Asian American leaders urge communities to stand by Latinos, denounce ICE raids

While federal immigration raids continue to upset life in Los Angeles, Asian American leaders rally their communities to raise their voice to Latinos support, which were the main objectives of application sweeping, warning that the districts frequent by Asian immigrants could be following.

The organizers say that many Asian immigrants have already been affected by the repression of the Trump administration against immigrants working in the country without documentation. Dozens of Southeast Asian immigrants in the counties of Los Angeles and Orange whose expulsion orders had been detained indefinite were held after having presented routine verifications in the US immigration and customs offices, according to immigration lawyers and advocacy groups.

In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotians and Vietnamese immigrants whose expulsion orders had remained – in some cases for decades – have been informed that these orders will now be applied.

Targeted Asian immigrants are generally sentenced for a crime after their arrival in the United States, which makes them eligible for expulsion after their release from prison or prison. In most cases, Ice never followed because immigrants lived in the United States long enough for their country of origin to recognize them as citizens.

“Our community is much quieter, but we are detained in very large numbers,” said Connie Chung Joe, director general of Asian Americans advancing the southern California judge. “There is such stigma and fear that, unlike the Latin community that wants to fight and talk about injustices, the first reaction of our community is to descend and hide more and more.”

On Thursday, more than half a dozen leaders representing Thai, Japanese and South-Asian communities held a press conference at Little Tokyo urging the members of the community to stand together and denounce the federal action as an excess of management.

President Trump came into office in January, promising to target violent criminals for expulsion. But in the midst of pressure to increase the expulsion numbers, administration officials in recent months have put their objective to agricultural workers, landscapers, street vendors and other workers, many of whom have been working in the country for decades.

While around 79% of the undocumented residents of the County of Los Angeles are from Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants represent the second group, constituting 16% of the people of the county without legal authorization, According to the Policy Institute migration. Through the United States, the Indians are the third group of undocumented residents, behind the Mexicans and the Salvadoran.

According to the Pew Research Center, the metropolitan region of Los an

So far, the highest raids in Southern California have focused on Latin districts, targeting car washing, restaurants, domiciliary renovation stores, churches and other places where undocumented residents are gathering and working.

The member of the Los Angeles Municipal Council, Ysabel Jurado and Peter Gee of the Little Tokyo Service Center, were among the speakers who denounced the ice raids at a press conference on Thursday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

But Asian companies were not immune. A raid outside a Home Depot in Hollywood occurred in front of the Thai city, where the organizers saw glacial agents patrolling the streets. At the end of May, the department of internal security agents made a nightclub in a nightclub in the Los Angeles region, arresting 36 people who, according to them, were Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants in the country without authorization.

In Little Bangladesh, immigration agents recently held 16 people outside a grocery store, according to Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of Aapi Equity Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 community organizations.

“They will come even more for us in the coming days and weeks,” said Kulkarni. “We are therefore only protected when we are in solidarity with our Angelenos compatriots.”

From June 1 to 10, at the start of federal sweeping, ice data show that 722 people were arrested in the Los Angeles region. The figures were obtained by the expulsion data project, a benchmark for the application of the UC Berkeley law.

An analysis of the Times revealed that 69% of those arrested during this period had no criminal conviction. Almost 48% were Mexican, 16% of Guatemala and 8% of Salvador.

Forty -seven of the 722 people detained – or around 6% – came from Asian countries.

“We know that fear is widespread and is deep,” said the assembly Mike Fong, a democrat whose district takes the park in Monterey and West San Gabriel Valley, regions with large populations of Asian immigrants.

The members of the Los Angeles municipal council, Nithya Raman and Ysabel Jurado, spoke of the repercussions that raids had on immigrant communities. Raman is an American Indian and Jurado is a Philippin-American.

Jurado said that the undocumented Philippins constitute an important part of the regional caregivers, taking care of the elderly and young children.

“Their work reflects the deepest values ​​of our communities: compassion, service and interdependence,” said Jurado. “Their work is essential and their humanity must be honored.”

Jurado and Raman called on the federal government to end the raids.

“It’s such an important time to express themselves and to ensure that the Latin American community does not feel alone,” said Raman. “I also clearly want to understand each person who is an American Asian, they are not only raids on others. These are raids on us. ”

The editor Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

This article is part of the time ‘ Actions report initiative,, funded by the James Irvine Foundationexploring the challenges faced by California’s economic divide.