Californians fear racial profiling amid immigration enforcement

Jackie Ramirez has always been aware of the color of her skin.

There was the school crossing guard who nicknamed her morenita, little brown girl. The uncle who affectionately called her paisita, a country girl.

But never has skin color felt so top of mind than this month, as immigration agents have descended on Southern California, conducting hundreds of arrests. Videos and stories have circulated of people arrested at car washes. Agents picking up street vendors without warrants. A Latino U.S. citizen asked what hospital he was born in.

The heightened fear that kicks in for those “driving while Black” is widely known. But the recent immigration sweeps have underscored how much of an issue skin color — and all the circumstances that attach to it — is for Latinos as well.

Samuel Brown-Vazquez and the Avocado Heights Vaquer@s lead demonstrators from Avocado Heights Park to La Puente City Hall in support of immigrant rights.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Ramirez was born and raised in East Los Angeles. Her mother was born in Mexico; her father is of Mexican descent.

“You’re scared to be brown,” said Ramirez, a Los Angeles radio host for “The Cruz Show” on Real 92.3. “You’re scared to look a certain way right now.”

The Department of Homeland Security has denied that agents are racially profiling. Agency spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has called claims of people being targeted because of skin color “disgusting and categorically FALSE.” But that hasn’t quelled concerns that darker-skinned people will be more likely to be stopped by immigration enforcement agents.

Latino parents are warning their U.S. citizen children to be careful when they leave the house. Some have taken to carrying their passports in their pockets. Workers at a coffee shop in Santa Ana tell customers, “Se cuiden” — take care of yourselves — and ask loved ones to text when they get home.

Even light-skinned Latinos have expressed concerns. Franchesca Olivas, 24, recently drove two hours from Hemet for a protest in downtown L.A. She said she “drives her dad around “because he’s full Mexican, and I’m half-white,” and he’s fearful of getting stopped.

“I’m a white-passing, third-generation Latina and I’m scared,” Taylor Tieman, a South Bay lawyer posted on Instagram Threads. “To my brothers and sisters — I’m so sorry. This country is failing you.”

In another post that has since garnered more than 8,000 likes, Nico Blitz, Ramirez’s fiance, who is Filipino American, stressed the impact of the raids across racial and ethnic lines.

“Filipinos — your legal status doesn’t mean you’re not brown, especially in the eyes of ICE,” Blitz, a DJ host on “The Cruz Show,” posted. “This fight isn’t exclusive to Latinos and Black people.”

Studies show that skin color has long affected the lives of Latinos — and others — in the U.S. Among the disadvantages linked to having darker skin are less income, lower socioeconomic status and more health problems.

A majority of U.S. Latinos — 62% — surveyed by Pew Research Center in 2021 said they felt having a darker skin color hurt their ability to get ahead. And 57% said skin color shapes their daily life experiences a lot or some, with about half saying discrimination based on race or skin color is a “very big problem” in the U.S.

But amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown, skin color has added another layer of fear.

In January, Native Americans alleged that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were harassing tribal members. A letter sent by nine congressional Democrats to Trump stated they had heard “several concerning reports” regarding the detention and harassment.

“Native American Tribal members are United States citizens. Stopping people because of what they look like — with dark skin, Asian, Latino or Native American characteristics is never acceptable,” the letter stated. “ICE’s dangerous behavior of harassing American citizens, seemingly only due to the way they look, is unconstitutional and un-American.”

This year, ICE agents mistakenly detained a deputy U.S. marshal in Tucson because he “fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE,” according to a statement from a U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson. The agency did not identify the deputy U.S. marshal or what description he fit.

The deputy U.S. marshal’s identity was confirmed by other law enforcement officers “and he exited the building without incident,” the statement read.

As immigration agents increased the pace of arrests across Southern California in early June, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis released a statement informing constituents that people were being targeted “based on their skin color and the type of work they do.”

Solis, whose mother immigrated from Nicaragua and her father from Mexico, said she’s “never felt so under siege.”

“It is an attack, not just on our immigrant community, but [on] people of color,” Solis said in an interview. “I know there are many people, including folks I’m associated with, friends, colleagues, who have families who are mixed status, and people are petrified to even show up to work, to send their kids to school. And this is harming our economy.”

Solis noted that during the height of the COVID pandemic, Asians were being targeted based on how they looked.

“Now it’s Latinos,” she said.

On a recent weekday, Martin Chairez, a minister at a church in Santa Ana, was walking with his sons when he stopped to take photos of the National Guard troops posted outside the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse in Orange County. He had taken his sons there to pray for the community.

A man on a horse holds small American flags.

Chairez was born in the Mexican state of Nayarit and came to the U.S. when he was 9. He was a so-called Dreamer, one of millions of immigrants brought to this country before they turned 16. And he benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed such young people, who were undocumented, to work, travel and get higher education legally.

Chairez has been married for 20 years, but he said his wife couldn’t petition for him to obtain legal status until their 11th wedding anniversary. He’s now a lawful permanent resident.

While working as a director at a border program in Tijuana, Chairez said, he saw asylum seekers and refugees coming from Haiti, Ukraine, South America and Central America.

“It’s quite revealing that no one from Ukraine, no one from Russia is being detained and deported — and they shouldn’t be. They also came here fleeing war and seeking opportunity,” Chairez said, his hands on his hips.

“I think it’s revealing that people from Central and South America are being targeted but people from Europe are not,” he said. “And again, they shouldn’t be, but neither should the people from South and Central America.”

Chairez’s wife is Black and his 14- and 12-year-old sons are biracial. When they get older and learn how to drive, he said, he’ll have to have those conversations with them “of what it means to drive while being a Black man.”

“Now that has extended, not just to those situations, but it’s applying to almost every aspect of our lives,” he said. “When we go to the grocery store, when we go shopping, when we’re out here taking a walk, are we going to be targeted? It seems like we’re now in a permanent posture of vulnerability, and that shouldn’t be. That’s not just.”

Nearby, Chelsea Salazar, 23, rushed back to her parking meter in Santa Ana after snapping photos of the National Guard. Salazar, a Corona resident and daughter of immigrants, said she’d heard of a raid on the 91 Freeway, which she takes to go home from her job as a behavioral interventionist.

That’s when she realized she had left her ID and her passport at home. Salazar, who struggles with anxiety, said she panicked and asked a friend to stay at her home while things calmed down instead of getting on the highway. She is a citizen but said she found herself questioning: “Are they going to believe me? What are they going to do to me?”

A man on a horse is draped in an American flag.

“I definitely did feel like I was going to probably get singled out or looked at different,” she said.

Carlos Garcia Mateo, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, said his parents are documented and just got their papers after 20 years. The Santa Ana resident pointed out how long it takes for people to become U.S. citizens in the country and said he has his own fears.

“If I step out of my house, am I going to get racially profiled?” he asked. “People like to allude to Nazi Germany and it kind of is. Capture first, ask questions later. What precedent does that set?”

On Father’s Day, more than 50 people gathered at Avocado Heights Park in the San Gabriel Valley for a march against deportations and raids. At a house near the park, a handwritten sign in Spanish offered goat milk for sale. The animals bleated from behind a wooden fence.

Residents of the equestrian community gathered on horseback — an American flag draped over one rider’s shoulders — in cars and on foot for the more than three-mile trek to City Hall under an unrelenting sun. People held signs that read, “La Puente heat melts ICE” and “I drink my horchata warm cuz I hate ICE!”

Music wafted out of cars in the procession and from a speaker that people wheeled along the route. Their soundtrack included Los Tigres del Norte’s “Somos Más Americanos” — “We are more American.” The band sang of being yelled at a thousand times “to return to my land.”

“I want to remind the gringo: I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me,” the lyrics rang out. “America was born free, man divided it.”

Ramirez and Blitz joined the caravan, seated in the bed of a black Toyota Tacoma truck. Ramirez’s brother, sister-in-law and 4-year-old niece were inside. Ramirez waved a Mexican flag; Blitz an American one.

“I need the Filipino community to realize we are brown too. No matter what we do, we will not be white, our skin will not be white,” said Blitz, who was born in San Francisco.

“We might have our legalization. Our parents might be legal,” he said. “But regardless of the fact, I feel that whenever ICE agents are out, they’re not looking for the papers. They’re not looking like, ‘Hey, where’s your passport?’ They’re looking at the color of your skin.”

When they reached La Puente City Hall, Ramirez and Blitz sat on the grass. Organizers urged attendees to register to vote if they were eligible and called out the groups of people who had been taken by immigration agents. Fruit vendors. Car wash employees. Construction workers.

“My elote man,” a young woman shouted.

“These are meaningful members of our community,” Samuel Brown-Vazquez, with the Avocado Heights Vaquer@s, told the crowd. Agents are “not going after the criminals; they’re going after the people who came here to work.”

Nearby, someone held a sign that read, “Sin miedo y con orgullo.”

Without fear and with pride.

Ramirez joined in as the crowd began to shout: “Sí se puede.” Yes, we can.

Times staff writer Summer Lin contributed to this report.

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