When reports of federal immigration raids last spring rose across the greater Los Angeles area, Inglewood immigration organizers turned to the city council.
Yaritza Gonzalez, co-founder of the ING Fellowship, said activists asked city leaders to put in place a sanctuary policy and a fund for food, housing and legal assistance for people impacted by the raids. Though council members acknowledged activists’ comments in public meetings in August, Gonzalez said the city has yet to take action.
Local governments across California have taken a range of approaches to the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement operations.
Some, like the city of Los Angeles, have leaned on sanctuary policies that bar agencies and city resources from being used to assist federal immigration agents. Others, like the county of Los Angeles, have formed aid funds. The city of Huntington Beach pushed in the opposite direction, unsuccessfully attempting to overturn California’s sanctuary law in federal court.
Inglewood’s approach has largely been business as usual.
“We’re studying the issue, but the reality is, these are federal operations,” Mayor James Butts told The LA Local. “The city has no input, knowledge, impact.”
Butts said the city has no current sanctuary policy. State law limits local police cooperation with federal immigration officials.
Gonzalez said activists want more from the city, particularly with the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics expected to draw massive, global crowds to Inglewood. Community groups and activists are already organizing basic resources and community patrols, she said. City officials could provide an added layer of support and protections, she argued.
“As much as neighbors that don’t hold these positions of power are putting their bodies on the line? We would want them to be also,” Gonzalez said.
Herminia Galvez, an Inglewood resident and CEO of nonprofit Healing Los Angeles Together, said she has watched officials in Los Angeles make moves to support immigrant communities, but not seen the same in Inglewood.
“Being on the ground, we are observing a lot of need, a lot of fear. We are not observing enough support for them,” she said.
Inglewood officials stay quiet on Jan. 13 raid
Reports of immigration raids have increased again across the Los Angeles area in recent weeks, including in Inglewood.
An Inglewood public works inspector told The LA Local on Jan. 13 that he watched masked agents detain two people working on a city infrastructure project outside Superior Grocer near the intersection of La Brea and Florence avenues. Reports from activist group Union del Barrio indicate more than a dozen people were detained in Inglewood and surrounding communities that same day.
Maritza Medina, an Inglewood-born writer and creative strategist, said she could see parts of the immigration raid on La Brea from her residence. Just an hour later, she said she received word that one of her relatives had been arrested by federal agents near the intersection of 102nd Street and La Brea while trying to sell his personal vehicle.
The relative, whose name Medina declined to share due to safety concerns, is undocumented.
Family members were able to locate the man in a federal detention center. He is now planning to self-deport, she said.
City officials remain reluctant to weigh in. None of Inglewood’s four councilmembers responded to inquiries. Butts told The LA Local he will take no public position on the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration operations.
“Do I have a position on the FBI doing white collar crime investigations? Nobody’s ever asked me that,” Butts said.
Some Inglewood officials, including Councilmembers Dionne Faulk and Alex Padilla, have publicly acknowledged ICE raids over the last year.
”We feel it. Our hearts are with everybody in the community that’s affected by these ICE raids,” Faulk said during an August city council meeting.
“It is devastating, the way our people are being tormented,” Padilla said during a meeting a week later.
But on other occasions, officials have restrained their comments.
Butts told The LA Local he saw no verified reports of federal immigration agents on Jan. 13, in spite of videos of men in tactical gear in Inglewood circulating on social media and the eyewitness account of a city employee. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported raid. “I cannot speak to things I do not know to be true,” Butts said.
Butts’s comments echoed those of Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta, who said at a town hall meeting in October that he was not aware of any U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Inglewood. “They don’t communicate with us,” he said.
Fronterotta did not immediately return an interview request.
Medina said she has been upset and hurt by the city’s limited acknowledgement of immigration raids. Latinos make up just under half the city’s population.
“How can you tell me that it’s not happening? I have watched it with my own eyes,” Medina said.