Los Angeles residents build aid network for immigrants living in fear

• Community mutual aid network supports undocumented Angelenos
• Fear of deportation forces many to hide at home
• Thousands of dollars donated for groceries

LOS ANGELES - One recent Tuesday morning, volunteer Kelly Flores parked her car outside a stranger's house in a working class neighbourhood of South Los Angeles and unloaded groceries worth almost $200.

A petite woman met her at the front gate and, as she thanked Flores for the bags of food, she started to cry.

Sonya, who asked that her real name be protected because she is undocumented, said she has rarely left her house in the past month, afraid of being arrested by federal immigration agents and deported. 

Huge swaths of Los Angeles, home to once-vibrant immigrant communities, have become ghost towns in the wake of increasingly volatile and militarised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids throughout the county, resulting in thousands of arrests since

President Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants in January. 

Between 11 million and 13 million people live in the United States without legal status, roughly 900,000 of them in Los Angeles County, according to the USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute.

The Trump administration claims 140,000 people have been deported since he took office in January, but some estimates suggest only about half of that number have been removed from the country.

Nationwide, 59,000 people are being held in detention, according to the nonpartisan American Immigration Council. 

Too scared to go to work, Sonya and scores of other residents without legal status have turned to rapid-response teams of volunteers to get food and basic necessities for their families.

The response effort is an outgrowth of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a group of 65 grassroots nonprofit organisations that document and warn communities of ICE activity.

In June alone through the 26th, the latest date for which there was information, 2,205 people in the Los Angeles area were arrested by ICE, according to records released by the agency.

The figure does not include arrests made by other agencies such as Customs and Border Protection. 

As raids became more frequent in June, anxious residents began calling the Coalition's hotlines with requests.

"They weren't necessarily asking for free food," said Lupe Carrasco Cardona, the organiser and chairperson of the Association of Raza Educators, a nonprofit in the coalition.

"In some cases it was, 'Can you go shop for us?'” she said.

Others needed help paying rent, she said, or someone to accompany them to a doctor's visit or immigration appointment because they were afraid to go alone.

The calls kept coming, so Carrasco Cardona put out a request for donations. So far, the project has raised more than $7,500 in mostly small amounts through Venmo and PayPal that have paid for groceries for more than 60 families.

The day that she spoke with Context, sixteen families were waiting for food deliveries.

"We do not consider this a charitable act," Carrasco Cardona said.

"We consider this an act of mutual aid because they contribute to our society in meaningful ways with their labour," she said. "This is just us giving back to them."

The employment of undocumented immigrants, many from Mexico and Central America, sustains multiple industries.

A June report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute showed the California economy could lose more than $212 billion in gross domestic product from direct and indirect economic activity from undocumented workers, with the biggest hits to construction and agriculture.

'Under siege'

The fear and isolation have taken a toll on Sonya's family, she said.

"I'm scared," she said, in tears, adding that she does not let her children go to a nearby park to play.

"I don't know how to keep them safe."

After the Trump administration rescinded guidance in January that limited or prevented immigration activity near schools and hospitals, ICE agents were spotted in hospitals in Los Angeles.

Federal officials have claimed they are only entering these buildings as escorts to detainees needing medical attention.

Although some of Sonya's children are U.S. citizens, her eldest daughter, who is pregnant and due in August, is not.

But the family is afraid to go to the hospital for the delivery after seeing reports of immigration agents entering medical facilities, she said.

Los Angeles used to feel "like a safe haven," Flores said after she left Sonya's house. "Now the city’s been under siege."

In June, the Trump administration federalised and deployed 4,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quash protests in response to increasing immigration raids and to aid ICE agents. 

'Hang on to that hope'

Carrasco Cardona and Flores, both schoolteachers, are part of a core group of seven to nine volunteers buying groceries and making deliveries.

Most are teachers, and they worry about what will happen when they go back to work when the school year starts in mid-August.

The start of the school year will give three of Sonya's children a much needed diversion, but she worries they could be targeted going to or from school or she might be arrested while they are away and they would not know what happened to her.

For now, the family has put systems in place.

When Sonya needs to do laundry, for example, she sends one daughter to the laundromat first to make sure there are no immigration agents in sight, and then she goes. It is one of the only times she will leave the house.

Seeing such fear and anxiety daily, the volunteers try to reassure the immigrants that there is a community that supports and cares for them.

"We want them to know you are not alone," Carrasco Cardona said.

"They need to hang on to that hope as long as they can to get them through this," she said.

(Reporting by Rachel Parsons. Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ellen Wulfhorst.)