Nearly 30 people, most of them women, gathered on a sunny Tuesday afternoon outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, where immigration court and federal immigration services operate. Standing in a circle at the foot of the building’s steps, they prayed, sang and remembered immigrants detained by federal agents.
They call themselves the Godmothers of the Disappeared.
The interfaith group has continued meeting long after the large demonstrations around downtown Los Angeles faded from daily view. Its members say their weekly vigil is meant to honor those taken into immigration custody, support their families and offer a quieter form of public witness amid the continuing fallout from federal immigration enforcement across Southern California.
Katharine Guerrero, one of the participants, told the group that Tongva Chicana activist Gloria Arellanes had taught her the meaning of standing in a circle — a symbol, she said, of unity rather than division. She also noted the layered history surrounding the civic center area, including its significance to the Tongva people, unmarked Indigenous graves near a nearby church, the former site of a slavery auction and the location across the freeway where 18 Chinese men and boys were lynched in 1871.
For the Godmothers, the federal building has become another site tied to state power and racial injustice, this time through the detention and deportation of immigrants.
The group describes its work as a companion to rapid-response networks, legal aid efforts and street protests organized in immigrant communities. Its members advocate for detainees to be released or returned, oppose federal tactics they say divide communities and call on immigration officers, law enforcement and military personnel to reconsider their roles.
When large protests erupted around the federal building last June, demonstrators filled nearby streets to oppose immigration arrests, raids and the deployment of military forces. Guerrero was there as a volunteer medical aide, assisting people injured by rubber bullets.
As confrontations escalated among sheriff’s deputies, police, federal agents and protesters, Guerrero said the Godmothers sought to create a different kind of space — one centered on prayer, conversation and presence.
“With godmothers, there’s a disarmament that allows for conversation,” Guerrero said. “We forget we belong to one another and in those moments, you get the opportunity to remember.”
Guerrero said she saw the vigil affect some National Guard members and military personnel stationed near federal property last summer, describing small moments of visible attention during public prayers.
“We are called to be in solidarity, even if that means the person suited up,” she said. “That’s the hard work.”
The group’s name is inspired by Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the women who gathered in Buenos Aires during the country’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s to demand answers about children and relatives who had been disappeared by security forces.
The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra said the Argentine mothers not only prayed for their missing children, but also for the soldiers serving the regime.
“They also gave flowers to the soldiers and they won,” Salvatierra said. “They changed the regime and were able to liberate their sons and daughters from prison.”
In Los Angeles, the Godmothers have paired their vigils with direct assistance. Members say they have raised about $22,000 to help more than 100 families affected by immigration detention, including families who lost primary wage earners. Some of the money has gone toward bail. Members said they have encountered mothers with children outside detention facilities, crying and unsure how they could afford legal help.
During the weekly vigil, participants walk together in song to two entrances of the federal complex where detainees are held. At one stop, near a driveway leading to an underground loading dock, Rosa Manriquez read a short biography of Rutilio Grande, the Salvadoran priest whose killing helped move Archbishop Oscar Romero to speak out against state repression. Both men were later killed by a death squad.
Manriquez then led a call-and-response prayer and a litany naming figures such as Emma Goldman, James Baldwin and Octavia Butler — people the group holds up as advocates, writers and organizers who pushed for a more just society.
Susan Garcia also spoke about a recent visit to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, the private detention facility in the Mojave Desert where many immigrants detained in Southern California are sent.
The group then continued toward a rear loading dock near the Metropolitan Detention Center, singing the Black spiritual “Down by the Riverside.” Richard Barragan offered a prayer through a microphone connected to a small rolling speaker, intended to be heard by detainees and federal personnel alike.
The Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble led the final song, “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed on Freedom).” Afterward, participants approached the black chain-link fence installed last summer and placed white daisies near the entrance.
Manriquez said the flowers are meant for detainees to see, but also as an offering to the federal agents and military members working there.
“They don’t have to do this,” she said.
For the Godmothers of the Disappeared, the ritual is both remembrance and a call to action. While the urgent work of protecting immigrant communities continues, members say the vigils are also meant to help Southern Californians imagine what comes after the raids, detentions and separations — and to begin the difficult work of building something more just.
Original source: CalMatters
