Trump immigration authorities launched a series of targeted arids throughout the city of Los Angeles today. And tonight, a massive protest is taking place outside the LA headquarters of ICE. NBC News political and national correspondent Jacob Sober is there and he joins us now.
Jacob, I just gotten a a text breaking news notification in the New York Times about this protest which seems to be quite large. What What's going on? Let me show you, Chris.
So, these are two protests converging at the same time. Here, I want to show you this one that's coming from the Metropolitan Detention Center, which is the jail that is run by the federal government or the county and the federal government downtown in downtown LA. It's converging with this protest that's coming over here.
Scott Killian, why don't you walk with me, Chris? What happened here today in Los Angeles, I think, is the worst nightmare for so many people who live here. You know, Los Angeles is a largely so-called minority majority city.
There are just as many um people of color here as there are white people. And in fact, 10% of the population of Los Angeles County, come which is one of the largest counties, the largest by population in the United States is undocumented. There could be as many as 1 million undocumented people who live here in Los Angeles.
And what you saw today and what all of these people are protesting is largecale immigration enforcement raids. What you're looking at on the left hand side of your screen is this protest from the sky. The helicopters are directly above me.
You saw I'm sorry for the noise, but you saw tactical officers on things like bearcat vehicles, flashbang grenades on the city streets of Los Angeles, which largely felt like, as some people described in local media, that the military was on the streets of Los Angeles. Historically, the Los Angeles Police Department does not cooperate with immigration enforcement efforts. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department does not cooperate with immigration enforcement efforts.
But when you have got ICE in Los Angeles, showing up reportedly at Home Depot, where many undocumented people go to get work as day laborers, you know, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, well, many of those people responded in the wake of the fires here in Los Angeles. When you've got ICE showing up outside of places like schools, it quite literally is striking fear into the heart of people all throughout this community. And it is, I think, I think it's fair to say, the worst fear of so many people here who live in Los Angeles and who have heard President Trump threaten that they would do this.
But when this day comes on a Friday morning that stretches into a Friday afternoon, people in Los Angeles are mobilizing and they are very upset. You have cheerle one of the big uh NOS's here that fights on behalf of immigrant rights. Um everybody is out today because uh obviously this is not to be tolerated by these folks here on the streets of Los Angeles.
Chris. Yeah. And just just to be clear here, my understanding of these these raids today, these were just workplace.
It wasn't like there was some list of people who they suspected were um dangerous or guilty of crimes. These were we've seen more and more of these basically workplace raids like show up to a place where people are employed and doing a job and and go in. Right.
That that was my my understanding of what these raids were today. What do we do? That's exactly right, Chris.
One was in the fashion district here just around the corner on Alama Street uh down Alama Street in downtown Los Angeles. Uh another one of them was basically if anybody knows MacArthur Park at a Home Depot near MacArthur Park. But, you know, the big worry here obviously is these collateral uh arrests.
And we have heard statements now from the Los Angeles Unified School District, from the Los Angeles Police Department, from the mayor of Los Angeles, from all uh many of the 15 members of the Los Angeles City Council. Um, basically condemning these raids because of what they do to the ordinary person uh in Los Angeles, which is instill a massive amount of fear. I was talking to a young woman just a few minutes ago who I lost her in the crowd, but her name was Erica Perez.
She said her mother was just deported earlier in the week after she Erica Perez has been a firefighter for Cal Fire responding to some of the wildfires not here in LA but uh in other places across LA. The bottom line is undocumented people are in every facet of life here uh in Los Angeles. They are our neighbors.
Uh they are our co-workers. They are in our schools. And when something like this happens today, look at these signs.
I just want to show you real quick. Scott, come over here. Um this is the message and this is what they're worried about.
get ice out of our schools uh and our communities because that is the worst fear uh as I said at the risk of repeating myself of so many people uh in in the city of Los Angeles. Chris, this is like I said um probably you know in terms of the images and of the feelings people are feeling. Um maybe not reminiscent of a time of many living young undocumented people in Los Angeles and and very scary for so many of them.
