Los Angeles – Immigration officials have been repeatedly seen outside a hollywood home in Hollywood home since May, which leads the staff to accompany residents of countries devastated by the war to work, errands and courts.
An executive of the shelter who serves people aged 18 to 24 said that he saw two Venezuelan men handcuffed and arrested by ice agents after they returned to the work shelter.
“There was no conversation,” said the employee, Lailanie, who requested that her last name was not used because she was afraid of immigration and the application of customs.
She said that approximately half a dozen immigration officers approached the residents “and put their hands behind their backs immediately.”
The shelters for homeless people seem to be another objective in the repression of the ongoing immigration of the Trump administration, which has resulted in almost 3,000 arrests in the Los Angeles area. Now they join Home Depots, 7-Elevens and Cannabis Farms as places where the federal government is carrying out its mass deportation effort.
In addition to the Hollywood refuge, service providers reported having seen the application of the Immigration Law in shelters in North Hollywood and San Diego, according to local media.
Immigration officials did not respond to an email asking if shelters for homeless people are being attacked as part of application efforts.
With more than 72,300 people without bone, Los Angeles County is the epicenter of the homeless people crisis. How many of them are immigrants is unknown because the Federal Annual Mandatory Count does not include citizenship questions.
The meeting at the Hollywood refuge took place a few weeks before President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard and US Marines to the region in response to large -scale protests against his deportation efforts.
Los Angeles service providers said that the law’s application effort has made their work more difficult because their clients are consumed by fear of deportation.
Donald Whitehead Jr., Executive Director of the National Coalition for homeless, said the aggressive operation “puts a goal” on the backs of homeless immigrants.
“The Villaniza,” he said.
In another shelter, people care in the center of Los Angeles, less customers stop to use showers and other public facilities because they fear that ice agents said, CEO John Maceri said.
He said that even US citizens in their permanent housing installation in the San Fernando Valley doubt because they are afraid to be arrested and questioned by ICE.
“Frankly, whatever dark skin, black and brown people, but particularly brown people of dark skin, do not want to leave,” Maceri said. “They don’t want to go to the grocery store. Some of them lack work. They are really scared. This fear factor is really entering into force.”
The highest ice arrest concentrations in Los Angeles have occurred in the predominantly Latin neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley, according to the non -profit coalition for the rights of human immigrants, or Chirla.
The American senator Alex Padilla, who is from the San Fernando Valley and was handcuffed by federal agents last month at a press conference of the National Secretary of National Security Kristi Noem, said that the numbers reflect a strategy of the Trump administration to attack the vulnerable communities, not only to the violent criminals he promised to arrest during his campaign.
“This is an administration that proudly changed politics to follow these application actions in workplaces, in schools, including primary schools and worship houses,” he said. “If they only focused on dangerous and violent criminals, you will not find them in schools, churches and camps for homeless people.”
A map published Tuesday by Chirla showed that 471 of the 2,800 arrests made by the Department of National Security from June 6 to July 20 occurred in predominantly Latin neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley. He did not specify how many of those arrested were homeless.
The president of Chirla, Angelica Salas, said that the data highlighted the “racial profile” by federal officials, who have denied pointing to people based on their skin color.
“What makes someone an ice target is if it is illegally in the United States, not in the color of their skin, race or ethnicity,” DHS said in a recent statement.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that encourages cities to eliminate homeless people from their streets. Whitehead said the order could trigger more arrests of homeless people and further increase their fears.
In the homeless refuge where the two Venezuelan men were arrested, residents remain on a maximum alert, said Lailanie. Immigrants are now accompanied to work, errands and judicial appointments by the personnel in unmarked cars without the organization of the organization.
The shelter officials requested that the Trump administration not use its name for fear of remuneration.
Venezuelans, who are 20 and 22, barely speak English and had been living in the shelter for a few weeks before being arrested, he said.
They had not been there enough time to be paired with immigration lawyers, he said. The 22 -year -old was deported, and employees have not been able to locate the youngest man, he said.
Since the arrests, staff members have witnessed at least three immigration interests around the installation, two refuge employees said.
On one occasion, a uniformed officer asked to use a bath inside the center. A maintenance worker allowed him to enter because he did not know what else to do, the two employees said.
Employees have also seen black SUVs without marked parked near the center and parking.
More recently, an asylum applicant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who had been living in the shelter was arrested after informing the Immigration Court, according to two people working at the shelter.
The employees said that before their arrest, he had difficulty requesting work because he carried an ankle monitor, which was given when he presented himself to immigration officials.
Confused, he went to the Immigration Court and asked the officials to withdraw the monitor, the two employees said, but was arrested. He was taken to the high desert detention center in advance, California, while his lawyer declared his case of asylum, which is still pending, according to Lailanie.
He fears being returned to Central Africa, where his father was killed, he said.
“People are scared and people are suffering, but people are also obliged to continue doing the job and do the right thing and try to fight for the right,” he said.
