ICE beat a union president in a “sanctuary city”
On Friday we shared an incredible story from San Diego: a neighborhood stood up to ICE and drove them out with nothing but courage and community.
But now, just days later, ICE is ramping up in Los Angeles and countless Angelenos are caught in the crossfire.
ICE didn’t just show up to detain. They came to punish.
They raided restaurants, dragged people into unmarked vans, and treated working families like fugitives.
David Huerta, President of SEIU California and leader of 750,000 workers across the state, stood in peaceful protest—carrying not just a union banner, but the conscience of a labor movement that refuses to look away.
And ICE beat him.
Federal agents beat and arrested a labor leader and an American citizen for doing exactly what any decent person would do: showing up.
And when the public gathered in response, militarized riot police lined up with ICE, not to deescalate but to enforce terror.
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They declared an unlawful assembly. They fired so-called “less-lethal” rounds, the same rubber bullets that shattered lives in the George Floyd demonstrations.
Let’s be clear: there is nothing “less lethal” about state violence.
Now Trump has issued blatantly illegal orders to federalize 2,000 California National Guard troops in defiance of our current governor, sending them into L.A. to squash what the White House is calling “a rebellion.”
Newsom’s only response was to reassure the president that the LAPD are sufficiently militarized without any help needed from the National Guard.
We do not need city or state leaders who sic the police on everyday people trying to stop the modern-day Gestapo.
But here’s what gives me hope:
The labor movement has always been where courage lives. Not in headlines. On the ground.
In the faces of those who link arms and say: if you want to take one of us, you’ll have to go through all of us.
That’s the spirit we’re building this campaign around.
Because ICE is a bipartisan weapon decades in the making. And unless we confront that truth, the raids won’t stop.
The silence won’t break. And the violence will escalate.
Under my governorship, California will not comply. We will reject ICE.
We will sever every tie, end every contract, and make this state a true sanctuary—not just in slogan, but in law and practice.
Pete and Power,
Butch Ware
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