Amanda Trebach, a member of the immigrant rights’ group Unión del Barrio and an ICU nurse, was monitoring ICE operations in the Los Angeles area when she was targeted and arrested herself. Video of the scene shows masked agents in plainclothes forcing her to the ground and briefly kneeling on her head. “They took me into an unmarked vehicle. They did not read me my rights. They didn’t tell me where I was going,” says Trebach, who was detained overnight before being released without charges the following evening after an outpouring of community support. She recounts her experience and explains why she will continue to fight for her immigrant neighbors in the face of the ongoing danger to her community.
TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We go now to Los Angeles, California, where grassroots organizers are challenging some of the most intense federal shows of force in immigration enforcement crackdowns of Trump’s second term. Earlier this month, the community activist, ICU nurse Amanda Trebach was violently arrested while documenting the operations of ICE agents. She’s a member of the group Unión del Barrio. At the time of her arrest, Amanda was participating in a peace patrol outside Terminal Island, a Coast Guard base used by ICE and Customs and Border Protection as a hub for operations in California. Dozens of volunteers have routinely stationed themselves outside Terminal Island to monitor the movement of the federal vehicles streaming in and out of the staging area. Terminal Island was once a thriving Japanese American fishing village that was demolished during World War II, with its residents forcibly sent to internment camps…