At 6 A.M., they piled into two cars and drove over Vincent Thomas Bridge onto Terminal Island, a bulk of reclaimed land in the middle of the harbor, passing vast shipping-container yards and small ramshackle buildings left over from the port's cannery days. From there, they turned onto Seaside Avenue, a narrow road that leads to a memorial of Furusato -- the Japanese American fishing village that was destroyed during the period of Japanese internment -- near the island's southern tip. About a hundred yards past the monument, a manned checkpoint marks the entrance to a small peninsula of federal land that houses a U.S. Coast Guard base and a prison. Seaside Avenue is its sole access point. The unique location of this complex makes it ideal for federal agents looking for a protected staging ground out of public view, while also allowing anyone to monitor the movements of those agents as they enter and exit the facility.
Back in June, Chiland, a Los Angeles public-school teacher, heard rumors that National Guard troops were being marshalled on Terminal Island in preparation to arrest anti-ICE demonstrators across the city. This inspired Chiland and his wife, Maya Suzuki Daniels, to co-found the Harbor Area Peace Patrol, a group of community activists that track the movements of immigration authorities around Los Angeles. "I came down here to check on that, because we wanted to let people know," Chiland told me. He didn't find any National Guard members that day, but "what I did see was a convoy of eleven vehicles" -- some labelled Border Patrol, others unmarked, with tinted windows -- leaving the federal complex and heading for the city. The next morning, another member of the newly established Peace Patrol returned to check if the Border Patrol convoys were back. They were. "We've been seeing them every day since," he said. Today was day ninety-one.
By six-thirty, the Peace Patrollers were standing along the shoulder of Seaside Avenue. Maldonado, a Los Angeles-area workers-compensation hearing representative, distributed green reflective vests ("so they can't say they didn't see us"), and the group got to work. Four of the Patrollers whipped out their cellphones to photograph each passing vehicle, while Chiland managed the Peace Patrol's Instagram account -- a vital tool for broadcasting information and communicating with the public. Maldonado held tally clickers in each hand (one for inbound traffic to the federal complex, one for outbound) and counted the flow of vehicles. "We'll get around a hundred to a hundred and thirty cars per day," he told me. An S.U.V. and a sedan drove by. Click. Click. "If we get an influx of cars, that lets me know that there's a lot of activity going on in L.A." The busiest day since the Patrol started recording was in August, when three hundred and five vehicles passed through. He laughed: "We'll tell our grandkids that we defeated fascism with six-dollar clickers."
With the images they capture at Terminal Island, the Peace Patrol and Unión del Barrio, an affiliated community-activist organization, compare vehicles with those that appear at immigration raids throughout the region. Some vehicles logged at Terminal Island by the group have been spotted as far away as Ventura, and even Sacramento. Once a license plate has been confirmed as that of a federal agent by appearing both at Terminal Island and at an immigration-enforcement raid, the Peace Patrol will post an image of the plate and the vehicle to the group's Instagram account. In a few instances, "we've seen one license plate on two different vehicles," Maldonado said. Other times, a temporary paper license plate has been used to obscure known plates.
"Exposure is not something that ICE wants," Tim McOsker, a Los Angeles City Council member whose district covers Terminal Island, explained to me in a phone call. McOsker has been a valuable resource for the Patrollers, and his wife has volunteered with the group. "When you are engaged in a systematic, unconstitutional activity where you're trying to grab as many people in your net as possible, you do not want cameras." The agents flowing through Terminal Island seem to agree. According to the Peace Patrol, after three months and dozens of confirmed vehicles and plates, certain cars are known to the Patrollers and have nicknames, like Christopher Columbus, Big Red, and Jammer. The federal agents have become aware of the Patrollers, too. Some agents will attempt to hide their faces as they pass -- what the patrollers have dubbed the shy shoulder. Others will try to disguise their unmarked cars with things like a "COEXIST" bumper sticker (nickname: "Captain Coexist") or Teddy bears on the dashboard. Still others will get aggressive. "We've been swerved at, we've had cars rip down the street at seventy, eighty miles per hour," said Cait Bartlett, another former L.A. public-school teacher. Not long after, a large pickup truck known to the group rolled by, its horn blaring at the patrollers as the driver flashed his middle finger. "They're trying to be intimidating," Bartlett continued. "So, there is a little bit of nervousness attached to it, but I know the work that we're doing is important."
A month earlier, that intimidation had boiled over. On the morning of August 8th, two masked men leaving the federal complex exited their vehicle and targeted one of the Patrollers, Amanda Trebach, who was photographing cars and holding a protest sign. She was pinned to the ground, handcuffed, and thrown into a van. Then, as Trebach recounts, the agents drove her into the complex, where she was detained for several hours. Later, she was moved into a second vehicle by masked, armed men (including one of the men who had arrested her), where a special agent from the Department of Homeland Security questioned her. From there, Trebach was moved to a federal detention facility in downtown Los Angeles, where she was held until later the next day.
When reached for comment, Tricia McLaughlin, the D.H.S. Assistant Secretary for public affairs, alleged that Trebach jumped in front of a Border Patrol vehicle leaving the federal complex, causing the driver to swerve, then "hit the car with her signs and fists while yelling obscenities at agents." McLaughlin further alleged that Trebach blocked agents of Customs and Border Protection from carrying out their duties, and that led to her arrest. (Trebach has not been charged with a crime.)
"None of that happened," Trebach told me, when reached by phone. D.H.S. is "very frustrated and angry that we're out there filming them, but we're standing on public property." She also said that her cellphone was confiscated while in detention, and it remains in the possession of D.H.S. As a result, Trebach, an I.C.U. nurse, worries about the additional personal information that agents may have accessed and could use to continue targeting her. "I'm scared every night when I come home that they're going to take me away," she said.
For Suzuki Daniels, the Peace Patrol co-founder, video of Trebach's arrest is still challenging to watch. "I have a physical reaction to it," she said. "The only reason that it's not getting national outcry is that, right now, we're being inundated with so many crimes in our communities and across the United States. I think we're kind of stunned, and in a freeze-trauma response."
Roughly two hours after Trebach was taken away, a group of masked agents returned to her unlocked car, rummaged through her belongings, "and held three of our Patrollers at gunpoint," Maldonado, who was present that morning, recalled. In the Peace Patrol's video of the confrontation, a Port Police cruiser is visible passing by, twice. Maldonado still doesn't understand why they didn't stop and intervene: "The federal agents never identified themselves. They're masked. You don't know if they're vigilantes. You don't know who they are. Port Police just cruised by and pretended they didn't see it at all."
I reached out to Thomas Gazsi, the chief of the Los Angeles Port Police, about the incident, and about the role of his department in upholding the rights of the Peace Patrollers to assemble on a public road. Gazsi confirmed that someone from his department was present the morning Trebach was detained, but clarified that it was a port-security civilian officer, not a police officer. Still, should the security officer have, at the very least, stopped to witness the incident with the gunmen, and called it in to the department? "She reported to her supervisors, which was reported to our department," Gazsi responded. "By the time our police officers arrived out there, everybody was gone."
The incident highlights the hollowness of the anti-Trump rhetoric of local politicians in Los Angeles. The city's mayor, Karen Bass, has repeatedly decried the federal government's incursion into the city (calling it an "assault" and "un-American"), and saying ICE's relentless immigration raids are a "reign of terror" that must end. In July, she issued an executive directive that bolstered a 2017 city ordinance prohibiting city resources, including the L.A.P.D., from being used in immigration-enforcement activities, "unless required by federal or state law." Yet, in multiple videos supplied to me by Unión del Barrio, the L.A.P.D. is present at immigration-enforcement activities, not impeding the federal agents but in what appears to be an accessory role.
In a video from June 24th, immigration agents are seen actively detaining individuals on the street, while L.A.P.D. officers stand in front of them, hands perched over their gun holsters or wielding batons, as they push back a crowd that has formed to intervene. In another video, from August 13th, an L.A.P.D. officer stands a few yards from an active Homeland Security Investigations operation as a person off camera asks "why L.A.P.D. is working with Homeland Security." The officer responds that L.A.P.D. "provides security" for the agency, and that the department has worked with H.S.I. on "many occasions."
This difference between what politicians promise and what actually happens has become more pronounced, of late, for anyone aligned with the Democratic Party. For Suzuki Daniels, the failure of Democrats to stand up against rising right-wing authoritarianism has left her feeling jaded about the entire political system. "No politician is going to save us," she said. After years of canvassing for political candidates, signing petitions, and making phone calls for campaigns, "everything I do for the next four years is going to be direct action and mutual aid," she said. "I am not pleading with politicians to save me or save the people I care about. There are masked men riding around my town trying to kidnap people."
This ethos harks back to another era of resistance in the Los Angeles harbor. Back on Terminal Island, a little after 7 A.M., Gina, another member of the group, who declined to give her last name, asked if she could show me the statue in the middle of the Japanese fishing-village memorial. She told me that her grandfather had been a Sicilian immigrant who fished in San Pedro Bay, and that he had learned how to catch tuna with longline poles -- a technique introduced by Japanese immigrants, many of whom had lived on Terminal Island. During the Second World War, as the U.S. government razed Furusato, "there was a lot of protection" from the non-Japanese community, Gina, said. "There was a lot of backlash, because what [the government] did was such a dirty thing." She choked up as she continued, "This is white supremacy, once again, trying to take a foothold -- it's full fascism. Just like what happened to the Japanese Americans." She turned to show me the statue of two Japanese fishermen, one looking out at Los Angeles, the other staring back at the federal complex, "watching them come and go," as if they were part of their own peace patrol. ♦