During the early morning hours of Monday, May 4, 1992, Lucia A. and her husband went for a walk around the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. Tensions around the city burned hot: The L.A. Uprising had erupted just a few days earlier, and although the situation had simmered down, the couple was technically violating a dusk-to-dawn curfew still in effect.
According to an American Civil Liberties Union report, a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser pulled alongside them and two uniformed officers hopped out. They grabbed Lucia by the hair, pinned her against a wall, and accused her of being a sex worker. When she failed to immediately produce any immigration documents, they detained her and insinuated that they would have her deported. The officers allegedly said, in Spanish, “You’re going to be visiting your country very soon and for free.”
The next day, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) representatives offered her a “voluntary departure” form, a legal agreement wherein she would essentially forfeit her immigration hearing and willingly deport herself. In exchange, she could evade the painful criminal and civil entanglements associated with so-called “riot aliens.” Probably worried about notoriously poor conditions in the detention facilities—she was pregnant—Lucia signed the papers.
Amid the Los Angeles Uprising, the LAPD, INS, and other government agencies coordinated to surveil, seize, interrogate, and deport undocumented immigrants. They carried out these efforts indiscriminately, categorizing everyday people going about their daily lives as “riot aliens.” As a result, more than a thousand Los Angeles residents were expelled from their communities. Today, as the Trump Administration prepares for more deportations, the mass removals that rippled across L.A. in 1992 remind us that local governments and immigration authorities already possess the tools to enact his agenda. In fact, they have already rehearsed that agenda to terrible effect.