As Immigration Crackdown Expands, Citizen Activists Observe and Report
Community groups in LA have been using tech tools and mobile phones to track ICE arrests. But citizen monitoring also carries risks, legal experts say.
A masked US Border Patrol officer stands watch in downtown Los Angeles in August.
Photographer: Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
At around 6 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 8, Amanda Trebach was standing outside Terminal Island, a gated federal facility inside the Port of Los Angeles that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been using as a Southern California staging ground. A 39-year-old nurse from Long Beach, Trebach volunteers with the Harbor Area Peace Patrol, a newly created community group that monitors immigration enforcement activity in the neighborhoods near the port. Equipped with lawn chairs and mobile phones, members of the grassroots community group have been taking photos and videos of vehicles coming in and out of the facility, posting images to their roughly 7,800 followers on Instagram with terse captions — “kidnapper cars leaving TI 9/5 am” — to alert locals to potential immigration raids.
That morning, things escalated. Trebach says she was filming a convoy of SUVs departing the facility when masked agents emerged from the vehicles and yelled at her to stop impeding their work; they arrested her, dragging her into a van and driving her into the detention center in Terminal Island. According to a Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, Trebach jumped in front of the vehicles and struck them with a sign she was carrying; she was arrested for obstructing federal agents.