Pasadena demonstrators protest ICE shootings on Nationwide Day of Motion

Roughly 50 demonstrators gathered Saturday morning in Pasadena as a part of a nationwide motion to honor lives misplaced throughout immigration enforcement operations and in detention facilities throughout the Trump administration.

They wore fliers round their necks, hung with yellow thread, bearing the smiling faces and names of among the 75 individuals who have died since January 2025.

“Killed by ICE” was printed above a photograph of every individual, together with native resident Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old killed whereas making an attempt to flee immigration brokers who descended on a House Depot in Monrovia final yr.

The Los Angeles residents, a part of the San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible group, carried American flags and held indicators that learn “No ICE No Battle” and “Cease ICE Murders.”

“Good morning, Pasadena,” Betsy Hanger, an organizer with the group, boomed right into a megaphone as she walked by means of an intersection. “Honk for democracy. Honk in order for you ICE off our streets now.”

A refrain of horns sounded as drivers signaled their help.

Organizer Andra Clarke held a banner in every hand that learn “Neighbors Say ICE Out.” The signal round her neck carried the identify and photograph of Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a 48-year-old who died in a Texas detention heart in December.

Clarke, 61, stated the group has been gathering on the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Truthful Oaks Avenue each Saturday since March. Final weekend, they celebrated civil rights activist John Lewis.

This Saturday, although, their focus was aimed toward ICE.

“Now 75 individuals have died by the hands of ICE,” Clarke stated. “We had been initially informed, ‘Oh they’re going to go after the criminals, the people who find themselves the worst of the worst.’ That’s a lie; that isn’t what’s occurring.

“They’re concentrating on communities, they’re concentrating on individuals of coloration. It’s fascism. … Anyone who cares about humanity ought to care about what’s occurring.”

Clarke stated it hit her exhausting when she realized of the 2 current deaths by the hands of ICE.

The occasion was additionally a vigil honoring 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by an ICE agent in Houston on July 7 whereas driving his building crew to a job website, and Johan Sebastian Guerrero, 25, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Maine throughout a visitors cease earlier this month.

“It’s like, once more? It simply doesn’t finish. It feels prefer it by no means ends — the evil.”

Shortly earlier than midday, Clarke used a megaphone to learn aloud the names of the handfuls who’ve died. After every identify learn, Hanger struck a singing bowl, the vibrations sounding out within the nook the place they stood. At occasions, she learn “unidentified man” or “4 unidentified girls.”

Subsequent to them was a poster board with a photograph of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old girl discovered unresponsive at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh after ICE launched her “into chilly winter situations and no look after psychological well being episodes or discover to kinfolk.”

“Let’s take a second of silence for all those that had been taken,” Clarke stated, bowing her head.

Amongst these gathered to pay attention was Leticia Lopez, a 65-year-old South Pasadena resident whose voice trembled as she talked concerning the influence of listening to about one other arrest or loss of life tied to enforcement operations.

“It will get me to the core,” she stated, hanging her chest. “It’s not getting any higher, it’s getting worse. I simply really feel like I have to do one thing.”

Lopez, who wore a shirt that learn “Immigrants aren’t criminals however the president is,” stated her mom and grandmother had been forcefully repatriated from Arizona to Mexico.

Her mom, who was raised in Mexico, later met her father there. He moved to the U.S. within the Fifties as a bracero. Listening to the tales of right now, she stated, “triggers every thing that they went by means of.”

“Once I see it occurring, it’s a generational trauma that I really feel,” she stated. Lopez stated individuals round her are carrying passports and paperwork in public to show they’re residents.

“As a result of they’re afraid they is likely to be profiled, picked up, kidnapped by ICE. When my son goes out, I fear,” she stated of her 28-year-old.