Inglewood city leaders spoke out about federal immigration raids during a City Council meeting on Tuesday after activists accused them of being relatively silent on the issue for months.
“There are people that are afraid to send their children to school, fearful that government agents will come and knock on their doors,” Mayor James Butts said during Tuesday’s meeting. “The worst thing that can happen is for us to be divided, because that’s exactly one of the outcomes of these types of behaviors from the government.”
The comments come after community patrols logged reports of federal agents detaining at least nine people in the city on Jan. 13. Previously, the mayor told The LA Local he had no position on the operations, and other members of the council did not respond to interview requests.
On Tuesday, Councilmembers Alex Padilla, Dionne Faulk and Eloy Morales joined Butts in laying out their thoughts during the meeting.
“It really tears, rips at the heart when you see these families torn apart,” Padilla said. The councilmember added the lack of communication from federal agents has caused friction with local law enforcement agencies.
Faulk said city leaders have been “absolutely horrified” at what they see on TV.
“We need change, we need it now,” she said. “I have one word for everybody: Vote.”
Morales said city leaders were reiterating what they’ve said all along. He called back to his own early years as a child of immigrants.
“Our hands are truly tied. If there’s something we could do, we would,” Morales said.
Councilmember Gloria Gray attended the meeting virtually and did not comment on the raids.
The city leaders’ statements came in response to a public comment from Maritza Medina, an Inglewood-born writer and creative strategist. Medina told the council she is not “asking the city to change federal law.”
“I’m asking for transparency. When leadership remains silent, fear fills that silence,” Medina said.
Immigration activists say they have been asking city officials for concrete action in response to the federal operations since May. Those calls surfaced again after Jan. 13, when reports of at least a dozen immigration detentions cropped up around the city.
Butts told The LA Local in a Jan. 15 interview that he had no knowledge of two workers detained on Jan. 13 at a city infrastructure project and had no position on federal immigration operations in general. None of the city’s four councilmembers responded to interview requests in January.
Some city leaders, including Faulk and Padilla, have acknowledged the raids during public meetings, but they have not responded to calls from activists to put in place an immigration-related aid fund or sanctuary policy limiting city cooperation with federal immigration agents, which a number of other local cities have done. State law already limits much local police interaction with immigration officials.
Quetzal Ceja, an organizer with the HILL Network, said the immigration aid and activism group tracks immigration detentions in Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lennox and Lawndale and has logged the names of more than 65 people detained outside Inglewood’s two Home Depot locations. Ceja is also a member of the Boycott Home Depot Coalition.
“There hasn’t been anyone from the city saying, ‘Hey, can we help?’” Ceja said. “There hasn’t been anyone responding except for the community orgs.”
