It started as another Saturday morning in the Home Depot in Paramount, a working class, mainly Latino outdoor area south of the center of Los Angeles.
Usually the store that is located along the river bed in Los Angeles, filled with weekend fighters who tackle home improvements, employees who collect supplies and immigrants collect in search of work.
But that morning borderpatrouille agents were seen across the home depot and gathered quickly on social media around 9 o'clock in the morning. Passers touched their horns. Soon demonstrators arrived. Home Depot finally closed.
The collisions between authorities and protesters lasted hours in both Paramount and the nearby Compton, although it was far from widespread. The chaos covered the area directly around the Alondra Boulevard store, but it was enough to provide dramatic TV video.
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And it was an important trigger for the Trump administration to send 2,000 national guard troops to LA to deal with disruptions and to help with immigration actions.
So what exactly happened in Paramount?
Twice reporters spent a large part of the day and night there on Saturday. Here is what they saw.
Protesters protect themselves against law enforcement during a protest. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
A touch of problems
Before the crowd arrived, Assembly member José Luis Solache Jr., who represents the Paramount area that includes the Home Depot, on the highway on its way to a community event in neighboring Lakewood when he spotting a caravan of American customs and border protection vehicles that Alondra boulevard. The street runs through the heart of the working class, mostly immigrants Latino community of Paramount.
He turned around and thought that they might be an immigration in his district and he followed them to an office park, the Paramount Business Center, across the street from Home Depot. Federal Legal Enforcement has a facility in Paramount.
Agents arrived there and the black gate that they would later guard with Volleys of tear gas and Flash-Bang grenades was open.
Unclear why they were there, he decided to record a message for Instagram.
“I saw a border agent here from the highway coming from Alondra. I had something like that, no, it can't happen,” he said.
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It was around 9 o'clock in the morning
“This is terrible,” he said on one of the messages. “I literally vibrate.”
“I don't know what they are doing inside. But I mean, why were they in Paramount?” He told his followers.
A demonstrator wears a Mexican flag while the delegates of La County Sheriff form a law enforcement line. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Spread over social media
Word quickly spread on social media.
Passers touched their horns. Soon demonstrators arrived.
“This is the situation,” said Solache, the assembly member, and turned the camera to show dozens of uniformed immigration and customs enforcement agents outside the Black Gates, while people kept cameras on the scene and Mariachi Schalde.
“The community comes out strongly to show that they are not welcome in our community,” said Solache, whose parents emigrated from Guanajuato, Mexico to the US. “None and Mi Distrito. Not in my district. Vámonos Pa 'Fuera (let's go, go here).”
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The outrage had grown in Los Angeles and the Latino -Migrants Community after a week of enforcement actions.
The day before, federal officials fell over a shop and distribution warehouse in the Fashion District Downtown, a business district fueled by immigrants, and arrested a senior official. In the run-up to the raid on the workplace, federal agents arrested immigrants when they came to the planned check-ins or the appearances of the courthouse made up and down, the families tear apart. A father was arrested for his 8-year-old old son. Parent groups raised alarms after an elementary student of Torrance and his father were set for deportation. For many, talk about deporting violent criminals. “This entire rhetoric to come after hard -working families is what we are all worried about,” said Solache. “If you come to do a raid at companies, that is where the anger comes from.”
He said he and many others came out to observe and send a message that immigration enforcement was not welcome in their community.
Lines
The scene started to get darker when agents formed a line and raised rifles that shots tears and pushed the crowd back.
The protests arrived when the word spread on social media of a raid at Home Depot or at a meat package. There was never a raid at Home Depot, but dozens of border patrol agents and other federal agencies were in a gated industrial office park, where a first crowd had gathered.
Most protesters were filming. There were social workers, neighbors and lawyers.
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But near the gates, federal agents saw that protesters threw something towards them or approaching the police line, they shot tear gas or flash-bang rounds. There were about 100 people there. As the crowd grew, the delegates of the sheriff were used to block a perimeter in the east and west, near the 710 highway. Protesters shouted at representatives and asked why they helped.
The crowd started to form, while hundreds of rounds were shot in the late morning near the office park.
Around noon the tensions grew when the agents tried to erase the way for border patrol and other unark vehicles to leave the business park. They shot tear gas and flash bang grenades on demonstrators who were on Alondra Boulevard. When a caravan of federal vehicles left the gates, demonstrators followed them and threw stones and other objects.
Protesters keep marching to a law enforcement line. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Chaos follows
Shortly after they left, a demonstrator released a garbage bag and set it on fire. A few others pushed a cart with concrete blocks from Home Depot and they stood on the road to block vehicles. A man hit the block and spread the broken pieces on the road. Further to the west along Alondra Boulevard, a crowd gathered behind a perimeter set up by the delegates of the sheriff at the 710 highway.
Then an American Marshall bus stopped from the highway to Alondra. The crowd surrounded the bus and tried to push it back and kicked it until tear gas was shot.
The impasse took place until the afternoon with protesters who registered a line of the delegates of the Sheriff who were equipped with shields and weapons at the intersection of Alondra Boulevard and Hunsaker Avenue, on the eastern circumference and next to Manuel Dominguez High School.
The crowd sang, “Ice go home” and “no righteousness, no peace.” Some people shouted at the delegates and wondered why they were in force. At one point, delegates started to shoot flash-end-end grenades on the crowd, which had to retire. People got angry and cursed in representatives. At least one man was seen who screamed against the delegates as he took them: “What the hell are you doing?
A woman under the protest group seemed to bleed and another man was treated for injuries. At least one person walked around with his shirt, his back bruised from foam projectiles that had hit him. In the distance, near the company park, demonstrating fireworks left and a Gollow of Black Smoke could be seen.
Protesters explode fireworks over a torch car at a crossroads on Compton. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Collisions continue in the night
Despite the use of tear gas and so -called less deadly projectiles, people returned to the intersection of Alondra Boulevard and Hunsaker Avenue, screaming at representatives, who sometimes mock them.
Around 4 p.m. the confrontation near a home depot was named an illegal meeting and officials warned protesters in Spanish and English to leave the area.
Around 100 demonstrators had gathered on the other side of the 710 Freeway near Atlantic Avenue and Alondra Boulevard, where some people were lobes of rocks and bottles in the delegates of La County Sheriff. They put at least three fires in the area, including a car that burned in the middle of the intersection.
At one point the representatives returned to the bottom of a bridge that runs over the 710 highway and the Los Angeles river. During the night, representatives and protesters exchanged Jabs, with demonstrators who launched fireworks that exploded near the line of representatives and police vehicles. They used cars to drive to the representatives in an attempt to scare them, causing the representatives to fire rubber bullets, tear gas and flash-bang grenades on the vehicles.
The helicopter of a sheriff circled above all night, warned people they would be found and arrested and to leave the area after an illegal meeting had been declared, but the demonstrators continued, singing and waving flags while some in the crowd kept throwing things at the delegates.
It was almost 9.30 pm when the line of representatives and vehicles started to move to the crowd, forcing them to flee back to Atlantic Avenue and Alondra Boulevard.
Delegates continued to fire tear gas and flash-bang grenades, sometimes in the direction of a gas station where demonstrators stood. By midnight, demonstrators started to leave, ending a night of conflict between local and federal law enforcement officers and in residents of Paramount.
Federal authorities said that some arrests had been made by agents. At least one video showed a woman who was previously tackled on the ground and was taken away. Other videos show that two other people who are also omitted by federal agents.
“Several arrests have already been made to hinder our activities,” said deputy director than Bongino, FBI, said on X. “There will be more. We pour the videos for more perpetrators. You bring chaos and we bring manuals.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
