Abraham Zavala was born at Adventist White Memorial. So were his kids. So late Friday, when he heard federal immigration agents were at the Boyle Heights hospital, and that local youth were out blowing whistles to warn neighbors, he went.
“To me that’s sacred ground,” said Zavala, an organizer with Unión del Barrio.
“I’m a dad,” he said. “I wanted to be there to support the youth.”
He was among the Boyle Heights residents who converged on the hospital and stayed in a standoff with federal immigration agents into the early hours of Saturday. Agents detained at least two people, according to rapid response groups.
Neighbors alerted each other with noisemakers and fireworks. A woman pounded her pots and pans. Teenagers ran across Mariachi Plaza, shouting that ICE was in the area and urging residents to lock their doors.
“Even though we’re afraid, you know we’re still showing up,” said Myra Vasquez, a Boyle Heights resident who rushed to White Memorial after hearing reports of ICE in the area. “We’re not going to allow them to just come into our communities and terrorize us because they’re the real terrorists causing harm.”
The confrontation peaked around 11:30 p.m. Video shared with Boyle Heights Beat shows agents pushing back protesters who had moved toward them, and the two sides begin shoving. Agents appear to pepper-spray people on the sidewalk. One agent then tackles a man and pins him to the ground, while a second person is pulled from the crowd. Both were detained.
The standoff continued past midnight. Zavala said agents got out of their vehicles and formed a line in front of the parking lot where paramedics enter, blocking an emergency exit. “They literally became White Memorial’s private security detail,” he said. Zavala said he and another person were sprayed with Mace.
The Dept. of Homeland Security declined to comment about the incident in Boyle Heights and, in a statement, the agency said they would “not disclose or discuss law enforcement operations.”
The spokesperson instead said that obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime.
“ICE does not target hospitals, schools, or churches,” the statement said, despite the large turnout of protesters who encountered the masked agents at the hospital.
Father Brendan Busse, who pastors nearby Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, rushed to White Memorial after seeing reports from the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network of ICE at the hospital.
Busse, a Jesuit priest, said he witnessed people caring for each other and tending to those suffering from pepper spray. People there advocated for them to find treatment at White Memorial, Busse said. Community members, he said, “were obviously doing their best, not just to communicate their feelings, but to push, to instigate the dispersal of this ICE presence.”
As clergy, Busse said their presence can help combat a narrative of those advocating for immigrants as “somehow dangerous, or violent, or vulgar.”
“Just to be there is a sign that that’s not the only version of what this looks like,” he said.
Initially, Busse showed up wearing a hoodie, but he decided to change into his green stole he had in his car as things appeared to get tense. “Just try to do what I could to bring a presence of maybe a little moral authority,” he said.
“It’s bad enough that people have to lift up their voices to say something so obvious, that their lives matter, that our communities are sacred, that families belong together,” Busse said. “It’s bad enough that they have to be out at 3 a.m. in the morning to tell anybody that.”
“It’s even worse if they would have to suffer the consequences of retribution and violence that comes from speaking out in that way,” Busse added.
