An upside-down American flag blew in the wind across the street from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on a recent Tuesday afternoon.
Handmade signs, chalked messages and music fill the block on Alameda Street where activists have maintained a 24/7 protest over the last couple of weeks.
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A man uses a monocular to view the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 at the 24/7 protest site across from the detention center. The activists are protesting the detention of undocumented residents and the presence of immigration enforcement officers in the region. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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A man uses a monocular to view the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 at the 24/7 protest site across from the detention center. The activists are protesting the detention of undocumented residents and the presence of immigration enforcement officers in the region. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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The group of about a dozen activists coordinate shifts with one another to ensure a constant presence throughout the day and night. Activists at the Occupy ICE LA site said they won’t leave until immigration raids in Los Angeles come to a halt.
It is part of a collective cry of resistance against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown – part of president Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history.
Wearing a cerulean blue romper and an electric green Luigi hat, 35-year-old Eddy stood sweeping the sidewalk along the perimeter of the Occupy ICE LA protest zone. The artist and organizer became “activated” after witnessing an ICE raid on Friday, June 6 in downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District.
“I saw this girl crying for her father,” Eddy said. “I saw the van leaving with her father in it and the girl [was] just like walking in despair. Nobody could really console her,” he said. “That image, her face, is burned into my memory, in my brain.”
Eddy joined the nonstop protest on July 12 after regularly attending anti-ICE protests in LA. Eddy’s last name is being withheld because he fears being targeted by local police and federal agents for his activism.
The 24/7 protest follow Los Angeles’ anti-ICE protests in June. Thousands of people around Los Angeles took to the streets after widespread immigration raids began targeting predominantly Latino communities, according to a recent analysis, throughout Los Angeles as part of president Trump’s goal of deporting one million undocumented people by the end of the year.
Trump said he was targeting the “worst of the worst,” though ICE data published at the end of June shows that over 70% of people detained by federal immigration officials have no criminal record.
Now, a fluctuating group of protesters maintain a constant presence outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center, a site called Occupy ICE LA.
A group of mostly strangers formed the 24/7 protest began on Friday, July 11, activists said, across the street from the MDC, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a processing center.
Occupy ICE LA protesters engage in direct action, community organizing, and mutual aid by offering water, books, and food kept on top and below two fold-out tables to anyone walking by. Eddy said people regularly pull over to drop off donations. The group also monitors ICE activity and loudly reads detainee rights through a megaphone when they see detainees in the subterranean basement walking into the ICE processing center, or when they spot vehicles full of people driving away from the federal building.
Watching violent immigration raids unfold on their phones or TVs, and witnessing the toll on their communities, drove some people to action, and to the Occupy ICE LA site.
LA Unified middle school teacher Jennifer Ventress, 56, joined a protest outside of the MDC on the Fourth of July, which she could “absolutely not celebrate.”
That was the initial protest, before Occupy ICE LA officially began, that led her to keep driving downtown to join others.
On a recent hot and sunny afternoon, she wore a sun hat, and held a rectangular piece of black cardboard that read, “DHS + ICE = Gestapo” in bold white lettering while sitting on a fold-up chair facing traffic on Alameda Street.
She teaches in Pacoima, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, and has students whose families have been impacted by the ongoing immigration raids.
“Every day I’m choosing to do something, whether it’s packing grocery bags for people who can’t pick up, who [don’t] feel safe going to the grocery store or just being out here because I think presence is important,” Ventress said.
Music teacher Kendrick Haskins, 27, comes out to the Occupy ICE LA protest during most weekdays, when there are fewer people on the ground, to help maintain visibility. Haskins said he’s motivated by a deep opposition to what he calls U.S. imperialism both abroad and in the states. Haskins sees the current immigration crackdown as a symptom of a larger pattern of systemic injustice present in the country.
“This is one of the main things they happen to be doing domestically, but the American Empire is doing horrible crimes against humanity across the world,” he said.
While he’s skeptical that the 24/7 protest will lead to ICE leaving Los Angeles, he does feel it plays an important role in raising awareness and mobilizing others to act. “A lot of people are honking, doing the fists in solidarity… there’s also a lot of people who are hecklers who are like… get a job!” Haskins said.
The Occupy ICE LA protest site was cleared on Friday, July 18 by the Los Angeles Police Department, citing an anti-homelessness law, according to LA Taco. Several canopies and other supplies were confiscated. That didn’t stop activists from coming back on the same day to continue their 24/7 protest.
“It’s time for ordinary Americans to show up and do something. … We have to save ourselves,” Eddy said.
LAPD declined to comment on the 24/7 protest. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the Metropolitan Detention Center, did not respond to requests for comment.
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