Our region has been under attack. Immigrant families and US Citizens in his district, his direct constituents, have been shot at by supposed federal agents. Others have been chased into medical clinics, harassed, and detained in broad daylight. These aren’t distant headlines, these are the streets, homes, and workplaces of the very people who elected Congressman Pete Aguilar to represent them.

When violence strikes our communities – we need leadership. We need a congressman who will use his power to demand accountability from federal agencies that act with impunity. We need a leader who will use his platform to say clearly: our communities should not be hunted, shot at, or harassed in the United States of America.

At the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, we don’t have the luxury of silence or delay. Every day, we are on the frontlines, informing people of their rights, running our immigrant defense hotline, providing legal support, and hosting community workshops. We are doing our part to protect our neighbors. But we need our representatives, especially one with Pete Aguilar’s influence, to do theirs.

Congressman Aguilar has the opportunity right now to use his position to set an agenda that will protect immigrant communities, demand accountability for federal agents who operate in our region, and to ensure transparency and justice for all. While Congressman Aguilar’s recent remarks at the Chicago Press conference were significant, his constituency now requires his commitment to three crucial actions:

Cease unconstitutional arrests and the use of force against all civilians.
Reverse the appropriations of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that contribute to raids, deportations, and family separations.

Terminate all funding for private prison companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic.

For too long, immigrant communities have been told to be patient, to be grateful, to stay quiet. But silence has never saved us. What we need now are leaders who will fight for safety and dignity, not just when it’s politically convenient, but when it truly matters.

Congressman Aguilar, this is your moment.

Will you step up?

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What the Ruling Means

The Court’s decision reverses earlier restrictions put in place by lower courts. Under the ruling, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents will have broader authority to carry out arrests without warrants, provided they claim “reasonable suspicion” of immigration violations.

Supporters of the practice, including some law enforcement officials and border security advocates, argue that roving patrols are necessary to strengthen border enforcement and reduce the presence of unauthorized immigrants who they say strain public resources.

Concerns from Advocates

Immigrant rights groups across the Inland Empire and Southern California immediately condemned the ruling, warning that it will lead to racial profiling, family separations, and a climate of fear in immigrant-heavy communities like Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“This ruling undermines trust between residents and law enforcement, making families more afraid to seek help, report crimes, or even access health and education services,” said representatives from the Inland Region Housing Justice Coalition in a statement.

Local groups including the ACLU of Southern California, Inland Congregations United for Change (ICUC), and Time for Change Foundation have pledged to mobilize, offering “Know Your Rights” workshops and legal assistance for immigrant families who may be targeted by increased patrols.

Impact on the Inland Empire

The Inland Empire has one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in California, with tens of thousands of residents in mixed-status households. Advocacy leaders warn that roving arrests will disproportionately affect Latino and Indigenous communities, many of whom already experience economic and housing insecurity.

“The chilling effect of this ruling is enormous,” said a San Bernardino-based immigrant advocate. “When people fear arrest at any moment, they avoid interacting with police, schools, and hospitals. That makes everyone less safe.”

A History of Controversy

Roving patrols have long been controversial in Southern California. Critics point to past cases where citizens and legal residents were detained and questioned based solely on their appearance or language. In the Inland Empire, several lawsuits were filed in the 1990s and 2000s challenging roving stops on major highways and near agricultural areas.

Civil rights organizations say the Supreme Court’s decision could revive those same abuses. “We fought this battle before, and here we are again,” said a Riverside attorney who has represented families in immigration cases.

Local Response

Some Inland Empire city officials expressed concern that the ruling could strain relationships between local law enforcement and residents. While local police departments are not required to assist in federal immigration enforcement, past collaborations between county jails and federal agencies have been criticized by immigrant advocates.

Community leaders are urging city councils and county supervisors to adopt “sanctuary-style” policies that limit cooperation with roving immigration arrests. They argue that such protections would help maintain community trust and safety.

What Happens Next

Immigrant rights groups in the region are planning a series of community meetings in coming weeks to explain the ruling’s implications, provide legal resources, and educate residents on their constitutional rights if stopped by federal agents.

“This decision may have passed, but our communities are united in demanding dignity, compassion, and justice,” said one Inland advocacy leader.

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On June 20 federal agents picked up a longtime parishioner of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Montclair on church property, according to the National Catholic Reporter. In a separate incident that day, agents chased several men onto the church parking lot of St. Adelaide parish in Highland. 

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin disputed what she said were news reports that agents had entered the church hall. 

“The accusation that ICE entered a church to make an arrest are FALSE,” she stated in an email to CalMatters.  “ICE conducted a traffic stop on an illegal alien on June 20 in the general proximity of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Montclair, California. The illegal alien chose to pull into the church parking lot. Officers then safely made the arrest.”

For almost a decade and a half, U.S. immigration officers steered clear of churches, complying with a directive by former President Barack Obama that limited immigration enforcement at sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Former President Joe Biden maintained those guidelines to deter immigration action in areas that provide essential services.

On his inauguration day Jan. 20, President Donald Trump revoked that protection, stating that the Biden-era restrictions “thwart law enforcement in or near so-called ‘sensitive’ areas.” 

Catholic leaders have denounced ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics and protested that many detained immigrants are denied the right to plead their cases.

“Authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God,” wrote Bishop Alberto Rojas, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, in a letter to parishioners June 23.

John Andrews, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, said the man detained at Our Lady of Lourdes is a longtime parishioner whose family is involved in the ministry. 

“There was no one present at Our Lady of Lourdes when he was taken into custody,” Andrews told CalMatters in an email. “He was doing some landscaping work there. He is in custody so there is no one who can really speak to what transpired in that apprehension.”

The men arrested at St. Adelaide Church didn’t appear to have a connection to the parish, Andrews said: “Neither the parish nor the diocese has any information about them, their whereabouts or whether or not they were arrested.”

Rojas stated in his letter that church leaders respect law enforcement efforts to keep communities safe from violent criminals, but raiding homes, workplaces and churches creates fear and confusion: “It is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — which guides us in all that we do.”

He asked elected leaders to “reconsider and cease these tactics immediately, in favor of an approach that respects human rights and human dignity and builds toward a more lasting, comprehensive reform of our immigration system.”

The Catholic Church has been increasingly vocal on the plight of immigrants and refugees in recent years. The late Pope Francis traveled to Sicily to meet with immigrants from Libya on his first pastoral visit outside Rome and later rescued 12 Syrians from a refugee camp in Greece. As Trump took office in January, Pope Francis denounced his mass deportation plans as “a disgrace.”

On June 20, the day of the Inland Empire church arrests, also World Refugee Day, Michael Pham, the newly appointed bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, joined a group of clergy to witness immigration proceedings at the federal building in San Diego. 

Pham came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam in 1981. He told reporters that he prayed for “wisdom and insight to help our poor brothers … through the crises in their lives.”

The raids also are beginning to draw criticism from some California Republican lawmakers. Six signed a June 27 letter calling for more moderate immigration action, arguing that raids are hurting communities and businesses.

The lawmakers — including state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, a Redlands Republican — endorsed the letter by Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Santa Clarita Republican, asking Trump to “focus deportations on criminals” and modernize immigration policies.

While they support immigration enforcement against violent criminals, they said, immigrants without criminal records are being swept up in raids, “creating widespread fear.”

ICE workplace raids at farms, construction sites, restaurants and hotels, “are harming the communities we represent and the businesses that employ our constituents,” the letter states.

The lawmakers are asking for comprehensive immigration reform, expansion of work visas and a path to legal status for non-criminal immigrants.

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In a statement posted to X, the Dodgers said ICE agents came to the stadium Thursday morning and “requested permission to access the parking lots.”

“They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization,” according to the statement.

“This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight’s game will be played as scheduled.
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) June” class=”redactor-linkify-object”>https://twitter.com/Dodgers/st… 19, 2025“

It’s unclear why ICE agents stopped by the stadium in Los Angeles.

The news comes after several days of immigration raids in southern California. It also comes at a time when the Dodgers are expected to break their silence on the ongoing raids.

Video shared by KTLA 5 shows federal agents leaving the stadium Thursday. The TV station reported they were at the stadium for several hours but were told they could not stay on the property.

The move by the Dodgers comes on the same day the team is expected to announce a new initiative meant to assist immigrant communities impacted by the ICE raids and federal crackdown, according to the LA Times.

Dodgers player Kike Hernández, a native of Puerto Rico, voiced his concern over the raids in an Instagram post this past week.

“I am saddened and infuriated by what’s happening in our country and our city. Los Angeles and Dodger fans have welcomed me, supported me and shown me nothing but kindness and love,” he wrote in the post. “This is my second home. And I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and human rights.”

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With the Trump administration promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, more than 200 people marched through downtown Ontario on Saturday morning in support of the Inland Empire’s immigrant community.

The energetic crowd waved American and Mexican flags, banged drums and unleashed noisemakers as they paraded along the sidewalks. They chanted, “We are not leaving,” and the United Farm Workers’ motto, “Sí, se puede.” Demonstrators erupted into cheers when vehicles along Euclid Avenue honked in support.

The protest — promoted on social media as a “mass mobilization against mass deportation” — was led by the San Bernardino-based Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, which is comprised of more than 35 organizations serving the immigrant community in the Inland Empire.

The region is home to a sizable immigrant population. According to a 2018 report from UC Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and the California Immigrant Policy Center, one in five Inland Empire residents was an immigrant, with nearly 1 million immigrants across Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

San Bernardino County also is home to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, one of California’s largest immigration detention centers, which is managed by the private prison corporation GEO Group. A coalition of immigrant rights groups has advocated for the facility’s closure for years, citing health, safety and human rights concerns.

Addressing the crowd before beginning the march, Javier Hernandez, executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, framed the administration’s rhetoric as an attempt to sow fear and panic among the immigrant community; a ploy to make people cower in the shadows or self-deport.

“The way we fight back is by coming out to the streets,” Hernandez said. “We’re leaving fear behind and pushing forward with our fight for immigrant rights.”

“Sin papeles, sin miedo,” he cried out, leading attendees in a boisterous chant. “Undocumented, unafraid.”

Confronting that fear — and speaking out for those feeling attacked and afraid to protest — was on the minds of many protesters.

Andy Garibay came to the country as a baby and now has work authorization and deportation protection through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. A mother of two, she lives in Rialto and works in payroll administration.

She said the Trump administration’s threats have her and her family on edge. Her family group chat seems to be constantly pinging with possible sightings of immigration officials near the warehouses where many relatives work, she said.

“Why should it be like this?” said Garibay, who held signs reading, “One Love,” and had a Mexican flag wrapped around her hair.

Deanna Pennino, of Ontario, is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant. He taught her and her siblings to work hard and be proud Americans, while never forgetting their roots, she said.

Pennino, a respiratory therapist at a local hospital, said several colleagues have stopped coming to work, afraid immigration authorities could show up at any moment. Trump on his first day in office rescinded a Biden-era policy that protected certain sensitive locations, including churches, schools and hospitals, from immigration enforcement.

Pennino also fought against Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that sought to bar immigrants lacking documentation from receiving any public benefits, including healthcare, education and social services. That experience, she said, proved to her that “we can fight and make a difference.”

During Saturday’s march, she carried a sign reading “Deport Elon,” a reference to Elon Musk, a South African immigrant who is leading a controversial effort to weed out alleged fraud, waste and abuse from the federal government.

Trump initially focused his rhetoric on tracking down immigrants lacking authorization and who have been accused of violent crimes. His administration now says it considers all immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization to be criminals, because they have violated immigration laws.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already conducted well-publicized operations in Chicago and New York, among other places. The pledge of more enforcement actions has rattled immigrant communities throughout California and across the country and spurred a groundswell of activism.

Last weekend, rumors that the federal government was planning a massive immigration enforcement sweep in Los Angeles County put many people on high alert. At that time, ICE officials did not say whether any special operations had taken place and did not release daily arrest figures. However, it appeared any such operation had not been anywhere near as widespread as many had predicted.

In early January, at the tail end of the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents conducted a multi-day raid in rural parts of Kern County, resulting in the detention and deportation of scores of laborers lacking documentation.

This week, ACLU attorneys representing the United Farm Workers and five Kern County residents sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials, alleging the raid amounted to a “fishing expedition” that indiscriminately targeted people of color who appeared to be farmworkers or day laborers.

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By Miriam Jordan and Jazmine Ulloa

It was just days into his first term when President Trump issued an order banning the entry of people from several predominantly Muslim countries. An SOS went out to immigration lawyers across New York to head to Kennedy Airport, where arriving passengers were already being detained.

By noon, hundreds of lawyers were interviewing relatives and friends of travelers who were being held, challenging their detention and drafting petitions for their release.

The mobilization that morning in 2017 spawned a network of hundreds of lawyers who are now ready to fight the crackdown on immigrants that Mr. Trump promised to carry out in a second term in office.

After his decisive victory over Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump is expected to name key cabinet choices in the coming days and weeks, including his nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The Supreme Court upheld a version of the ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim countries, which the Biden administration eliminated in 2021. But earlier this fall, Mr. Trump said he would “bring back the travel ban.”

During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to undertake the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, though he skirted questions about whether the sweeps would target undocumented immigrants who had long lived in the country, people who had more recently crossed at the southern border or both. About 11 million undocumented people resided in the United States as of 2022, according to the Pew Research Center, with nearly two-thirds having been in the country for at least a decade.

While deporting millions of people would be all but impossible with current enforcement resources, Mr. Trump has said he would consider stationing American troops at the border with Mexico and working with governors to deploy the National Guard into the interior of the country.

In his victory speech early on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that voters had handed him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to pursue his agenda.

Indeed, the immigrant advocacy community will face a very different political landscape when Mr. Trump returns to the White House in January. Voter sentiment has shifted markedly, with far more Americans expressing concerns about immigration and a willingness to support tougher policies.

Unlike in 2016, when he won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote, Mr. Trump won both in this election, the first Republican to prevail in the national vote in two decades, after campaigning on harsh immigration policies. And he will enter office with a Supreme Court that counts three of his first-term nominees among the nine justices.

“We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country and we’ve made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that,” he said on Wednesday.

Lawyers for immigrants said they have been preparing for months for the possibility of large-scale workplace raids, roundups in immigrant enclaves, new restrictions on asylum, the expansion of detention and the termination of programs temporarily shielding some people from deportation.

“The Trump team might think they are ready,” said Camille Mackler, chief executive of Immigration Arc, who sent an SOS email that brought hundreds of lawyers to Kennedy Airport that day in 2017. “But so are we.”

Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which sued the government over the Muslim ban, said that winning the popular vote was not a license to ignore the law. “He can’t act outside the bounds of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” she said.

Having battled one Trump administration, she and her allies are ready for a second, Ms. Heller said. “We literally have a blueprint of what they are planning to do, and so we had months and months to figure out how to protect people,” she said.

“Trump has told us what to expect — hate and persecution and concentration camps,” she said, referring to his team’s plans to use military funds to build “vast holding facilities.” “None of us have any illusions about what we are up against this time.”

The new president’s immigration agenda will have battle-tested allies in some of the country’s state capitals. A coalition of Republican attorneys general, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, have systematically challenged the Biden administration on key immigration policies.

The results have been mixed, with some challenges temporarily blocking President Biden’s efforts but others being turned back by the courts. The challenges have kept the fight over immigration in the news and on voters’ minds, and given the Biden administration even more to worry about.

While the states that have been mounting those legal fights are not likely to be challenging the incoming Trump administration, they could play a crucial role in carrying out some of the expected federal efforts on immigration, said Lenni Benson, a professor of immigration law at New York Law School.

After extensive civil rights litigation, Arizona’s attorney general opined in 2016 that sheriffs could enforce “a show-me-your-papers law,” as long as they asked for documents from every person arrested.

Mr. Trump, who made immigration his calling card again this campaign, is expected to issue a spate of executive orders on his first day in office, such as to seal the border and arrest undocumented immigrants, including ones in the interior of the country.

Mr. Trump’s immigration advisers have said that, while criminals would be prioritized in making arrests, no one unlawfully in the country would be spared, a shift from Mr. Biden and other presidents, who focused resources on targeting serious criminals.

Lawsuits are expected to pile up.

“We have spent the last nine months planning for this, and are prepared to go to court as often as necessary, just like the first time,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who argued many immigration cases, including one to halt the policy of separating migrant families at the border.

The A.C.L.U. filed many legal challenges against Trump policies during his first administration. It defeated his attempt to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census at the Supreme Court and won a settlement for the families split up at the border. In a full-page ad published in The Times’s print paper on Friday, the organization wrote an open letter to Mr. Trump, saying it planned to defend people’s rights “in the courts, at state legislatures and in the streets.”

Tom Homan, a senior immigration official in the last Trump administration who is expected to return to government, said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last month that large-scale worksite raids would resume. Such operations, which can lead to the arrest of hundreds of unauthorized workers, are costly and complex, and have not been conducted under Mr. Biden.

Bruna Bouhid-Sollod, senior political director for United We Dream Action, a national group led by youngimmigrant activists, said the organization has been crafting plans for a second Trump presidency.

Those strategies include “know-your-rights” training, letter writing campaigns to encourage elected officials and public art and vigils to show support for undocumented immigrants.

One of the biggest concerns is the fate of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program known as DACA, which has shielded from deportation and granted work authorization to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Ms. Bouhid-Sollod said she was among many DACA recipients who joined United We Dream after Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, out of fear that Mr. Trump would kill the program. He tried to, but the Supreme Court kept the program in place in a 5-4 ruling, saying the Trump administration hadn’t followed proper procedures for ending it.

Since then, Texas and several other states have sued to end DACA, and a federal court ruling in their favor is under review by an appeals court that has several Trump-nominated judges and has embraced some of the most aggressive conservative arguments in American law.

And of course, the incoming Trump administration itself could try again to end DACA.

“We are cleareyed about the challenges ahead,” Ms. Bouhid-Sollod said. “That is the big difference between 2016 and 2024.”

Benjamin Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the organization has long been analyzing Mr. Trump’s immigration promises, preparing litigation to challenge policies they believe would violate their clients’ rights to have their cases heard and fairly processed under the law.

In his campaign, Mr. Trump spoke of using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out mass deportations, a law under which people of Japanese descent were held in internment camps during World War II.

Mr. Trump also has said the deportations would be modeled after those under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose administration used sweeps, raids and blunt forms of racial profiling in the 1950s to round up and expel mostly Mexican and Mexican American laborers.

“He has threatened to use powers — some that haven’t been used in a century, since World War II — to arrest, detain and imprison people without any judicial review,” Mr. Johnson said, referring to Mr. Trump. “We are going to have to find ways to meet the moment.”

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