Last summer, armed and masked immigration agents began plucking people off street corners, from workplaces, parking lots, and department stores across Los Angeles.
Partners, breadwinners, grandparents, and children were arrested, detained, and deported, leaving neighborhoods rattled.
A year later, families are still living under the shadow of those raids, sorting through the emotional and administrative wreckage.
They file paperwork to bring deported relatives back, suppress flashbacks to the chaos, and rebuild daily routines without a loved one.
Noémi and Jesús: A Family Divided by a Signature
Noémi’s husband, Jesús, still wakes her every morning with a phone call from Kiní, Mexico. He calls their four children next, urging them to get ready for school.
Before his arrest, he would have had breakfast ready for them.
Jesús had worked at a Westchester carwash for a decade. He was detained there last June, pressured to sign a document without his glasses, and deported.
He had been in the US since 1992 and married Noémi, his first love, two years after they met.
Noémi and the kids visited him in Mexico and considered relocating, but decided it was best for the children’s education to return to Inglewood.
Their daughters are in community college, studying law and software engineering. The children take music and dance lessons and play sports.
Still, daily life feels dissonant without Jesús. Noémi misses their lunchtime tacos together.
Dhelainy misses walking the dogs with her dad. Angel misses weekend training.
Gabriel, the youngest, doesn’t fully understand why his father is away, only that his mom cries and his dad can’t come to his kindergarten graduation.
The family has submitted a green card petition, but backlogs could take six years or longer. Noémi searches for a lawyer who might reunite them sooner.
“The future is all just a blank,” she said.
Christopher: A Nephew’s Race to Find His Uncle
Christopher knew little about immigration policy until his uncle Daniel was taken last June.
Daniel, who has significant intellectual disabilities and limited speech, was strolling in east Los Angeles when agents in an unmarked vehicle cornered him.
Christopher, a US citizen, quickly became the family’s navigator.
Using ICE’s online tracker, he traced his uncle to a federal building, then to the Adelanto detention center.
After days of calls, a legal aid group found Daniel there, scared and confused.
Then Daniel disappeared from the system. Christopher drove to Adelanto with his sister, searching restaurants, parks, and gas stations.
They didn’t find him.
Eventually, lawyers learned Daniel had been deported to Tijuana, where volunteers at a reception center located him in a local hospital.
He had no idea his family was searching for him.
It took more than nine months to get Daniel paroled back into the US. Christopher now breathes easier, but still worries about other family members without status.
“That ever-looming fear and anxiety, it still exists,” he said.
Mario: From Breadwinner to Purgatory
Mario had worked non-stop since arriving from Mexico 33 years ago, commuting 80 miles each day to a carwash in Santa Ana.
He was proud to be the sole breadwinner for his wife and three children.
Last August, despite his family’s pleas to stay home amid the raids, he reported to work. He heard yelling, saw co-workers running, and hid in the restroom.
An officer swung open the door, and soon Mario was in handcuffs.
He spent six nights on a cold holding cell floor, huddling with others for warmth, then two months at Adelanto, where he fell ill.
He was released in October after a habeas corpus petition.
Now he must check in with ICE via an app and cannot work while awaiting a final deportation hearing in July.
His son pays the bills. “Life has been a sort of purgatory,” he said.
