you know, like regular normal street people.

So it's like, they just don't fit in.

Like Like you go to, if, if they're in Compton or in Boyle Heights or in Englewood, and you're just like, you see them, you see the neighborhood people, and then you look at them.

It's like, they're not dressed the same.

They don't fit in.

Like, you could just tell, you know, they try to maintain a low profile, but in maintaining that low profile, they give themselves up.

Well, like, like in these neighborhoods, like in like the, you know, like Los Angeles is in many ways like the Latino capital of America.

But like in these communities, in these neighborhoods, what's it feel like to just live in Los Angeles right now, even if you are documented or even if you are a U.S.

citizen?

Well,

it's scary.

I think everybody's living in fear.

I, you know, I have a lot of connections with community people.

I go out to eat a lot still, and I just hear these stories of people just living in fear.

I have, you know, the other day I ran into a friend of mine who was like, dude, I got pulled over by a nice agent.

I was riding my bike and they stopped me.

They rushed me.

Like fucking five guys just ran up to me, grabbed me and were wanting to take me and I had to prove that I was a U.S.

citizen.

Well, how are they able to prove that

they were a U.S.

citizen?

Well, they started talking shit to him in English.

First of all, he's got good English.

And then he pulled out his real ID.

So I guess the real ID was enough.

And that was enough to let him go.

But he's like, yeah, they harassed me for about half an hour before they let me go.

You have situations where like in restaurants, the other day I went to a restaurant and the owner was telling me how sheriffs came in to eat.

And he took their order.

He turned around to the kitchen and the kitchen staff were all gone.

Like they just saw a green uniform and they booked it.

And like, you know, people are just living in fear,

especially in the Spanish communities, you know, like they, and a lot of the

Latino communities don't understand the difference between

sheriff,

ICE, Border Patrol, and all the different agencies.

And a lot of them are not going to wait around to take a chance.

If they see somebody that looks like

some kind of a law enforcement agency, they book it.

They run.

You know, like, you know, LA is living in fear and it's very traumatizing right now.

Well, I mean, like, and I mean, I wish I could say that that was misplaced.

I mean, like, this is this is a very grim subject, and it really does feel like all of the evil in this country is sort of congealing in one moment right now.

But, like, I got to bring this up because the fact of the matter is that a lot of people keep dying in ICE custody, or if they aren't dying, they're being severely mistreated.

And I just want to talk about, like, you covered a story of a man named Ismahel Alaya Uribe.

Could you discuss who he was and what happened in the circumstances surrounding his death?

Yeah, that was a really difficult story to cover.

It was me and my team.

We now have a team here that's helping me cover the ice.

I have Aisha, Jualles Palomares, and Izzy Ramirez, who I've kind of brought under my wings to help me cover all of this.

We had to dig into the story and look at different facets of what happened because one, DHS never tells you the truth.

DHS is always full of shit.

And every statement they put out, they're lying.

Bill Asaley, the acting federal attorney, has tried to bring bring charges against all these people that are observers or at protest or even people they arrest.

And the courts have thrown out like 90% of them saying like these are false.

They're like blatantly false statements by the DHS.

So we have to dig around and find the families, find what actually happened.

And this young gentleman got arrested

at a car wash.

And while he was working, he's been at the car wash, working there as a manager.

He's been there for 15 years.

He was brought to the U.S.

when he was four years old.

He was a doctor recipient,

didn't have children, but was

an uncle to kids and godfather to his nephew and niece.

And

poor guy,

he ended up getting taken to the Elanto Detention Center.

This was about a month ago.

And within two weeks, his mom, I spoke to his mom and she would tell me how she would go visit them.

And he just started with a cough and was like, hey, get some medical attention.

He's like, mom, they won't do anything for me.

And then she went back the next week and they started looking real pale and bloodshot eyes and was like, You need to get some medical attention.

He's like, They won't believe I'm sick, mom.

They won't give me anything.

And finally, he collapsed, shaking and convulsing.

And that's when the prison set the alarm blew, the code blue alarm.

And they came and they gave him a shot and they started giving them 500 milligrams of Tylenol three times a day.

So that last time they saw him, she was like, she said she went on a Saturday and that he was like, mom, I can't anymore.

I can't anymore, mom.

I can't do this anymore.

So she said she was going to talk to the lawyer on Monday.

But that Sunday,

she got noticed that he got taken to the local hospital.

He was there for about 14 hours.

And on Monday morning at 5.30 in the morning, Huntington Beach police showed up at her door to give her the news that her son had passed away.

And basically what had happened is that he had developed anapsis that got infected.

And I've had anapsis before.

That shit is painful as fuck.

I almost died from anapsis.

Like, it's no fucking joking matter.

Like, that shit is terrible to try to have it without any medication.

And that shit will kill you.

And it did to that point.

So, I mean, what you're describing is circumstances in which, like, a guy who had been in this country since he was four years old and working at the, basically just as the man, since he was four,

uh, working as the manager of a car wash is arrested just

like not because he did any crime, but just because what, like, he, his legal status was in dispute, was sent to some sort of detention center or prison where he was denied medical care repeatedly that caused him to die.

How confident are we that, like, this kind of incompetence or negligence is not, in fact, like a systematic matter of policy?

Oh, I mean,

it's definitely a matter of policy.

Adelanto facility is no stranger to having deaths.

They've had several deaths in the past.

This is just the first death they've had this year alone.

There's other facilities that are being reopened by the administration that were shut down because of their negligence, because of the amount of deaths and medical negligence they've had.

Constantly, we have reports of people being taken who are diabetic or have cancer or taking some kind of medications for blood pressure or whatever, and agents will throw the medications out and not give it to these people.

And somehow, and some of these people get very sick and ill.

It forces some people to just self-deport and say, like, screw it, I'm just going to self-deport and sign the paperwork so they get deported because they just, they're afraid of dying in jail.

It's a very real thing.

And most people ask, well, why don't all these people self-deport?

Why do they stick around?

Well, most of these people that are being detained have been in the U.S.

have families, have been here for 10 years.

They own businesses.

Their lives are here.

And apart from like, you know, those horror stories you hear about them being afraid to go back to their home countries because they might be persecuting their home countries,

they've built a life here.

So they're staying here for the off chance that they get to get a court hearing and get to get released on bail at least and get back to their families.

Given what you're describing, like a policy of

ethnic cleansing.

and intentional disregard that leads to circumstances that leads to kind of like a passive extermination of people.

Like, Like, do you feel that like when people refer to ICE as the American Gestapo or these as Nazi tactics, do you feel that that's like appropriate?

Or is that misplaced?

I would like to say that they're worse.

They're worse because they're cowards.

They're hiding their faces, right?

They don't want to identify themselves.

I think that they slowly are.

leading that way.

I mean, we don't have

full-on death camps, you know, we don't have full-on concentration camps, but how far away are we from that?

You know, we're with Alligator Alcatraz.

I think there's about 300 detention camps and there's only like 190 something that are publicly known, right?

And so like a lot of these people are just, and then the, you take into account that ICE is really not about paperwork.

You know, they've stopped, they've, they've stopped updating their page on the deaths in their detention centers.

You know, I have the count of a total of

16.

Their page still only shows 13.

You know, they haven't showed the last three.

They haven't updated it.

They stopped doing paperwork.

They scrapped paperwork.

They used to have to file paperwork as to where they were going to go, who they were going to detain, file all of that.

They said, nah, we're not doing that anymore because it just takes too much time.

So this whole culture of like, screw the paperwork, just grab, detain, verify later, throw them in jail.

you know, whatever.

Like it's a complete recklessness for due process, for bureaucratic elements that are supposed to put safeguards on the citizens that they're taking or the residents that they're taking are all immigrants.

It's a complete disregard for all due process.

Like when you consider that, I'm just wondering, like, because I see people, at least like online, or people who support this, or people who say, I voted for this, and people who talk about the victims of, you know, like the targets of these raids and of these deaths as invaders, that these people have invaded our country.

It's like some sort of like they're waging war against America or they're a threat to America.

I mean, I'm not asking to like to psychoanalyze these people, but like,

how do you feel?

Like, what does that make you feel when you see that, like, a certain, through a certain chunk of America, this is not just like not horrifying or shameful, but like something to be celebrated or something to be gloated over?

I don't know, man.

I don't understand it.

I don't understand it.

How do you celebrate families being detained?

In Chicago, there's a video of a poor five-year-old, of a five-year-old little girl watching her parents get taken.

And then you see a picture of her in a detention cell with a yellow plastic bag over her trying to stay warm on a bench all by herself how do you how like how do people lose their humanity you know i mean when people start put uh hailing laws and and due process yet celebrate the law enforcement that are acting lawlessly and have no due process like like how do you how do you equate the both how do you justify it how do you celebrate that you know it's just it's complete hypocrisy to me in my mind um or like they, how do you believe that America is like the best and most powerful country in the world, but like a five-year-old girl is like an existential threat to this country or your safety?

It's just, I, I, I don't have an explanation for it.

I really don't.

Everybody they've gone after here in Los Angeles.

Look,

everybody said this.

I've said this.

The, the criminals, the cartels.

Yeah, like take and we, nobody wants criminals in cartel activity, but who are they actually going after?

They're going after.

They're completely not doing that.

Yeah.

People sell an old lady selling tamales on the street, an old man waiting for the bus to go to work.

You know, people gardening, people at the day labor center just looking

for their next

meal.

It's literally

they're going after people that speak Spanish, are in work clothes, and have dark skin.

That's literally who they're going after, which is workers, people that contribute to the economy.

I mean, I've said this before on other episodes of my show, but like I, when I think about this, I think it's to the, like, in the minds of someone like Stephen Miller, like who I think is like probably the intellectual godfather

behind what we're seeing in the streets of Los Angeles or Chicago or New York.

I think someone who is in this country undocumented or here illegally, who's committing serious crimes, who's like murdering people or raping or fucking doing home invasions, I think them being in this country is less of a threat to their ideology than that old woman who's selling tamales or that guy who's like doing a roof.

I think the idea of like, whatever you want to call it, immigrants, undocumented people, Latinos in this country who are just working, having families, starting businesses, becoming a part of the fabric of just American life and economy and culture, that to them is what they regard as the existential threat, not MS-13, not cartels, not drug dealers.

Yeah, I mean, exactly.

And, you know, to them, this whole image of like MS-13 here in Los Angeles, I am so sick and tired of them using MS-13 to justify their raids.

They're like, they did the whole staging at MacArthur Park here in Los Angeles,

where they pulled out everybody, U.S.

Marshals, Border Patrol, ICE, Department of Homeland Security, ATF,

DEA, on horses, on military tanks,

marching down through a park where there were kids literally just having a little summer camp there because to them, that's MS-13 territory.

We haven't seen MS-13 here in LA for like the longest time.

I mean, we're talking about like that shit that happened when I grew up.

You know, I haven't seen a goddamn MS-13 member in like forever and over 20 years.

So like they're using this as like the boogeyman and justifying raids around like MacArthur Park area in the West Lake area as like, oh yeah, they're going after MS-13.

Like really, MS-13 is selling the males on the corner and looking for work at Home Depot.

That's MS-13.

Like, give me a fucking break.

I want to get back to something we were talking about a little earlier in this conversation, which is that, like, thus far, it seems like for ordinary civilians or people who are horrified by this, like, the primary means of fighting back against this or resisting it if it happens in front of you is taking out your phone and filming what you see.

And I'm just wondering, like, from your perspective, like, I've wondered like what I would do myself, because I see this happen on like screens.

I know it's happening here in my city, but it hasn't happened like right in front of me.

So, in your opinion, like, as someone who's covered this for a long time, are there a set of like best practices?

If you see, if you see ICE taking someone on the streets, what should you do?

Yeah, very basic.

You always had to remember the who, what, when, where's, hows.

Okay.

Very basic.

Like, that's just basic writing, journalism 101.

Who, what, when, where, how?

When was it?

Okay.

Narrate it through the phone, put it on the captions.

Uh, the date, the time,

where was where this is happening, not just like a general Los Angeles, like, no, these cross streets in this city, okay?

Because it's happening everywhere now.

And it's like somebody who, like myself, was documenting everything that's happening here in Los Angeles.

Sometimes I come across videos and it's just like ICE is here okay great where are you when was this

is it ICE you know first of all

try to get pictures of the agents you know get video of the agents and the vehicles especially because we can look up license plates

they're very tricky with their license plates so that's a good tip to find figure out if it's ICE or not they switch out license plates on their vehicles all the time so the license plate will not match the vehicle so if you if you see like a f-150 truck and you look up the license plate the license plate might say it's a Camry, right?

Or, you know, the license plates are all registered for some reason in Oklahoma.

You know, it'll be a California license plate, but the registered owner is in California.

I mean, in Oklahoma, you know, shit like that.

It just

doesn't match up.

So that's how you know it's a nice vehicle because they're unmarked.

But yeah,

but capture that.

Narrate if you see people being taken.

How many people are being taken?

How many agents were there?

If you can get close enough, but not too close, because they will rough you up and take your ass too.

Try to ask the people being taken, what's your name and what's your birthday?

Don't ask him country of origin.

I've seen people like doing that, especially at the immigration courts where they're like, what's your country of origin?

Where are you from?

Don't ask him that because they can use that to

justify taking somebody.

Being like, yeah, he's not from here.

Country of origin is American.

That's who they are right now.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the country they're from.

So yeah, get all of that information.

Make sure you document all of it.

And it's important.

The documentation process is really important.

If not for now, at least for the future, but a lot of this documentation helps a lot of people get out of court, especially if they're getting accused of being, of assaulting a federal agent, because federal agents are fucking pussies, all right?

If you could point a camera at them, all of a sudden it's violence against them, according to Pam Bondi, right?

You know, like,

so, so yeah, document, document, document all the details you can, all the context you can, and look for your local, um, look for your, if you're not a part of a rapid response group if you're just in an area look for the rapid response group in your area or also look for the local immigration organizations that do immigration help Chirla is a big national one too you can reach out to Chirla and send that to them they'll file it away you know I'm documenting everything as well too so maybe in the future some justice can be done and all of this can be used in some court cases um you've also covered so you've done some stories about um like incidents of community responders like actually foiling ice or getting them to like pack up and go away like what does that look like?

So

I was just talking about how like in this morning about how some areas of LA,

we know there's been like, there's, there's ice rates happening, but we we don't we don't know about it in some areas, right?

Like in the valley, they don't have any, like, they don't have as many rapid response groups.

I think there's only like one rapid response group in the valley.

And the valley is huge.

I'm talking about San Fernando Valley.

It's huge.

That like is the biggest part of LA and people forget that that's actually the city of LA.

But then you have areas in like Orange County where they've been hitting hard, like around Santa Ana and in Long Beach, you know, in Long Beach, they've been hitting Long Beach hard.

And those rapid response groups have figured it out.

They've gone together.

So this is what it looks like.

You have groups that are outside of Terminal Island.

They're called the Harbor Peace Patrols.

And they just sit out there and just as the vehicles leave, they just take pictures.

or the license plates in the vehicles and be like, these are the vehicles that are going out.

And then they share that to the other networks.

All the other networks are, all right, cool, they're coming now they look for those vehicles when people spot those vehicles they'll start following them they'll look they'll go around to like the regular places which will be a public park a government building or federal building in the area um they'll stage behind like uh supermarkets or anywhere that has like big parking lots it'll be the front of the parking lot or behind the stores where they have a lot of loading areas They look for them there.

And then when they spot them in the area, they'll start alerting the local like

rapid responders that are out out watching at home depots and at car washes now we have a network of people that have started you know looking out for car washes so then when they spot them in a certain area they'll alert people be like hey they're in the area like watch out so then people will move into like somewhere safe or they kind of get out of the area the laborers will get moved away and so by the time the ice agents actually show up nobody there's nobody there to be taken You know what I mean?

So it's really just being on top of them, watching where they are,

alerting the other community members and having this network be like, okay, they're here, they're over there, cool, hey, watch out, they're close to this area, hey, they're headed in that direction.

Okay, let's let this car washers know, let's let that Home Depot know, and then they let the community members know, and then they alert everybody, and that's how they do it.

You know, they don't impede, they don't get in the way, they're just eyes, just eyes and voices out there letting people know where they're at.

Well, like, I was supposed in addition to, I don't know, like tapping into some of these community responder groups, which sound like they have like a fairly impressive like network of, I i don't know counter surveillance um if there's anyone like in our audience who's listening who has like an undocumented family family member or is maybe even undocumented themselves like is there anything that they can do to practically avoid being picked up and like what preparations should someone have in place in anticipation should the worst case scenario happen um to avoid getting picked up i don't know bleach your hair blonde and

start working on

your accent start working on your accent dress white as hell i don't know what that means, but doctors,

tucked in, Chinos, golf shirts, you know, things like that.

Yeah, people start putting American flag shirts on or something.

I don't know.

It's real difficult because there's ICE has such an advantage over everybody.

You know that they're using facial recognition.

So they're literally like, well, go, they spend days scouting areas.

They'll go to like the home depots, like, and they'll send scouts undercovers and just kind of like with their phones, try to like get pictures, use their phones for facial recognition on whoever's there day laborers um

and then come back you know a day or two later you know and try to raid the place the dmvs have shared like the license plate uh data with the i mean if we can all get dmv data license plate data and check vehicles so can they and they're constantly getting all this data so they they're looking as they're driving around they're looking up license plates on people and if it's somebody that's in their database of somebody that might be undocumented they'll pull them over break the windows and pull them out of the cars um So it's really difficult.

I mean, you'd have to literally not have any license plates that

register to anybody that may be undocumented.

You probably have to ride around in somebody else's vehicle.

Avoid areas that ICE frequents.

Like in LA, ICE is at the Home Depots and the car washes.

That's where they're at.

Besides driving around and going to different places.

I would say

go to work.

I hope wherever you work at has a plan in place.

A lot of little local businesses and restaurants have developed their own little plans of what to do if I shows up.

It's almost kind of like

Anne Frank, you know, where like a lot of businesses are like, okay, we're going to hide this storage room.

We're going to put a shelf here.

And if I show up, go here, hide here, and then we'll hide the door or something, right?

Or,

you know, they're like, even like, I heard a witness that says one place bought a van, an old van, and just keep it in the back of the parking lot.

So, you know, if ICE shows up, the guys can all just run and hide in the van.

Just crazy shit like that.

But it's kind of a weird world that people have to have these

plans in place in case ICE does show up.

What we tell people is: look,

memorize at least one phone number.

If you're undocumented or you fear you're going to be taken by ICE, or you could be a target of ICE, have at least one

phone number memorized.

If you are in the system, right, you have an A number, which is the alien number.

That's what everybody gets, gets an alien number.

Remember that alien number too, and make sure somebody in your family or your friends or whoever you're going to call has that alien number so that they can track you.

I mean, ICE isn't doing a very good job of logging information as to where you are, but those are the very least things you can do.

So like, obviously, like I said, you've been covering this for a long time in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles has been sort of the forefront of this national siege that's going on right now.

But like many other American cities are also in the crosshairs.

You mentioned they just launched a big operation in Chicago.

Trump has been talking about some sort of military occupation of Portland.

Obviously here in New York, we're dealing with the same shit.

What can other cities?

Oh, yeah.

What can other cities?

and communities in America learn from like what you've seen and documented in Los Angeles?

Like what can LA teach the rest of the country about how to deal with ICE and just like,

you know, where this is all going, yeah, I think the most effective thing I've seen is the rapid response groups.

And I've talked with politicians, I've talked with community members.

It really comes down to people, it comes down to

U.S.

citizens protecting their neighbors, people in the communities, um, looking out for themselves.

It doesn't have to be a big organized operation, and even some of like the rapid response networks that we have here in Los Angeles aren't big operations.

We're talking about like two or three people, you know, two or three people, and then they'll have a group chat with like other community members.

And then when people can come out when they're not working, they'll come out.

It doesn't take a lot of people to start this, but you always want to do these things in numbers, you know?

And it just starts with your neighborhood.

And nobody knows your neighborhood best, right?

In your neighborhood, I'm sure you, you go down the street, you go get a cup of coffee or a sandwich, right?

And you know the cashiers, right?

Like, you know who they are, right?

Like you have these little, they might not be personal relationships, but you know, their neighborhood.

I mean, you see them like every other day, you know, that's like that's that's a relationship right there.

Exactly.

So, so nobody knows your neighborhood best than you.

If you don't have a rapid response network, I mean, literally, just you can start one on your own by just talking to your neighbors, talking to your local businesses, setting up a phone number and being like, Look, let's just start up a network, a big group chat.

I'm in, I'm in several group chats with different rapid response neighborhood watches.

Like,

there's at least three of them that I'm in, and each one of them has like six to 800 people.

So, when that chat starts going off, it's like, oh, we just saw ice in this area.

Can somebody go, oh, my cousin just told me that they just saw ice over there.

Can somebody go verify?

And then people go and verify and let the Home Depots know.

Somebody also follow them around.

Be like, okay, they're over here.

They're over there.

And that's a great way to just kind of like watch out for your own neighborhood.

I would say just start at the basics.

Start with your own block.

Start with your own little neighborhood.

And that's all it really takes.

Well, I mean, like, yeah, I mean, you've talked about like some very impressive work being done by just individual people in in the community who have put together very quickly these very impressive, like I said, sort of networks of counter surveillance and action.

But like, how would you rate the response of just the politicians elected to represent the people of Los Angeles, from the mayor to the city council to the governor of California?

Like, have they just left people more or less naked against this assault on their civil liberties?

It's tough, man.

It's really tough to, it's easy to be critical of your leaders because you expect a lot more from your leaders, you know.

Um, it's also tough to know what to demand and what to expect of them, especially when a lot of people don't understand civics, right?

Just basic civics as to what powers a mayor does have.

Like in Los Angeles, the mayor's doesn't really have a weak mayoralty system, yes.

Yeah, it doesn't really have like in LA, there's a police commission, so the mayor can't exactly direct the police to do something.

She has to go through a commission, and the people have to go through the commission and convince the commission to to get the captain of the LAPD to do something the chief of the lapd to do something right um versus like in new york the mayor has direct control of the nypd right the mayor says nypd do this nypd does that right

but in in california it's very different it's uh even our system of government here is uh what do they call it the people's uh i forgot the the people democratic people government or something like that um where it's different like

so

i felt like a lot of these politicians um our political leaders, feel like their hands are tied.

There's only so much they can do before they start themselves doing what Trump is doing is just ignoring their own laws, ignoring the limitations on their own power set on by their own local governments, before they start crossing those lines.

So it's like there's really not much they can do without crossing their own legal

framework.

So, and they've told me themselves, like, look, bro, like the only things that

we can do is this.

We're limited.

It really comes down to the people.

And that's why you'll hear politicians in California be like, get out there and protest, get out there and do that.

Get out there and do this.

But then they do that.

And then what happens?

LAPD comes and shuts the party down, harasses protesters, defends ICE.

So it's like,

how can our local leaders stop LAPD?

Well, they don't have power over LAPD.

LAPD has their own power.

They have the commission.

They have to commit to convention to do something.

And even then,

are they going to follow it?

I mean,

Chief McDonald said that he was going to implement like, you know, verifying ICE agents around the city.

He was going to have his LAPD

go around and

ask people that are masks and unmarked cars to identify themselves as actual federal agents.

This is before even the new Novigilantes Act got passed in California.

He didn't do it.

He just said he was going to do it, but we never did.

Not one single case, not one reported single case of them doing that.

So we're stuck here between politicians that have limited power, especially against the federal government.

You know,

there's this thing called the Supremacy Clause, which, you know, I'm not sure if you know about that, but, you know, where the federal government literally has more power than the state.

So how do they challenge that as a state or as a city?

To what extent does the LAPD or LA County Sheriff's Department, like, how hand in glove do they work with ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies?

Like, I mean, like you mentioned, like, it doesn't seem like it seems like there are some things proposed to maybe, I don't know, like gum up the works or slow them down, but like that doesn't seem to be happening.

Do you get the impression that LAPD is more or less completely happy to acquiesce to the presence of ICE in their cities and what they're doing to just the civilians in Los Angeles, that the LAPD, at least theoretically, is there to protect and serve?

You know, I can't speak for the whole department, but I'll tell you what I've seen.

I've seen LAPD fist bumping ICE agents, you know, pulling over and having chats with them, shaking hands, throwing peace signs.

You know, I've seen at sheriff's office,

you know, where ICE shows up to a sheriff's office and, you know, the sheriff's being like, hey, happy to have you here.

Happy to see you here.

They like law enforcement, all of them, they all see themselves as birds of a feather,

from what I've seen, in my opinion.

So,

yeah,

they don't want to get in the way of ICE.

And when they have been called out to areas where ICE activity has been heavy and a lot of people show up to protest, whether it be in downtown LA when they took a couple U.S.

citizen girls

or when they're protesting at the MDC.

LAPD is happy to come and provide protection for ICE agents and to make sure that ICE agents aren't interfered with by local citizens.

I guess just like to take it back to LA Taco, and I guess like the original remit of your blog and organization, like covering food culture in LA, like how has like how has this affected both the economy and the culture of food in Los Angeles?

It's devastated it.

It's absolutely devastating.

Every business out there, look, and it's not just ice.

You have to remember, we just went through these devastating wildfires that wiped out two whole neighborhoods, like not small neighborhoods, huge neighborhoods, Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

That just happened this year, earlier this year.

And then before that,

we're still trying to figure out.

Hollywood

was the main source of income for a lot of businesses.

People think it's just like, it's just actors and writers that were affected.

No, Hollywood fed a lot of LA through

catering events, through like side gigs, you know, props, lighting and grip, people building stages, people that maintain the lots, all the side jobs.

I mean, a huge part of LA's economy was based on Hollywood here and all the extra things that happened on the side.

So yeah, you take into account the economy.

And then before that, we had the pandemic, of course.

Everybody suffers from the pandemic.

But we had pandemic.

We have Hollywood strike that we still haven't recovered from.

Hollywood has left.

They're in Atlanta.

They're in Australia.

They're in Scotland and Ireland.

They're filming in other parts, but LA.

Then you had the fires, and now you have ICE.

And we are in a deficit now

as a city.

Most of our money now is going out to pay out lawsuits against the LEPD for brutalizing people at protests or not protests.

Like we are in a real shitbind here.

Oh, well, I mean, I wish I had

a less grim way to end this episode.

Memo to me.

I'll tell you this much, though.

I'll tell you this much.

As much of a shipbuilding we're in right now, L.A.

is strong and L.A.

is resilient.

And L.A.

will get through this shit.

And just as we have through every single crisis in the past, we're going to get through this.

And I believe in my Angelinos.

And if anything, All of this is bringing us closer together as a community, bringing ties together, the way people are organizing and realizing that it really is going to be up to them to pull the city together and get through all of this.

Absolutely.

I mean, LA is not my home.

Basically, half of our show lives in LA.

I'm in LA a lot.

It's a wonderful city.

It's one of my favorite places in the world.

It's one of the most unique American cities.

And

I believe you when you say LA is going to get through this.

Yeah, yeah, it will.

All right.

Memo Torres, I really want to thank you for your time and all the work you've done.

If any of our listeners would like to support LA Taco or support any of these local like rapid response teams that you've talked about, like what would you advise them to do?

Yeah, at LA Taco, we could always use the help.

Go to any of our legal bios on any of our social media apps and our pages.

You can drop a donation or you can become a member, you know, and if you become a member, you get cool as merch.

We got the coolest merch out of anybody because we hire nothing but local artists to do the merch, LA people.

So yeah, you can support those two ways or you can just buy the merch, you know, if you don't

want to donate or be a member, get something out of it, get some of the merch.

And the rapid response groups, we're always shouting them out.

I'm always shouting them out in my daily memo and showing the videos as who's out there.

And if you need resources and want to figure out who these rapid response groups are, go to lataco.com slash ice.

We have a whole page full of resources where you can volunteer.

If you need lawyers, if you're a victim of these raids, where you can get resources.

different immigration organizations you can reach out to.

So yeah, we have it all there.

We're here and we're ready for LA.

Once again, Memo Torres of LA Taco, really thank you.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Hey, thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate the show, too.

Great job, guys.

Thanks, man.