Do Angelenos Really Believe Their Own Politics?

Los Angeles has proudly shouted ICE Out. The slogan is morally uncomplicated. Immigration is not.

At the Dodger's Stadium, April 2025

I cannot join the chant—not because I excuse the Trump Administration’s conduct, but because I believe in the rule of law. It must bind everyone: those living in this country without legal status, the officers charged with enforcing immigration law, and the federal government that gives those officers their authority.

Removal can be a lawful consequence of lacking legal status when it is ordered and carried out through lawful process. During the Obama Administration, more than three million people were formally removed from the United States. More than two million others were returned, generally without formal removal orders. Large-scale immigration enforcement is not new to this country, nor is it unique to Donald Trump.

What is different—and indefensible—is a federal government violating the rule of law in the name of enforcing it.

I believe ICE is necessary. What is not necessary is lawlessness in its name. We should stop retreating into all-or-nothing positions that look convincing on protest signs but collapse in the real world. Believing that immigration laws should be enforced does not require accepting every method used to enforce them. Condemning government abuse does not require pretending that immigration enforcement itself is illegitimate.

Unless we are prepared to argue that the Obama Administration’s deportations were inherently unlawful, the existence of immigration enforcement cannot itself be the offense. The offense is a government that demands obedience to the law while refusing to be restrained by it.

I was not surprised by the quiet I heard from the streets of Los Angeles after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Houston, Texas. Federal officials say he attempted to ram an officer with his van; witnesses dispute that account, and federal authorities have released no footage of the shooting. The same Los Angeles streets that had found their voices for a slogan had remarkably little to say when the abstraction became a dead man.

That silence sits uneasily beside another kind of public declaration. Street evangelists preach in Spanish through amplification while disrupting the peace and daily routines of local residents. They have plenty to say. What they offer the people around them is nothing beyond noise imposed on those trying to work, rest, raise children, study in their homes, and get through another day.

They should clean the pile of trash beside which they preach. They should distribute food, household necessities, or money to people in need. They should comfort the lonely, help the sick, and defend those being treated without dignity. They should speak with homeless people rather than shout God’s word at them.

Instead, their only visible contribution is disturbance.

Words rather than action. Comfort rather than courage. That appears to be the operating principle.

According to the Gospels, Jesus preached extensively, but his teachings were inseparable from action. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, cared for the poor, touched those others rejected, and defended people who had been stripped of dignity. His ministry did not end with the sermon. The sermon demanded service.

Perhaps that is why these street evangelists so often preach to an audience of zero. They force attention with amplifiers while offering no visible reason to believe. They open their mouths but not their hands.

They are willing to disturb ordinary residents, yet unwilling to preach to those with money, influence, and power. Los Angeles has no shortage of millionaires, political leaders, corporate executives, and powerful institutions. They are only minutes away. But preaching to power requires courage. Preaching at people who have little ability to escape the disturbance requires only a microphone.

Can people who lack the courage to preach to wealth, influence, and power truly claim to spread the word of God? Or are they simply using His name to make noise among people with less power to object?

The same question should be asked of our politics.

When Los Angeles County Measure ER—the Essential Services Restoration Act—narrowly passed with 50.64 percent voting yes and 49.36 percent voting no, I let out a small sigh. The measure imposed a temporary half-percent sales-tax increase to support county hospitals, clinics, and other essential services threatened by cuts to Medi-Cal funding.

Its sponsors had misunderstood Angelenos.

Los Angeles is willing to shout ICE Out, but the electorate willing to display solidarity is not necessarily the same electorate willing to finance it. Measure ER was broader than immigration, but supporters campaigned heavily on preserving the healthcare safety net amid cuts that would affect residents without legal status. The measure nearly failed.

The narrow margin does not tell us why every voter opposed it. It does, however, reveal how fragile civic generosity becomes once it appears on a sales receipt. Political compassion is easy when the cost is carried by someone else. It becomes far less popular when the cashier adds it to the total.

All of this returned to me when I learned that the Dodgers will visit the White House on July 23 to celebrate their 2025 World Series championship. Even through the fog of grief following Dad’s death, I found myself waiting to see how the Angelenos who shouted ICE Out would respond.

They flooded the streets of Downtown Los Angeles when the Dodgers celebrated their championship. Will they do the same to protest the team’s visit to the White House? Will they abandon their season tickets? Will the seats at Dodger Stadium sit empty? Will the concession stands lose their long lines? Will street vendors stop selling unlicensed Dodgers T-shirts and baseball caps?

Political conviction becomes silent when it asks people to give up something they love.

So far, I have heard no comparable roar. The loudest voices reaching me from the street remain the Spanish-language sermons, amplified for an audience that does not stop, turn, or even look their way.

Los Angeles is very good at declarations. It is less reliable when conviction arrives with a bill, a boycott, or a sacrifice.

Perhaps that is the real question—not whether ordinary Angelenos believe their politics, but whether they still believe when belief costs them something.

_____

More essay:

My Last Gift to Dad Was a Do-Not-Resuscitate Order

Will Love Give Us the Courage to Let Our Dad Go?

Gwyneth Paltrow is Aloof, So What Are You?

Are We Really Living Our Best Life?

Confessions of a Former Poll Worker

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