MacArthur Park goes quiet amid ICE sweeps. ‘They’re targeting people that look like me’

On Friday morning, the area around MacArthur Park, a longtime immigrant hub west of downtown, was noticeably quieter than usual.

Gone were many of the vendors who once lined South Alvarado Street at all times of day, selling everything from baby formula to Lionel Messi jerseys.

“There’s like sadness, maybe grief. I think a lot of fear, a lot of fear is going around these communities. And yeah, people are walking around just very cautious, very cautious,” said Cristina Serrano, 37, as she was doing mitt work at Panda Boxing Gym, near the corner of Westlake Avenue and 8th Street.

Over the last week, hundreds of undocumented immigrants — some with criminal records, most without — have been taken into custody in Los Angeles and the surrounding communities as part of an escalation in immigration enforcement by the Trump administration. It’s sparked protests, vandalism and sporadic clashes with police that prompted President Trump to send military troops to downtown L.A., sparking questions over state rights. The clashes also forced officials to issue a curfew for the area.

Elsewhere, undocumented immigrants, and even those here legally but fear they could be racially profiled, are exercising extra caution navigating their daily lives.

Already, many vendors had left because of fencing the city put up earlier this year after a gang-related shooting wounded six people. Business owners also regularly complain about the throngs of people who use drugs day and night in the park.

At Panda Boxing, the gym’s owner now regularly walks up and down the block looking for signs of trouble and to make sure that people in the gym feel safe, said Serrano.

“I mean, most of us are U.S. citizens, but again, if there’s someone that we may know in the gym [who isn’t], we’re gonna make sure we protect them and keep them safe,” she said. “In general, that’s where we stand as far as this gym.”

Even though she is a citizen by birth, she says that she’s taken to carrying a copy of her birth certificate with her everywhere she goes as a precaution. She also has a lawyer on speed dial.

“I don’t know who they want to stop, who they’re targeting, to be honest, because they’re targeting people that look like me,” she said.

She also said the Mexican restaurant next door abruptly closed its doors for two days, without explanation.

Over at Tony’s Barber Shop on the next block over, one of the barbers dusted hair off her chair as her customer got up to leave.

The barber, who declined to give her name, explained in Spanish that business had almost disappeared.

Asked why, she exchanged an exasperated look with the customer, before saying that “La Migra” — slang for ICE — was popping up everywhere in the area, scaring off her customers.

On Friday morning, Julia Meltzer was on her way to work and had just turned left on Virgil Avenue from 6th Street when she saw a number of men in bulletproof vests. There was at least one vehicle, a silver Ford SUV with Arizona licence plates, parked on the driveway of an apartment complex.

As she pulled up closer to the vehicle, she said she saw men handcuffing a man wearing an orange shirt and white shorts. Meltzer said she pulled over and began taking photos and videos after realizing she had just stumbled upon a federal immigration operation.

As she and other residents continued documenting, Meltzer came across a distraught woman who was the wife of the man the federal agents had just arrested. Meltzer said the woman, Alejandra Gascon, identified her husband as Jeisson Gonzalez.

Videos and photos taken by Meltzer and other residents shared with The Times show masked federal agents in plainclothes wearing “police” vests with the three-letter acronym for Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The vehicles, all of them unmarked, included a black Dodge 4x4 truck, also with Arizona license plates.

In another video taken by Meltzer, Gascon said her husband was on his way to work when they detained him.

“He had just left the house,” she said, crying before running off.

Meltzer said while the men were conducting their operation, people were driving by, honking and at some point she could hear people screaming out “ICE, ICE, ICE.”

Natalie Martino was in her apartment facing the street when she heard people screaming and couldn’t make out what they were saying, but could hear what sounded like “ICE.”

Martino ran to her balcony and saw that federal agents had detained her downstairs neighbor and began to use her cell phone to record the incident.

At one point, she went downstairs and saw a white van parked across the street, after the other agents had left.

“So I walked across the street to this white van with tinted windows to get a closer look to see who was sitting inside and of course it was another agent,” she said. “I could only see his vest, so I started yelling ‘ICE’ and banged on the hood of the [van] and then he left.”

After the operation was over, she began to post videos on her Instagram account and reported the incident on the building’s message board. She said she also tried to go live on the Citizen app, but it wouldn’t work.

Martino said her neighbor is a nice man.

“He walks this little Yorkie who wears dresses,” she said. “This is a parent, this is a family man [who] was literally walking to his car to leave for work.”

It was the first operation Martino has witnessed and she said it underscores the disturbing callousness of how they are being conducted.

“It’s very odd to me that someone has the capability to just walk down the street and pick someone up and just take them away and it’s just a big question mark of where they’re going, how they’re going to be treated and if they’re even going to be coming back,” she said. “There’s no answers, there’s no follow-up, there’s no accountability.”

“The whole thing is crazy,” she added.