A federal grand jury on Friday indicted Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, who has dual citizenship in El Salvador and Mexico, on two counts of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and one count of damaging government property.

Patrick Kolasinski, one of his lawyers, has said Mendoza panicked and tried to flee when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents blocked his car and that he did not intend to run over anyone. Kolasinski also disputed claims by officials that his client was a suspected gang member wanted in El Salvador for questioning in relation to a murder.

Salvadoran court documents show he was acquitted of murder in El Salvador and Mendoza has denied ever being in a gang, his lawyer has said. He came to the U.S. in 2019 and has no criminal record, Kolasinski has said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday that Mendoza has requested a jury trial. A status conference was set for July 27.

Mendoza is recovering after several surgeries for multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the jaw, his attorney said.

The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE officers fired defensive shots at Mendoza after he tried to drive into them. DHS said the officers were conducting an enforcement stop targeting Mendoza, 36, on April 7 in Patterson, a city about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco.

It was part of a series of shootings that have occurred during the Trump administration’s aggressive push to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally. It is also among those where questions have been raised to federal officials about the circumstances since in some shootings, video evidence contradicted immigration officials’ initial accounts.

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Attorney Patrick Kolasinski said federal prosecutors have told him that Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez is not under arrest, raising questions about why he was the target of an enforcement action. No one under that name from El Salvador is in ICE detention, according to the agency’s online detainee locator. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not responded to inquiries about Kolasinki’s statements.

Tuesday’s encounter was among a string of shootings during the Trump administration’s aggressive push to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally, about which questions have been raised with federal immigration officials.

DHS has said ICE agents fired defensive shots at Mendoza when he tried to drive into them after he was pulled over on Tuesday. Officials said they were conducting an enforcement stop targeting Mendoza, 36, in Patterson, a city about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. They described him as a suspected gang member wanted in El Salvador for questioning in connection to a murder.

Kolasinski told reporters that Mendoza was having difficulty speaking because he was shot in the jaw, but that he said he was never a member of a gang. Kolasinski said previously that his client has been stopped for minor traffic infractions but has no criminal record in the U.S. and is not the subject of an arrest warrant in El Salvador, where he was acquitted of murder.

Kolasinski said that the FBI was leading the investigation of the shooting and that ICE was not currently involved in Mendoza’s case. The Department of Justice referred inquiries to the FBI, which said it couldn’t comment on an active investigation.

Kolasinski said that agents fired on Mendoza while the car was stopped and he drove away to flee the gunfire. “He fled in a panic because he was being fired on,” Kolasinski said. “He was not trying to hurt anyone … he was just scared he was going to die.”

According to a Oct. 25, 2019 court document from a judge in El Salvador, Mendoza, who was 29 at the time, was acquitted after being accused of murder and ordered immediately released. The document lists 10 others who were convicted of various crimes from aggravated robbery to murder, and mentions at least one of them was a member of the 18th Street Gang. But there is no mention of Mendoza belonging to a gang or being accused of carrying out gang activity in the document.

In the California ICE shooting, dashcam footage obtained by KCRA-TV shows three officers standing around a vehicle stopped on the side of a road. One of the officers appears to be touching the driver-side window when the car begins to back up and turn, hitting a vehicle behind it. At least two of the agents have weapons drawn, pointing at the car. The driver then pulls forward toward where the men are standing and turns sharply, driving over the roadway median.

The video has no sound and it’s unclear when the shots were fired or if words were said.

Mendoza’s fiancée was able to speak with him Wednesday before a surgery and again Thursday morning, Kolasinski said.

Kolasinski said Mendoza, a dual citizen of El Salvador and Mexico, came to the U.S. in 2019 but he said he did not know his legal status nor how he arrived to the country.

The attorney said his client works as a laborer to repair fire damage. He has a 2-year-old daughter and is engaged to a U.S. citizen, he said.

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More on Ol’ Blue Eyes in a bit.

For now let me tell you about one victim of President Trump’s mountain of lies whose brush with the administration defined our 2025.

On June 7, Brayan Ramos-Brito drove east on Alondra Boulevard from Compton toward a Chevron in Paramount to buy some snacks. It was his day off. It also was the weekend when Trump unleashed his deportation Leviathan on Southern California in a campaign that hasn’t stopped.

Ramos-Brito, a cook, had no idea that was going on as traffic froze on Alondra in front of a Home Depot. A “stay-at-home type of guy,” he didn’t even vote in the 2024 election because “politics isn’t my thing.”

But as the slender 30-year-old sat in his car, he saw federal immigration agents who had gathered across the street from the Home Depot fire flash-bang grenades at protesters who were screaming at them to leave. That’s when the moment “got to me.”

Ramos-Britos, a U.S citizen, got out of his car to yell at la migra, accusing those who looked Latino of being a “disgrace.” He said one of them shoved him into a scrum of protesters. After that, “all I remember were knees and kicks” by agents before they dragged him on the pavement and into the back of a van.

For hours Ramos-Brito and others stayed zip-tied inside as “craziness” erupted outside. Hundreds more residents arrived, as did L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. Smoke from blazes set by the former and tear gas canisters tossed by the latter seeped inside the van — “we kept telling agents we couldn’t breath, but they just ignored us.”

Photos and footage from the Paramount protest went viral and sparked an even bigger rally the following day near downtown L.A. that devolved into torched Waymo cars and concrete blocks hurled at California Highway Patrol vehicles. Soon, Trump called up the National Guard and Marines to occupy the City of Angels under the pretense that anarchy now ruled here — even though protests were confined to pockets of the metropolis. Siccing the National Guard on cities is something Trump has since tried to replicate across the country in any place that has dared to push back against immigration sweeps.

Ramos-Brito spent two weeks in a detention facility in Santa Ana stuffed in a cell with undocumented immigrants facing deportation. He faced federal felony charges of assaulting a federal agent and was accused of being one of the Paramount protest’s ringleaders as well.

Prosecutors tried to scare him into pleading guilty with threats of years in prison. Despite having no money to hire a lawyer, he refused: “I wasn’t going to take the blame for something I didn’t do.”

Federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega represented Ramos-Brito during a two-day September trial. Ortega screened video footage to the jury that proved his client’s version of what happened and easily caught federal agents contradicting each other and their own field reports.

The jury took about an hour to acquit Ramos-Brito on misdemeanor assault charges. He wants to move on — but the mendacity of the administration won’t let him.

The lies it used to try to railroad an innocent man turned out not to be an aberration but a playbook for Trump’s 2025.

Lies, of course, have fueled the president’s career from the days he was was a smarmy New York developer riding the coattails of his daddy. This year he and his apologists employed them like never before to try to consolidate their grip on all aspects of American life. They lied about the economy, about the contents of the Epstein files, about the efficacy of vaccines, the worth of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, our supposed noninterventionist foreign policy and so much more.

Above all, or at least most malignantly, Trump and his crew lied about immigrants. The big lie. The lie they thought everyone would believe and thus would excuse all the other lies. They have lied about and maligned just about anyone they don’t see worthy of being a so-called “heritage American,” aka white.

Trump ran for reelection on a promise to focus on targeting “the worst of the worst” but has shrugged his shoulders as most of the people swept up in raids have no criminal record and are sometimes even citizens and permanent residents. He vowed that deporting people would improve the economy despite decades of studies showing the opposite. Trumpworld insists immigrants are destroying the United States — never mind that the commander in chief is the son of a Scotswoman and is married to a Slovenian while vice president JD Vance’s in-laws are from India.

The administration maintains unchecked migration is cultural suicide even as cabinet members sport last names — Kennedy, Rubio, Bondi, Loeffler — once seen by Americans of past generations as synonymous with invading hordes.

This is where Frank Sinatra comes in.

Over the Christmas weekend, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media that his family watched a Christmas special starring the Chairman of the Board and his fellow paisan, Dean Martin.

“Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world,” Miller sneered. It didn’t matter that the crooners were proud children of Italian immigrants who arrived during a time where they were as demonized as Venezuelans and Somalis are now.

Take it from Sinatra himself.

In 1945 he released “The House I Live In,” a short film in which he tells a group of boys chasing one of their Jewish peers to embrace a diverse America. In 1991 as his Republican Party was launching an era of laws in California targeting illegal immigrants, Sinatra penned a Fourth of July essay for The Times opposing such hate.

“Who in the name of God are these people anyway, the ones who elevate themselves above others?” Sinatra wrote. “America is an immigrant country. Maybe not you and me, but those whose love made our lives possible, or their parents or grandparents.”

As 2025 went from one hell month to another, it really felt like Trumpworld’s lies would loom over the land for good. But as the year ends, it seems truth finally is peeking through the storm clouds, like the blue skies Sinatra sang about so beautifully.

Trump’s approval ratings have dropped greatly since his inauguration even among those who voted for him, with his deportation disaster playing a role. Judges and juries are beginning to swat away charges filed against people like Ramos-Brito like they were flies swarming around a dung pile. Under especial scrutiny is Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, the public face of Trump’s deportation ground game.

In November, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis ruled the federal government had to stop using excessive force in Chicago after months of agents firing pepper balls and tear gas at the slightest perceived insult. Her decision reasoned that Bovino’s sworn testimony about a Chicago under siege by pro-immigrant activists was “not credible” because he provided “cute” answers when he wasn’t “outright lying.”

Among the victims of those lies: Scott Blackburn, who was arrested for allegedly assaulting Bovino during an immigration raid even though videos showed the migra man tackle Blackburn like they were playing sandlot football, and Cole Sheridan, whom Bovino claimed injured his groin while arresting him during a protest; federal prosecutors quickly dropped all charges against Sheridan when they realized there was a lack of evidence to back up Bovino’s story.

And then there is Ramos-Brito, who had to endure a federal trial that hinged on Bovino insisting he was guilty of assaulting a federal agent in Paramount. He shook his head in disgust when I told him about Bovino’s continued tall tales.

“Justice was served for me,” Ramos-Brito said, “but not for others. I got lucky.”

We spoke in front of the Home Depot where the June 7 protest happened, where Trump’s year of immigration lies went into overdrive. The day laborers who used to gather there for years weren’t around. The gate where la migra and protesters faced off was closed.

Ramos-Brito still drives down that stretch of Alondra Boulevard for his snacks from the Chevron station that stands a block away from where his life forever was changed. It took him months to go public with his story. Scars remain on his ribs, back and shoulders.

“There’s times when little moments come through my head,” he acknowledged.

What finally convinced him to speak up was think about others out there like him. He now realizes speaking out against Trump’s lies is the only way to stop him for good.

“Whoever is going through the same that I did, keep fighting,” Ramos-Brito said softly. “They should look at my experience to give them hope.”

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In a statement, Longoria’s attorneys said Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived at the Longoria household at 4:18 a.m. Thursday, with an armored personnel carrier, a type of military vehicle, and deployed more than a dozen “fully armed and armored” agents to swarm the home, breaking the locks on his gate. An agent called out to Longoria to come out, using a bullhorn, as agents stood at each door and pointed their rifles at the door and at the occupants inside, the attorneys said.

“These are the type of tactics reserved for dangerous criminals such as violent gang members, drug lords, and terrorists,” the attorneys said. “It was clearly intended to intimidate and punish Mr. Longoria and his family for daring to speak out about their attempted murder by ICE and CBP agents on August 16th.”

On that day, federal immigration officers stopped Longoria in San Bernardino. During the encounter, Longoria, who was in his truck with his 18-year-old son and 23-year-old son-in-law, feared for his safety and drove off after masked officers shattered his car window, his attorneys said.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said officers were injured during the encounter when Longoria tried to “run them down.” Longoria’s attorneys dispute their client injured the officers or attempted to hit them, and earlier this week they called for an investigation of the shooting.

On Friday morning, the U.S. attorney’s office confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Longoria the day before. Word of his arrest was earlier reported by the San Bernardino Sun.

Ciaran McEvoy, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said Longoria made an initial appearance before a U.S. District Court judge in Riverside, and is set to be arraigned on Sept. 30. The federal magistrate judge ordered him released on a $5,000 bond.

Longoria was being held at the San Bernardino County jail, in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, as of Thursday afternoon, McEvoy said in an email.

“Since Longoria is an illegal alien, ICE has a detainer on him,” he said. Longoria’s attorneys said their client was transferred into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as of Friday.

An unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed federal agents arrested Longoria at his home.

“CBP and ICE remain committed to enforcing the law, protecting officers, and keeping dangerous criminals off America’s streets — even as local officials in California undermine those efforts,” the official said.

According to a criminal complaint submitted by a Homeland Security Investigations agent, whose name is redacted, Longoria is facing a charge of assault on a federal officer with a deadly/dangerous weapon.

In the complaint, the agent, who interviewed the officers who stopped Longoria, said the officers had stopped Longoria’s GMC pickup truck to conduct “an immigration check.” Two of them were ICE officers and the other two were CBP officers.

The complaint states that the officers were identifiable by their visible clothing marked with “police.”

After they stopped Longoria’s truck, the complaint states, he refused to comply with the demands to turn off his vehicle and roll down the window. One of the CBP officers, identified as J.C., decided to break the window after Longoria refused the commands, and was allegedly struck by the driver’s door on his left elbow and left calf. The passenger side window was also shattered by agents during the encounter.

Another CBP officer was allegedly struck by the front bumper/fender of the truck on his right leg. “The Truck kept pushing Officer S.T., and Officer S.T. shot at the Truck, afraid for his life,” according to the complaint.

Longoria’s attorneys had previously released surveillance video of the incident, which appears to dispute a key claim by Homeland Security — that Longoria drove his truck toward officers and injured them.

In the surveillance video, the moment Longoria drives away, officers on both sides of the truck remain in sight of the video, and they then pile into their vehicles and pursue Longoria’s truck down a side street.

After Longoria drove off, the family called 911. While San Bernardino police were questioning Longoria, the immigration officers arrived, and family members identified the one they believed had shot at the truck.

At the initial court appearance, the judge questioned the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Cory Burleson, about the government’s claim that it was conducting an “immigration check,” a term he couldn’t clarify when asked by the court, according to Longoria’s attorneys. Burleson also claimed Longoria was stopped due to a traffic violation, but couldn’t identify the violation, his attorneys said. When the judge asked Burleson to identify the alleged injuries of the officers, Burleson said he was “not aware of any injuries,” Longoria’s attorneys said.

Longoria’s attorneys said their client was granted bond, but because of the ICE hold, has since been transferred into ICE custody, which they believe is the “true purpose of this false and baseless charge.”

“No reasonable prosecutor could believe that a conviction would be secured against Mr. Longoria for the August 16th stop, when every video supports Mr. Longoria’s version of events and directly contradicts DHS’ story,” his attorneys said. “Yet [the Department of Justice] will not drop the charges; it has been their practice during this Administration to pursue charges based on unsubstantiated and false affidavits in order to arrest individuals and then turn them over to ICE.”

His attorneys said they intend to continue advocating for Longoria, his son and son-in-law.

“We are in contact with local and State authorities and are encouraging a state investigation and criminal charges against the ICE/CBP agents,” the attorneys said.

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She is also anxious. Attention from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could upend her life more than 23 years after she illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border as a teenager.

“The worry is they’ll pull you over when you’re driving and ask for your papers,” said Lidia, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only her first name be used because of her fears of deportation. “We need to work. We need to feed our families and pay our rent.”

As parades and other events celebrating the contributions of workers in the U.S. are held Monday for the Labor Day holiday, experts say President Donald Trump’s stepped-up immigration policies are impacting the nation’s labor force.

More than 1.2 million immigrants disappeared from the labor force from January through the end of July, according to preliminary Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. That includes people who are in the country illegally as well as legal residents.

Immigrants make up almost 20% of the U.S. workforce and that data shows 45% of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants, according to Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer. About 30% of all construction workers are immigrants and 24% of service workers are immigrants, she added.

The loss in immigrant workers comes as the nation is seeing the first decline in the overall immigrant population after the number of people in the U.S. illegally reached an all-time high of 14 million in 2023.

“It’s unclear how much of the decline we’ve seen since January is due to voluntary departures to pursue other opportunities or avoid deportation, removals, underreporting or other technical issues,” Kramer said. “However, we don’t believe that the preliminary numbers indicating net-negative migration are so far off that the decline isn’t real.”

Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the U.S. illegally. He has said he is focusing deportation efforts on “dangerous criminals,” but most people detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. At the same time, the number of illegal border crossings has plunged under his policies.

Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said immigrants normally contribute at least 50% of job growth in the U.S.

“The influx across the border from what we can tell is essentially stopped, and that’s where we were getting millions and millions of migrants over the last four years,” she said. “That has had a huge impact on the ability to create jobs.”

‘Crops did go to waste’

Just across the border from Mexico in McAllen, Texas, corn and cotton fields are about ready for harvesting. Elizabeth Rodriguez worries there won’t be enough workers available for the gins and other machinery once the fields are cleared.

Immigration enforcement actions at farms, businesses and construction sites brought everything to a standstill, said Rodriguez, director of farmworker advocacy for the National Farmworker Ministry.

“In May, during the peak of our watermelon and cantaloupe season, it delayed it. A lot of crops did go to waste,” she said.

In Ventura County, California, northwest of Los Angeles, Lisa Tate manages her family business that grows citrus fruits, avocados and coffee on eight ranches and 800 acres (323 hectares).

Most of the men and women who work their farms are contractor-provided day laborers. There were days earlier this year when crews would be smaller. Tate is hesitant to place that blame on immigration policies. But the fear of ICE raids spread quickly.

Dozens of area farmworkers were arrested late this spring.

“People were being taken out of laundromats, off the side of the road,” Tate said.

Lidia, the farmworker who spoke to the AP through an interpreter, said her biggest fear is being sent back to Mexico. Now 36, she is married with three school-age children who were born here.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring my kids,” said Lidia. “I’m also very concerned I’d have to start from zero. My whole life has been in the United States.”

From construction to health care

Construction sites in and around McAllen also “are completely dead,” Rodriguez said.

“We have a large labor force that is undocumented,” she said. “We’ve seen ICE particularly targeting construction sites and attempting to target mechanic and repair shops.”

The number of construction jobs are down in about half of U.S. metropolitan areas, according to an Associated General Contractors of America analysis of government employment data. The largest loss of 7,200 jobs was in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, area. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area lost 6,200 jobs.

“Construction employment has stalled or retreated in many areas for a variety of reasons,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. “But contractors report they would hire more people if only they could find more qualified and willing workers and tougher immigration enforcement wasn’t disrupting labor supplies.”

Kramer, with Pew, also warns about the potential impact on health care. She says immigrants make up about 43% of home health care aides.

The Service Employees International Union represents about 2 million workers in health care, the public sector and property services. An estimated half of long-term care workers who are members of SEIU 2015 in California are immigrants, said Arnulfo De La Cruz, the local’s president.

“What’s going to happen when millions of Americans can no longer find a home care provider?” De La Cruz said. “What happens when immigrants aren’t in the field to pick our crops? Who’s going to staff our hospitals and nursing homes?” ___ An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the name of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The name is not Immigration Control and Enforcement.

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“If, as Defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion, they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion,” the panel wrote.

The ruling leaves in place a temporary restraining order barring masked and heavily armed agents from snatching people off the streets of Southern California without first establishing reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally.

Under the 4th Amendment, reasonable suspicion cannot be based solely on race, ethnicity, language, location or employment, either alone or in combination, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of Los Angeles wrote in her original order.

9th Circuit Judges Marsha S. Berzon, Jennifer Sung and Ronald M. Gould agreed.

“There is no predicate action that the individual plaintiffs would need to take, other than simply going about their lives, to potentially be subject to the challenged stops,” the opinion said.

Fourth Amendment injunctions are hard to win, experts say. Plaintiffs must show not only that they were hurt, but that they are likely to be hurt again in the same way in the future.

One way to meet that test in court is to show the injury is the product of a government policy. Throughout a hearing Monday, the appellate judges repeatedly probed that question, roughly doubling the administration’s time to respond in an effort to get an answer.

“After the district court injunction here, the secretary of Homeland Security said, ‘We are going to continue doing what we’re doing’ — so that’s not a policy?” Berzon asked.

“The policy is to follow the 4th Amendment and to require reasonable suspicion,” said Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Yaakov Roth.

Roth also rebuffed questions about a 3,000-arrests-per-day quota first touted by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in May.

In a memo to the panel on Wednesday, Roth clarified that “no such goal” had been established.

The court rejected that argument Friday, writing that “no official statement or express policy is required” to prove one exists.

“Agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks … some repeatedly in the same location,” the opinion said, making the likelihood of future stops “considerable.”

The ruling scolded the Department of Justice for “misreading” the restraining order it sought to block, and said it “mischaracterized” Judge Frimpong’s order. And it rejected the government’s central claim that its law enforcement mandate would be “chilled” by the district court’s order.

“Defendants have failed to establish that they will be ‘chilled’ from their enforcement efforts at all, let alone in a manner that constitutes the ‘irreparable injury’ required to support a stay pending appeal,” the panel wrote.

The case is still in its early phases, with hearings set for a preliminary injunction in September. But the “shock and awe” campaign of chaotic public arrests that first gripped Southern California on June 6 has all but ceased in the seven counties covered by Frimpong’s order: Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

“The underlying 4th Amendment law is not complicated,” said Mohammad Tajsar of the ACLU of Southern California — part of a coalition of civil rights groups and individual attorneys challenging cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens swept up in chaotic arrests. “Even a more conservative panel would have been concerned about what the government is doing.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, whose city was among a number of Southern California municipalities allowed to join the lawsuit this week, celebrated the news at a hastily arranged news conference late Friday night at Getty House, her official residence in Windsor Square.

The mayor strode out of the Tudor Revival-style home and toward the bank of waiting television cameras with a purposeful smile.

“This is a great day for Los Angeles,” she said, characterizing the court’s decision as a victory upholding the Constitution and affirming the rule of law.

Upholding the temporary restraining order “means that people cannot be snatched off the street by masked men like we had experienced for almost two months in the city,” Bass said, referencing the fact that the increasingly aggressive raids have often been carried out by masked agents who sometimes use unmarked vehicles.

Bass, whose late husband was Latino and whose late daughter, stepchildren and grandchildren are of Latino descent, has described the raids as deeply personal.

Speaking directly to the city’s immigrant community, Bass was sanguine about the possibility that the terror paralyzing local communities might begin to ebb.

“The message that I have is that I hope that feeling of fear will subside, that people will be willing and able to come out of their homes, that people will be able to go back to work, that our economy will begin to pick up again,” Bass said.

The Trump administration has previously signaled its intent to fight judicial limits on its deportation efforts any way it can. It was not immediately clear where an appeal would proceed. Bass said she believed the administration would likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

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Luna addressed what he described as widespread community concerns over the department’s policies on cooperation with federal immigration authorities during a news conference at the Hall of Justice. His remarks came one day after a report by The Times revealed that in May and June the Sheriff’s Department transferred 20 inmates to ICE in compliance with the warrants.

L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman and other legal experts said federal law requires local law enforcement agencies to comply with warrants issued by federal judges, which trump state and local “sanctuary” policies aimed at shielding immigrants from deportation. The warrants involve criminal charges, the department said, not civil immigration violations.

“It’s a federal judicial warrant signed by a judge. There’s no choice. That means somebody has gone before a judge to get an arrest warrant for them,” Luna said.

He added that the inmates his department turned over have “got enough probable cause to get an arrest warrant for and they’ve committed, usually, a significant crime,” such as attempted murder, rape or robbery. “This isn’t the ice cream vendor, the lady making tacos on the street.”

The sheriff also addressed a statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday stating that it had “issued requests” to sheriffs in California counties including Los Angeles and San Francisco counties asking them to provide lists of all inmates in their jails who are not U.S. citizens, in addition to information about their criminal histories and when they are due to be released.

The Justice Department said in the statement that it hopes the sheriffs will cooperate with the request voluntarily, but that “if necessary, the Department will pursue all available means of obtaining the data, including through subpoenas.”

Luna said that “at this time, we have not officially received this letter. We’ve heard about it, but haven’t actually seen it.”

“Once we receive the letter, we will absolutely review it to determine what information, if any, we can legally provide,” he said.

The sheriff noted that any potential effort to compile such a list would be complicated by the fact that his department does not collect information about people’s immigration status when they are booked into county jails, and that he does not know if the agency has the technical capacity to compile such a roster.

Earlier Thursday, Luna said at the monthly meeting of the L.A. County Civilian Oversight Commission that when “you get booked, processed and you get Livescanned, that’s a national system, so agents of the federal government will know you’re in custody. So it’s not that we’re notifying them, it’s an automatic notification based on your fingerprints.”

He said during the Thursday news conference that he believes ICE uses information gathered during that booking process to compile lists of people to issue civil immigration detainers for.

Under sanctuary policies, the Sheriff’s Department is legally barred from handing over inmates in response to so-called detainers, or ICE requests to hold a person for potential deportation.

Luna said that in 2024, his department received “995 civil detainer requests from ICE and did not comply with any of them because that would violate both state law and county policy.”

Luna also offered repeated reassurances to county residents who have raised concerns about the unsubstantiated prospect that the Sheriff’s Department is engaging in wider cooperation with ICE.

He said that he personally believes “we should all be concerned” about “federal agents either chasing people around a car wash or a Home Depot,” and that his department does not assist ICE in those kinds of street operations, which have instilled deep fear in immigrant communities across L.A. County since they began last month.

“I completely understand the concern, the fear and anxiety from our community here in Los Angeles County,” he said. “We do not honor ICE detainers or requests for transfers. We do not allow immigration officials to operate within our facilities, and we do not permit the use of county property databases or personnel by ICE.”

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The Bishop of San Bernardino, Alberto Rojas, has issued a decree dispensing Catholics from attending Sunday Mass in response to concerns about recent immigration enforcement actions. The last time attendance was made optional was during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Think of the faithful

John Andrews leads communications for the Diocese and said there’s been a climate of fear in their immigrant communities since the raids began weeks ago.

“ We’ve noticed it. We felt it. And then to compound the situation in our diocese, we’ve had two different Catholic churches where immigration enforcement agents have come on to church property and made arrests,” Andrews said.

The Diocese covers both Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with more than 1 million self-identifying Catholics spread across 94 parishes. One out of every five people living in both counties are foreign-born, according to data from the U.S. census.

In the days and weeks following the ICE sweeps, there have been growing questions to Bishop Rojas from worried congregants.

“A lot of people come to him and say, ‘Bishop, is it really smart for me to attend mass? Do I have to do the weekly obligation?’” Andrews said. “And I think that was weighing heavily on him.”

How we got here

Church law allows a bishop to dispense the faithful from usual duties — including attend Mass — when he judges it contributes to their spiritual good. Bishop Rojas decided that the fears experienced by his congregants were a “grave inconvenience” to that spiritual good, according to the decree.

Along with an excuse from Sunday Mass, the decree encouraged alternative spiritual practices such as praying the rosary or attending virtual services.

It also ordered pastors and ministers to provide “compassionate support to those affected by this fear,” and said the dispensation would be in place until the circumstances which caused the decree “are sufficiently resolved.”

Church officials said they hope the decree does not have to be in place for too long.

“We want people to feel free to be able to come to church,” Andrews said. “It really kind of depends on whether these enforcement tactics continue the way they have been.”

A day after Bishop Rojas issued his decree he followed up with a message on the Diocese Facebook page, reiterating the role of parishes to support affected Catholics in their connection to the church at this time.

“Please continue to pray for our immigrant brothers and sisters. ” Bishop Rojas wrote.

Fears across the region

It’s not just Catholic churches that have weighed in amid escalating immigration actions. Last week, the Mayor of Perris in Riverside County took to Instagram to warn constituents about ICE enforcement in the city.

“Do not go out unless necessary. Stay at home and do not open the door to strangers. This message is for awareness and safety.” Mayor Michael M. Vargas said in a video post.

At Cal State L.A. this past week Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Heather Lattimer sent a letter to faculty accounting for and responding to fears from students over taking public transit and driving to campus.

In the letter Lattimer pointed to school policies in place for professors to give excused absences and alternative make-up work to concerned students.

She also wrote that faculty can elect to offer students to join classes remotely in extraordinary circumstances.

Fall semester for the school begins on August 18.

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Speaking to reporters, he clarified U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s policy at worksites after the Department of Homeland Security said this week it was reversing recent guidance that called for a pause on operations at those places.

“The message is clear now that we’re going to continue doing worksite enforcement operations, even on farms and hotels, but based on a prioritized basis. Criminals come first,” Homan said.

The Trump administration is focusing resources on so-called sanctuary cities, he said, because “they knowingly release public safety threats, illegal aliens to the community every day.”

When asked why ICE directed its agents last week to hold off on investigations of farms and hotels, Homan dodged the question saying, “Worksite enforcement operations is an important part of the work we do.”

Homan said in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday that a lot of worksite enforcement operations are “based on criminal information, criminal investigations such as forced labor, such as trafficking and such as … tax fraud and money laundering.”

DHS’ Homeland Security Investigations team paused immigration enforcement actions last week at worksites tied to the agriculture industry including meatpacking plants and fisheries, as well as restaurants and hotels, according to an internal policy memo that was sent by a senior ICE official and obtained by NBC News.

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The calls come as shocking footage emerged from around the Southland showing dramatic arrests and aggressive tactics used by federal agents on city streets.

“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Mayor Jessica Ancona of El Monte, who said she was hit by rubber bullets during a raid in her city.

In Los Angeles, City Council leaders accused federal officers in unmarked vehicles of brazenly ‘abducting’ people off the streets without warrants and based on racial profiling. Signs of terror and tension are palpable across the region.

On Wednesday, masked men grabbed a pedestrian in a church parking lot, and unmarked trucks rammed a car with a young family inside, engulfing a baby and toddler in smoke or tear gas. In Orange County on Wednesday, rumors of parents being deported spread through an elementary school, prompting the district to assure families that commencement and award ceremonies would not be open to the public or warrantless immigration raids. In Santa Ana on Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials positioned a rooftop sniper outside a federal building with a rifle trained down at a group of middle-school-aged protesters.

Pastor Tanya Lopez at Downey Memorial Christian Church experienced the fear firsthand.

She witnessed armed men in masks and unmarked vehicles arrest a man Wednesday morning in the parking lot of her church.

“I am a mother, a first-generation daughter of immigrants myself,” Lopez said. “This is not just an immigrant issue. Who knows if this man was a citizen? They were not letting him answer any questions, provide any identification. They surrounded him and just started to grab him.”

“I am disheartened. My daughters were crying. I am completely heartbroken that this is how they started their summer break,” Lopez added. “Now I have to not just try to regulate my own mental health and own sudden rush of adrenaline and everything else. I have to now remind my daughters that everything is going to be okay because they told me that they were scared that (the agents) were going to shoot their mommy today.”

“They are coming, and they are relentless, and cruelty is the point,” Lopez said. “So we will meet that cruelty with love, with justice and compassion because we are non-violent.”

Her husband, a Reverend at the church, said he told the agents he didn’t want this on his property and that’s when the agents told him “the whole country is our property.”

“When someone tells that to you with a weapon in their hands and on their body, that is a very clear message,” Rev. Al Lopez said. “As a man of faith, that is not allowed, that is not correct, and that goes against everything that our country stands for.”

Across the county in Boyle Heights, federal agents in unmarked trucks boxed in and rammed a sedan with a family inside, including an infant and toddler. Armed officers jumped out and deployed smoke or tear gas on the vehicle, and ordered out of the vehicle Christian Damian Cerno-Camacho, a protester suspected of punching a border patrol agent.

The dramatic arrest was caught on video and stirred outrage in the community, but Homeland Security officials defended their work of the officers.

Homeland Security officials responded to Patch’s request for comment about the crash with a statement by Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“This was no hit and run. This was a targeted arrest of a violent rioter who punched a CBP officer. When Homeland Security Investigations tried to arrest Christian Damian Cerno-Camacho for the assault, he attempted to flee,” she said. “He was ultimately arrested and taken into custody.”

“Our officers are facing a 413% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest murders, rapists, and gang members,” she added. “Secretary Noem’s message to the LA rioters is clear: you will not stop us or slow us down.”

Archbishop José H. Gomez on Wednesday called for peaceful demonstrations and also urged the federal government not to make ordinary families suffer.

“We all agree that we don’t want undocumented immigrants who are known terrorists or violent criminals in our communities,” Gomez said. “But there is no need for the government to carry out enforcement actions in a way that provokes fear and anxiety among ordinary, hardworking immigrants and their families.”

Meanwhile, the commander in charge of the troops said about 500 National Guard soldiers deployed to the Los Angeles protests have been trained to accompany agents on immigration operations. And while some troops have already gone on such missions, he said it’s too early to say if that will continue, even after the protests die down.

Speaking alongside the other mayors at a news conference, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the raids spread fear at the behest of the White House.

“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers. But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe,” she said. “You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”

Those who have been caught up in the nationwide raids include asylum seekers, people who overstayed their visas and migrants awaiting their day in immigration court.

The administration has cited the protests in its decision to deploy the military. Referring to the demonstrations, which have been mostly concentrated in the LA business district, the Democratic mayor added: “If you drive a few blocks outside of downtown, you don’t know that anything is happening in the city at all.”

The city leaders who joined the call for ICE raids to stop include:

• Paramount Mayor Peggy Lemons
• Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores
• Vernon Mayor Judith Merlo
• South Gate Mayor Maria Davila
• Ventura Mayor Dr. Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios
• Bell Gardens Mayor Jorgel Chavez
• El Monte Mayor Jessica Ancona
• Montebello Mayor Sal Melendez
• Santa Paula Mayor Pedro Chavez
• Santa Monica Mayor Lana Negrete
• West Hollywood Mayor Chelsea Byers
• Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez
• Fillmore Mayor Pro Tem Albert Mendez
• Paramount Vice Mayor Brenda Olmos
• Ventura Deputy Mayor Doug Halter
• Lynwood Councilwoman Lorraine Avila Moore
• Artesia Councilmember Melissa Ramoso
• Downey Councilman Mario Trujillo
• Paramount Councilmember Vilma Cuellar Stallings
• Pico Rivera Councilmember Andrew Lara
• South Gate Councilmember Gil Hurtado
• Vernon Councilmember Crystal Larios
• Vernon Councilmember Leticia Lopez

California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has asked a federal court to put an emergency stop to the military helping immigration agents in the nation’s second-largest city. This week, guardsmen began standing protectively around agents as they carry out arrests. A judge set a hearing for Thursday.

The military is now closer to engaging in law enforcement actions such as deportations, as Trump has promised in his crackdown. The Guard has the authority to temporarily detain people who attack officers, but any arrests must be made by law enforcement.

The president posted on the Truth Social platform that the city “would be burning to the ground” if he had not sent in the military.

But now, the protests have spread nationwide. Demonstrations have spread to Dallas and Austin in Texas, and Chicago and New York, where thousands rallied and more arrests were made. A nationwide protest is scheduled for Saturday.

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