The UCLA Center for Law and Immigration Policy convened a panel to assess the fightback efforts amid the current explosion of immigration raids.
In early November, the UCLA Center for Law and Immigration Policy convened a panel to assess the fightback efforts amid the current explosion of immigration raids and anti-immigrant public policy. The discussion, Lessons in Resistance: Learning from the Response to the LA Raids, (you can view it yourself here) featured Carlos Amador, Economic Justice manager of CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, along with journalist Jacob Soboroff, a correspondent for NBC news and MS NOW, who has covered immigration going back to the Obama Administration; and Mayra Joachim, Immigrants’ Rights Project Deputy Director, ACLU and counsel on several pivotal cases.
Distinguished Professor and Faculty Co-Director Hiroshi Motomura led the discussion.
The picture that emerged during the presentations is the swift evolution in tactics and strategies that immigrant and civil rights defenders have developed in the course of months.
Panelist Mayra Joaquim, Immigrants’ Rights Deputy Director deputy and a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. Joaquim is involved in several cases, a pivotal one being Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem a class action suit which addresses violations of the 4th amendment.
(To save you the googling here, the 4th Amendment says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”)
A current ACLU suit calls for an end to unlawful stops and arrests, and for the protection of the plaintiff’s due process. It also calls for access to counsel while in immigration detention.
Mayra Joaquim, Immigrants’ Rights Deputy Director deputy and a senior staff attorney at the ACLU.
“There is, of course, permissible enforcement,” by immigration personnel, Joaquim said. But there are many limitations that appear to be exceeded in televised videos that show what she calls “the sheer excessive force, cruelty and violence that are happening. Immigration agents are simply ignoring 4th Amendment principles and statutes that regulate how and when they can stop someone.”
Joaquim is mindful that it’s important that court testimony serves to tell peoples’ stories. Her team teaches them to develop a narrative with the details of their experiences and that provides a sense of who they are.
The community and advocacy component of the litigation is key. Cases can only be successful, she said, if “depictions of what is happening to people on the ground are clear and accurate.”
“There is a separate narrative storytelling component that’s at the heart of these cases.”
Soboroff had opened the entire discussion with observations on role of stories and storytelling in the immigration movement. He’s been reporting on immigration policy since he joined MSNBC (newly re-labeled as MS NOW) eleven years ago.
“I wanted to tell this (immigration policy) story because it’s a story about people, not necessarily about politics,” he said. Clips of Soboroff’s reporting were part of the video that opened the event.
One recent news piece was a report from Chicago. (ICE has had a particularly noxious presence in the Windy City, one that included an introductory middle-of-the night raid by helicopter; photos from the event show babies wearing diapers—and handcuffs.)
In the report, Soboroff is walking along side one of the demonstrators interviewing her when a helmeted, masked man runs up behind her and seems to make a grab at her shoulder. Soboroff seems to hustle her a few steps out of harm’s way.
I thought– “what is mass deportation? It’s family separation by another name.” Jacob Soboroff
Another recent Soboroff report from Chicago from the site of a just-finished bakery raid ends with a melancholy image of him standing next to two empty Styrofoam coffee cups that move a little in the breeze, abandoned on an outside counter by the customers who were sipping the coffee and took off when the migra showed up.
Empathetic reporting, yes. But Soboroff wanted to tell the story not as an advocate, but with a balanced approach in mind. During his time reporting at MS NOW, he said, the United States has had both Democratic and Republican presidents “that have had deterrence-based, punitive-based immigration policies that criminalize people that are just looking for a better life.”
Barack Obama, Soboroff pointed out, has been referred to as the deporter-in-chief. “There were stories about how he was deporting more people than anyone else in the history of the country and why it was so easy for Donald Trump to institute the family separation policy that I reported on so extensively in 2018.” Haitians were a deportation target during the Biden Administration, Soboroff noted.
“And then I reported from the floor of the Republican Convention when thousands—maybe tens of thousands? Held up those signs that said ‘Mass Deportation Now!’ And I knew at the time—I thought– “what is mass deportation? It’s family separation by another name.”
He noted the increase of what he called “citizen journalists” —the people who record events with their phones or write for the local publications that cover immigration-related events in their neighborhoods and region. The smaller, non-legacy news outlets play a strong role. “LA Taco deserves a Pulitzer prize for the work that they’ve done during the raids.”
The immigration story, he said “is harder to tell than ever.
“LA Taco deserves a Pulitzer prize for the work that they’ve done during the raids.” Jacob Soboroff.
“In 2017, I went to South El Monte to a church–the archdiocese (of Los Angeles) was doing know your rights trainings and they invited us in. They wanted to show us and they wanted to show the country what it was like to prepare people for what to do if [the migra] comes knocking on your door.
Now, “the church doesn’t even want to do that anymore.
Undocumented sources, people that I’ve worked with over the years whose stories I’ve followed, don’t want to be on television anymore. They just don’t want to be out front.”
If there is one “lesson in resistance” to be gleaned from the UCLA Immigration Panel it is that as long as ICE raid continue to plague the Latino and other ethnic communities, there will be journalists and immigrant rights activists who will be on the case as well.
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Copyright 2025 by Bobbi Murray. Photos of UCLA Center for Law and Immigration Policy, Mayra Joaquin and LA Taco logo used under fair use proviso of the copyright law. Image of caged immigrants in the public domain.