The Westlake area where ICE showed up on horseback at MacArthur Park is an immigrant community.
Are You Out of Your Mind?
Big doings in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles this past week–Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up with military trucks and in uniform, some on horseback, at the 35-acre park just west of downtown.
Take it away it away msn news–
“Officers on horseback entered from one end and trotted toward the other. On the adjacent streets were military Humvees.”
The Westlake area where ICE showed up on horseback, no less, is an immigrant community, which, as any LA driver could tell you, is really dense and crowded. Lots of people from Central America—a majority Latino population, over 70%-plus and a double-digit percentage of people of Asian descent.
The only place to live nearby would be the local apartment buildings, built decades ago, some air-conditioned if you can afford it.
MacArthur Park is a nice way to get out of a crowded, especially for kids. When the Humvees and horses arrived at MacArthur Park this past week, there was a children’s summer camp happening.
Humvees, horses, uniformed men closing in on your summer camp–who wouldn’t want that as an unforgettable childhood summer experience?
Humvees, horses, uniformed men closing in on your summer camp–who wouldn’t want that unforgettable childhood summer experience? Not at all traumatizing.
Which brings us to the subject of mental health under the Trump Administration.
Thing One—there have been considerable federal cuts to mental health support.
Just when we need it.
In communities targeted by ICE, “What we are seeing are elevated levels of anxiety, hypervigilance, and panic attacks in individuals and families, especially those in mixed-status households,” said Hector Ayala, co-chair of the Latino Behavioral Health Coalition. Ayala also runs an outpatient mental health organization in north Philadelphia.
In mixed-status families—parents from another country negotiating visa or refugee status, with children born here, for just one example—the fear is amped up by fear of separation.
In Pasadena a 14-year-old took over his street-vendor mom’s tamale cart when she got spooked by ICE after some neighbors were taken.
In Pasadena a 14-year-old took over his street-vendor mom’s tamale cart when she got spooked by ICE after some neighbors were taken. So, the kid took over the work and the neighbors came out to support and lined up to buy food.
Which is what we neighbors need to do. But getting back to this family’s story—a mother afraid to come out of the house and a kid who has to step up and cover? He can’t feel particularly safe himself, and that situation doesn’t exactly put him on the road to a Harvard education.
An article in the Lancet from March 2025 notes that “stricter asylum policies and expanded immigration enforcement, has exacerbated fear, insecurity and anxiety among migrants and refugee populations.”
Note that it’s not only among the Latino population, although Latino communities are the favored target.
Garden Grove, CA in Orange County, has 42% Asian population, 37% Latino with a total of 49% foreign-born. The city council was on the griddle recently residents pressuring the city to create information resource centers and along with other support and to disclose how the local police department coordinates with ICE.
In Little Saigon in nearby Westminster, the largest Vietnamese community outside the country of Viet Nam, leaders have been pushing against ICE tactics after a series of raids.
So ICE is not just a raza problem.
And neither is the anxiety, sense of helplessness and general mental health afflictions that have arrived with this epoch of the Trump presidency. The mental health profession has identified Political Anxiety Disorder– fear, anger, and helplessness that people feel when faced with ongoing political instability.
Or maybe an unstable person in the Oval Office—but those who describe the disorder don’t put it quite that bluntly.
The right-wing smirkers talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome like those noting the stress and mental suffering associated with this administration’s cruel words and deeds are the people with a screw loose.
But mental health experts say it’s not that.
This presidency itself had brought stress levels and anxiety levels to record levels.
Blackdoctor.org breaks it down nicely and notes more marginalized communities are more affected by the cruel policies and rhetoric of this Administration. Psychiatrist and Yale University professor Bandy X. Lee, editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, puts it this way: “If you have any intact reality testing you’re going to be horrified and highly anxious, if not afraid for your life. This presidency itself had brought stress levels and anxiety levels to record levels, even before all the chaos. People are going to be suffering greatly and traumatized after this presidency.”
So, you’re not really nuts. You’re right to react this way. If you look at the playbook for dictatorships, it goes the same—set up The Other, create instability and steal everyone blind—added that last one here but it seems true.
But making us mentally unstable is definitely part of the game. Mental health support was on the federal budget chopping block, particularly for young people.
All of our responses to this mental health assault differ. A person who can’t leave the house to go to her job so she can pay rent or go to the store is certainly at a different level of mental suffering than someone who has to turn off the evening news to avoid nausea.
Probably the best thing we can do if we’re not the person locked up in fear of ICE is check on that person; look into local organized efforts to supply support to those who are, join the food banks that are collecting and delivering food to families and snoop around to find the organizations that are collecting funds to cover rent for people who can’t go to work—maybe at your church or synagogue, or even if you don’t belong to one, snoop around there to see who knows about community efforts.
Figure out your trench to push back against the hysteria.
It’ll make you feel better.
Oh, and deep breaths whenever you remember.
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Copyright 2025 by Bobbi Murray. Tamale cart photo copyrighted by Barrio Dog Productions, Comprehensive Health Care graphic used under “fair use” proviso of the cpyright law. All other photos are in the public domain.