L.A. Taco reporter Memo Torres has been tirelessly documenting immigration raids in Los Angeles since June.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had made more than 5,000 arrests in Los Angeles since June, when federal agents arrived to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The agency claimed, without evidence, that it had arrested the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” when in fact most of the people arrested had no criminal history. Even U.S. citizens and people with legal authorization to be in the country have been detained in the sweeps.
A federal judge ruled last month that ICE agents were unconstitutionally arresting people based on their race, accent or line of work, and ordered government officials to stop arresting people without reasonable suspicion. Nonetheless, the indiscriminate immigration raids have continued.
Some of the most comprehensive coverage of these arrests comes from L.A. Taco, a local, independent media outlet that began as a food-centric publication. As other local media outlets in L.A. shut down, L.A. Taco continued its food coverage (including its annual TACO MADNESS competition) and expanded into city news and politics, covering everything from policebrutality to racial disparities in weed arrest data to the aftermath of January’sdevastating wildfires. Since June, L.A. Taco reporter Memo Torres has tirelessly documented immigration raids and related news in daily roundups published on the website, as well as YouTube and Instagram…