What do you do when a family member is kidnapped by masked men and bundled into an unmarked car? The most common response would be to dial 911 and call for help. But, since June 2025, thousands of Los Angeles residents have watched their loved ones being snatched and disappeared without due process by federal immigration agents, with little to no institutional recourse. Instead, they’ve had to rely on themselves. Among them is Luana Lopez, a Salvadoran American and incoming freshman at California State University, Northridge, whose life was turned upside down on June 19, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents abducted her mother. Ana Franco Galdamez was working as a vendor in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Hollywood when she was arrested by federal agents. As reports of an ICE raid rippled through community networks, Lopez feared the worst. “My older sister had called me saying that ICE was in the area my mom was working at and we tried calling my mom and she wasn’t answering. And that’s when we knew,” said Lopez. Lopez and her sister Gabriela, along with their mother, actively volunteer with Homies Unidos, an LA-based organization founded 27 years ago by Alex Sanchez, a Salvadoran American who, like Galdamez, fled violence in his home country. Sanchez’s organization is leading the effort to help free Galdamez and is one among a constellation of grassroots groups protecting immigrants, who are deeply integrated into every aspect of LA. Immigrants comprise more than a third of all Los Angeles County residents. Undocumented Angelenos — most of whom have lived in Los Angeles County for more than a decade — are 7 percent of the population. The county is, more broadly speaking, a center of multiracial culture and community. People of color have outnumbered white people since the 1980s; today they make up three-quarters of the population, and Latinos alone are nearly half the population at 48 percent. It’s no wonder that Donald Trump sought to make an example of Los Angeles. Immigration raids at workplaces, parking lots, factories, swap meets, and bus stops have resulted in thousands of arrests and deportation orders. The crackdown this summer is likely only a preview of what’s coming. With the passage of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, Congress approved a tripling of ICE’s budget. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) pointed out, “This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion — making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA & others combined.” She warned, “It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play.” With little help from elected officials and government agencies, and with a greater assault on the horizon, LA organizers have mobilized to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE. They call it “community self-defense.” Ron Gochez, a leading member of the LA-based organization Union del Barrio, understood that with Trump’s election to a second presidential term, immigrants were going to face serious — and possibly unprecedented — levels of attacks. “We knew what was coming,” explained Gochez, who by day works as a high school history teacher in South LA In February 2025, he helped convene the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a multiracial group of organizers who readied themselves for ICE raids. So, how does it work? Keeping ICE at bay begins with intelligence-gathering. Individuals who sign up to participate in neighborhoods where federal agents have been spotted carry out “community patrols” by car early in the morning — ICE forces are known to strike in the early hours — and contact organizers as soon as a raid appears imminent. The next stage is public condemnation. “When we get word of them being there, when we find them, or the community calls us with information — and that’s a crucial part of our work, the community collaborating with us and giving us information — we go and we immediately denounce them,” said Gochez. This means driving by ICE agents while loudly denouncing them on megaphones. “We tell them they’re not wanted, [that] we don’t want them in our community.” After that come warnings and a show of people power. Organizers use their megaphones to warn those who are vulnerable to stay indoors: “Hey, ICE is present… if you’re undocumented, please go inside. Do not open your doors. Do not open your windows. Don’t talk to these people” — while inviting citizens and others who are privileged to join them on the streets. “[We tell them], ‘if you are documented, come out. Come out and join us. Defend your neighbor,’” Gochez said. In Gochez’s experience, such actions have resulted in quick retreats of ICE agents, especially when agents are outnumbered. “That’s what we call community self-defense, using people power, not violence, to be able to defend the community,” he said. Ahead of the new 2025-2026 school year, Union del Barrio has announced teacher training sessions to protect students from immigration raids. Teachers in Southern California and all over the nation are preparing for the worst. As Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers explained, “We serve in the stead of parents for the time their kids are in school. So, somebody knocks on a school door and says ‘I want that kid,’ we have an obligation to say ‘no.’” Weingarten explained how educators are ensuring schools are equipped with ‘Know Your Rights’ literature and form phone trees in case ICE shows up. She said, “we are creating a community of complaining loudly” against ICE targeting of schools. Gochez credits such work with staving off the worst of ICE raids. “After spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and thousands of agents, and National Guardsmen and U.S. Marines, they haven’t been able to get even 1 percent of the undocumented population in Los Angeles,” said Gochez. Of the nearly 1 million undocumented people estimated to be living in LA County, ICE agents have arrested almost 3,000. That’s a third of a percent. In Gochez’s view, these numbers are a testament to the successful attempts by members of the Community Self-Defense Coalition to force ICE agents to retreat. “The resistance is working, and we just have to keep it up,” he said. With accusations of ICE operating out of the bounds of the U.S. Constitution, know-your-rights trainings have also played a critical role in keeping people safe. Just ahead of Trump’s second term in January 2025, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), ramped up such trainings. Even as the group is helping with clean-up and rebuilding efforts after Southern California’s deadly fires, it is ensuring that immigrant workers counter fear with knowledge. “There is no way that you can actually defend yourself when you are fearful,” Pablo Alvarado, NDLON’s executive director said. “The way you remove that fear is by making sure that people know that they have rights and that they can exercise those rights.” NDLON’s credo, solo el pueblo, salva al pueblo (“only the people can save the people”) captures the confidence with which an informed community is able to meet the coming acceleration of anti-immigrant institutional violence. “You have to feed your family,” said Alvarado. “And you have to keep on … living your life, taking your children to school, going to work, going to the church, going to taking your kids to the soccer game.” He points out that those who know their rights “turn the tables … the other way and [are] asking for their [ICE agents’] papers.” But in the face of a government that flouts rules, laws, and even the U.S. Constitution, immigrants like Galdamez continue to remain vulnerable. Galdamez arrived in the United States from El Salvador decades earlier, fleeing a violent and abusive ex-partner, after losing her only son in a homicide. In addition to being a parking lot vendor, she has worked as a housekeeper and babysitter. Now, she speaks to her daughter by phone from Adelanto Detention Center, a notorious, privately-run ICE processing facility. Conditions are horrific and Lopez relates that her mother is sometimes held in chains. NDLON’s “Adopt a Day Labor Corner” program could deter ICE from snatching workers like Galdamez in the future. The group is calling on members of the public to “[c]hoose a location convenient to you, where day laborers gather and commit to showing up regularly. Be present. Be consistent. Build relationships and offer protection.” Gochez remains undeterred. “There are millions of our people in this country. And if we were to organize ourselves, we absolutely can defend ourselves.”