Despite rumors of a massive immigration sweep in Los Angeles, numbers don’t add up

For days, rumors that the federal government was planning a massive immigration enforcement sweep in Los Angeles County on Sunday had put officials on alert and cast a pall of fear and unease across many immigrant communities.

But by midafternoon, it appeared that the operation — if indeed one had been launched — had not been anywhere nearly as widespread as many had predicted.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials would not say whether any special operations had taken place or release arrest figures for the day. Representatives for the FBI, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles Police Department either referred questions to ICE, had no information or said they were not involved in federal immigration actions.

Officers at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles — a lockup run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons — had been asked to prepare for an influx of up to 120 new bookings from expected immigration raids this weekend, according to two sources familiar with the situation. Typically, the downtown facility is staffed to receive new inmates only on weekdays, the officials said, and handling weekend intakes required ordering staff to come in on their days off.

The staff came in as directed, but by midafternoon immigration officials had dropped off fewer than a dozen people for processing, according to one of the sources.

“We are hearing they aren’t getting the numbers they want,” the source said, adding that the numbers could rise if officials started bringing in detainees from San Bernardino County later in the evening. Both sources requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

When reached by email for comment, a federal prison spokesman confirmed that the agency is assisting ICE by housing some detainees, but declined to comment on any plans to house migrants in the Los Angeles detention center. He said the agency would not comment “on the legal status of an individual, nor do we specify the legal status of individuals assigned to any particular facility, including numbers and locations.”

Across Los Angeles County, from Alhambra to Highland Park, there were videos posted on social media showing unmarked vehicles and officers with vests showing up at homes.

But at least one group acting in defense of immigrants posted Sunday morning that it had followed ICE agents from a staging point at a Target store parking lot in Alhambra to a residence. Parts of their video showed law enforcement officers in bulletproof vests posted outside a stucco apartment building with their faces covered.

Neighbors said it was shortly after dawn that two blacked-out sedans pulled up around the low slung two-story apartment complex.

Behind the residence’s door was Felipe Espinoza, a 56-year-old Los Angeles traffic officer, who was doing planks and getting ready for work when FBI agents shouted, “Open the door.”

More than half a dozen agents were outside his home. He raised his hands to the screen, recalling all the police shows he had seen. They repeatedly asked for his father-in-law, whose car was registered to the address.

“I haven’t seen him in a while,” he told them. Meanwhile, his 7-year-old child came to the door along with his wife, who told the agents they couldn’t come in without a warrant.

Espinoza said he finally went outside to talk with them, and they produced a three-page document that they said was a warrant. But they showed him only the first page.

“They were a little hesitant about showing me the warrant, per se, but what I saw they didn’t have a seal on it or anything,” he said. What it did clearly say was “illegal alien.”

The document showed several variations of his father-in-law’s name and it was only then it became clear to him that it was an immigration issue. He had figured it might be related to drug activity at the location. Before the family moved into the apartment two years ago, the police had been frequently called to the complex because of drug dealing. But the new owners had fixed up the place, there hadn’t been police activity in years, and families were now living there.

Neighbors were walking their dogs on the tidy tree-lined street in Alhambra, a largely middle-class community of Asian and Latino residents where 1 in 4 residents were born outside the United States.

After Espinoza read about Sunday’s immigration crackdown, it became more clear.

“It happened so fast,” he said. “I was taken aback really.”

He has known his father-in-law for more than a decade and couldn’t understand why officials would be searching for him.

An activist with a loudspeaker attempted to communicate with someone inside the apartment: “If they don’t have a warrant, you don’t have to open the door,” the voice said. “It has to be signed by a judge. Do not talk to them if they do not have a warrant.”

Other voices on the loudspeaker called the agents “kidnappers” and “terrorists,” and a small group began to chant: “Say it once. Say it twice. We will not put up with ICE.”

It was unclear from the video whether the officers were in fact from ICE or from some other agency and whether anyone was detained as a result of the visit. The watch commander with the Alhambra Police Department said his agency had no knowledge of any operation in his city Sunday.

Sofia Teodoro, a member of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, which recently formed in response to heightened immigration enforcement, said she stumbled upon Sunday’s operation when she pulled into the Target parking lot.

She saw multiple unmarked vehicles and began recording. Shortly before 6 a.m., some of the vehicles left, and she and others followed them to a residential neighborhood nearby. They arrived at Olive Avenue and St. Charles Terrace, where agents blocked off the intersection with their cars.

Meanwhile, another member who stayed back at the parking lot noticed a van with a Department of Homeland Security license plate and informed the coalition group.

“Once we got confirmation that DHS was in sight, we started alerting the community and letting them know that immigration was here in the area and to stay indoors.”

Many in Los Angeles have been braced for a big operation since President Trump was sworn in for his second term last month. ICE has already conducted well-publicized operations in Chicago and New York, among other places.

This month, The Times reviewed a government document suggesting that federal law enforcement was planning to carry out a “large scale” immigration enforcement action in the Los Angeles area before the end of the month. But sources also warned those plans were subject to change.

Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this report.