Masked ICE agents and random ID checks spread fear across LA

Early this year, the Department of Homeland Security warned of sweeping immigration enforcement across California—home to numerous sanctuary cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. That warning is no longer abstract.

ICE operations are now spilling into everyday life in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, marked by indiscriminate stops, warrantless questioning, and tactics that resemble manhunts more than routine law enforcement. The escalation is unfolding in real time—on city streets, at job sites, and in neighborhoods already living with deep anxiety.

On January 15, armed federal agents descended on Downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District, a bustling area populated largely by Latino vendors and immigrant-owned small businesses. Witnesses described unmarked vehicles, masked agents, and street-level questioning that sent workers scrambling and customers fleeing.

For business owners still recovering from previous enforcement actions that emptied storefronts and devastated foot traffic, the message was unmistakable: simply being visible has become a risk.

A day earlier, immigrant rights groups documented more than 20 ICE operations across Los Angeles County in a single day, including Little Tokyo, Montebello, East Los Angeles, Pico Rivera, and Commerce. Videos circulating online showed federal agents conducting what appeared to be random identity checks in public spaces.

One especially disturbing clip showed ICE agents climbing onto the roof of a residential construction site to apprehend workers, prompting laborers to flee across neighboring buildings in panic.

This was not a carefully targeted operation against a dangerous suspect. It was a show of dominance—one that turned a workplace into a scene of chaos and fear.

Supporters of aggressive enforcement insist such actions are necessary to remove “the worst criminals.” But what communities are witnessing on the ground tells a very different story: random identity checks in public spaces, warrantless encounters, masked agents refusing to identify themselves. These are not the hallmarks of focused, intelligence-driven policing. They are the tools of mass intimidation.

The danger of this approach becomes tragically clear when force enters the picture.

On January 7, in Minneapolis, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three. She was not undocumented. She was not the target of an immigration arrest. DHS claimed agents fired in self-defense when her vehicle moved during an operation that deployed nearly 2,000 federal agents across the Twin Cities.

Seen against that backdrop, the scenes now unfolding in Los Angeles take on far greater significance. Random stops. Masked agents. Roof chases. Armed patrols in commercial districts. These are not isolated tactics; they reflect a broader enforcement philosophy that treats immigrant communities as hostile territory.

The danger is no longer theoretical. Indiscriminate enforcement combined with a permissive attitude toward the use of force is a recipe for more deaths—not only of undocumented immigrants, but of citizens, bystanders, and workers whose only “crime” is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Immigration enforcement is an administrative function. It is not a battlefield. Yet federal actions increasingly resemble crowd control through fear. As long as immigration authorities view immigrants as people to be driven out rather than governed under law, abuses of power will continue—and so will tragedy.

If the federal government is serious about public safety, it must return to its original stated purpose: prioritizing the removal of undocumented immigrants with serious violent criminal records—not blanket raids, racial profiling, or warrantless street interrogations. Anything less is not law enforcement. It is intimidation.

The warning signs are already here. The only remaining question is whether those in power will choose to stop this runaway enforcement—before another life is lost in the name of “security.”

By Mooyoung Lee [lee.mooyoung@koreadaily.com]