All eyes have been on Los Angeles since June 6, when protests erupted over sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that were taking place across the area as part of the Trump administration's broader onslaught of deportation. As of early June, ICE arrests since the beginning of Trump’s second term, which began in January, have topped 100,000.
After authorizing the deployment of the National Guard to LA on June 8, President Trump took to Truth Social on June 15 to announce his intention to “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions and Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.” He added, “That is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role."
Los Angeles is far from the only sanctuary jurisdiction in California with a sizable population that is vulnerable to President Trump’s deportation efforts: In this region, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties were included in a now-retracted list that was released by the Department of Homeland Security of more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions” nationwide that the agency claims are “deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws.” Though these counties are not themselves sanctuary counties, California is a sanctuary state — meaning there are strict limits on collaboration between state and local law enforcement and ICE.
Home to some 900,000 immigrants — over a third of whom, according to the University of Southern California's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, are undocumented — communities farther north in the Central Valley have also been increasingly on edge with the administration’s intensified calls for mass deportations since President Trump's return in January. However, like those south of them, communities in the Central Valley are going to great lengths to protect one another from ICE.
Alyssa Leiva, 28, is one organizer who has been at the forefront of the movement to protect the Valley’s communities from ICE. Leiva was born and raised in Stockton, CA, where more than a quarter of the population are immigrants; it was ranked in 2020 as one of the most racially diverse cities in the United States with a population of 300,000 or more by U.S. News & World Report. The anti-immigrant sentiment incited by Trump is deeply personal for Leiva, whose mother and grandmother emigrated to the US from Mexico.
“My mom came to the country with my grandmother at six years old,” says Leiva. “Growing up in Stockton…I had a lot of peers who were a part of an underserved community and were immigrants themselves.”
Leiva began her advocacy work in high school, and later worked in local politics as district director for former Stockton councilwoman Kimberly Warmsley. A large part of her work, according to Leiva, focused on the south side of Stockton, and included advocating for the community’s sizable immigrant population.
Since the start of Trump’s second administration, Leiva has been using her city council experience to collaborate with organizers across the Central Valley to combat increased ICE activity, distributing Know Your Rights materials in large cities in the Central Valley, such as Modesto and Merced. With heightened tensions in Southern California, Leiva and other activists have been working to start an action fund to assist with anti-deportation work.
Leiva also works with Central Valley BIPOC Coalition, which was started by 26-year-old activist Julissa Ruiz Ramirez in 2020. Ramirez immigrated from Mexico to the Central Valley as a child, and as a college student was a part of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán), an organization that combines Chicano unity with political activism. After Ramirez graduated from college in 2020, she and her comrades wanted to continue their political activism within their communities at home, which is how the Coalition was born.
“We needed a space to organize and to continue the work we were doing," says Ramirez, "but also rooted in our values.… A space that’s rooted in liberation and love.”
Most of the Central Valley BIPOC Coalition’s work is concentrated in Stanislaus County, where the population of immigrants is 7% higher than the national average. But the organization has stepped in to provide assistance across the vast San Joaquin Valley, including Bakersfield — which is over 200 miles south of Stanislaus County. Though national media has mostly been concentrated on Los Angeles, Ramirez feels it is crucial for eyes to be on the Central Valley to properly address the plight of undocumented immigrants.
“California is such an [economic] power worldwide,” says Ramirez, referring to California’s status as the fourth-largest economy in the world, thanks in part to robust agricultural production. “A lot of that is because of our people.” A quarter of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and other food products come from the Central Valley, which is heavily reliant on migrant labor workers. These migrant labor workers make up the communities that Leiva and Ramirez are trying to protect.
In collaboration with other organizations, says Ramirez, Central Valley BIPOC Coalition has hosted several Know Your Rights meetings across the Central Valley. Due to the past month’s escalations, they quickly ran out of the 3,000 cards they created to distribute to their communities.
Sacramento is another sanctuary city in the Central Valley that has seen an uptick of ICE activity that threatens its immigrant population. NorCal Resist, an organization based in the California capital city, has mobilized to protect its neighbors by focusing on mutual aid and “identifying the needs of the community, and then addressing them in an organic way,” explains volunteer Giselle Garcia.
NorCal Resist, which is made up almost entirely of volunteers, partners with youth organizations across the region that need guidance in protecting their neighbors from ICE. One of the most direct ways they help is through an accompaniment program, in which volunteers join vulnerable community members for government appointments like court appearances. With more reports about ICE agents detaining immigrants at court hearings, this program has proved to be invaluable to the communities of the Central Valley, from their headquarters in Sacramento to 90 miles north in Chico.
Says Garcia, “What we have developed in the last three and a half weeks is a schedule so that we have volunteers at the immigration courthouse around the clock, ready to support individuals.”
In addition to moral support and connections to legal resources, the volunteers offer physical support: “If we have enough [volunteers], they try to use their bodies to block ICE from being able to get their hands on individuals," Garcia says. "And then our volunteers escort them out of the building.”
If ICE agents are successful in arresting people at an appointment, NorCal Resist volunteers “collect all of the necessary information from these individuals so that we can triage them to legal support,” Garcia continues. “We file stays [for them] so they don’t get sent to different facilities outside of California, and we connect with their families who are waiting at home for their loved ones and have no idea that they were arrested.”
Central Valley BIPOC Coalition and NorCal Resist also work with the Valley Watch Network to assist with reporting on ICE activity. Launched by Faith in the Valley, a faith-based community organization that seeks to address issues of inequality in the Central Valley, the Valley Watch Network aims to address the Trump administration’s “intention to increase deportation — an action that threatens the fabric of our communities across the Central Valley,” according to the group's official website.
Garcia emphasizes the importance of the network in keeping communities safe while not allowing panic to fester. “We’ve been seeing a lot of people use this moment with immigration for clickbait.… so we’re seeing a lot of false posts about ICE,” she notes. “We dispel these false reports so that people can feel a bit of relief.” If they confirm that there is indeed ICE activity, an alert is sent out to the community so those without confirmed status can be prepared to avoid the area.
These efforts have not been without significant pushback, however; Garcia claims that, recently, ICE has been barring all volunteers from accessing the federal immigration court in Sacramento, along with reporters and other members of the media. (Teen Vogue has reached out to ICE for comment.) Though the John Moss Federal Building on Sacramento's Capitol Mall was closed off beginning June 13 for immigration hearings, Garcia says it was open again after a week, when NorCal Resists began receiving legal support.
“They say it's our fault for protesting.… But what are we gonna do? We’re not stopping," Garcia tells Teen Vogue. "We still arrive every day at the court.”
Central Valley organizers continue to face opposition to efforts to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE, even when engaging in nonviolent protests. On June 14, several protesters in Modesto were arrested during the “No Kings” protest that took place across the country over the weekend. The Modesto Police Department released a statement claiming that individuals arrested were those who refused to remove their face masks. In 2019, Modesto City Council passed an ordinance that banned wearing face masks at protests.
“This is while the police were wearing masks and covering [their own] faces,” says Ramirez. (Teen Vogue has reached out to the Modesto Police Department for comment.)
Ramirez connects the practice of local police departments covering their faces to ICE agents doing the same while arresting people such as Rümeysa Öztürk in unmarked vehicles. This connection demonstrates that ICE threats impact more than just Latinx communities, which is something Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities (EMAC) Stockton hopes to address with its organization. Central Valley cities like Stockton host some of the nation’s largest Southeast Asian refugee populations.
Nikki Chan, co-executive director of EMAC Stockton, cites the organization’s Rapid Response work as one of the main methods they use to help Southeast Asian community members who are vulnerable to ICE. Chan tells Teen Vogue she has witnessed an increase in deportations of Cambodian immigrants in the last year; during the first two years of Trump’s first term, there was a 279% increase.
Many of the people EMAC Stockton aims to help are currently or formerly incarcerated individuals, by assisting them find lawyers and offering post-conviction relief to help pay for legal fees. These individuals are not undocumented; they are former green card holders who lose their immigration status once convicted of a crime. Many of those in need are Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laos, and Hmong folks who came to the Central Valley as refugees seeking asylum during the 1970s and '80s. Once they lose their status, these individuals have a host of other barriers that EMAC Stockton aims to address.
“There is that layer of them coming here as a refugee, already doing their time, and then [being at risk] of deportation," says Chan, "which becomes a double punishment.”
Given their uniquely immigrant-heavy community, organizers in the Central Valley are more committed than ever to standing up to Trump’s increased mobilization of ICE. “That’s why I started organizing in the Central Valley,” says Leiva. “Because it’s all connected.”
“We’ve held this core belief… that if a movement were to be birthed in California, it is to be birthed in the Central Valley,” says Ramirez.
