Federal immigration agents have departed from the Coast Guard site at Terminal Island in San Pedro, which for months was used as a base of operations while the Trump administration conducted immigration raids across Southern California. <\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-San Pedro) said the Coast Guard confirmed Friday evening that agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol vacated the site, though she said it\u2019s unclear whether they are moving to another area in Los Angeles County. <\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The news was met with celebration by local elected officials and community volunteers who tracked the agents\u2019 movements on and off the base since last summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough we do not know the reason for their departure, in moments like this, we will take any good news we can get,\u201d Councilmember Tim McOsker said.<\/p>\n
McOsker attributes the agency\u2019s decision to leave to the vigilance of community members and especially the Harbor Area Peace Patrols. <\/p>\n
The organization was founded in June, when the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement sweeps across Los Angeles, to monitor activity in San Pedro, Wilmington and the Port of L.A.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis victory was won by and for the people of the Harbor Area,\u201d said Maya Suzuki Daniels, co-founder of the Harbor Area Peace Patrols. \u201cTogether, we proved that courage and determination are all that is required to defend our rights and one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
A key part of the Harbor Area Peace Patrols\u2019 work was sending volunteers to locations around Terminal Island with cameras and binoculars to track how many vehicles were leaving. Patrollers took pictures of license plates and immigration enforcement vehicles and then sent those pictures to the Community Self Defense Coalition, so its members knew which cars to look out for across L.A.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE didn\u2019t leave. The people kicked them out,\u201d said Ron Gochez, a member of Uni\u00f3n del Barrio, a group that monitors immigration sweeps across Los Angeles and helped create the Harbor Area Peace Patrols. <\/p>\n
Still, activists say their work is not done. Volunteers will continue to patrol the local community for evidence of immigration activity and share updates on their social media. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that this battle, this struggle, is for the long haul, and we are absolutely committed to continuing organizing, to struggle back, to fight back,\u201d Gochez said. <\/p>\n
Officials too urged caution. While immigration raids in Southern California appear to have slowed since summer, operations still are being reported on a near daily basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile this is good news, we still need to remain vigilant \u2014 don\u2019t put away your whistles just yet,\u201d Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal immigration agents have departed from the Coast Guard site at Terminal Island in San Pedro, which for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2700,7504,7,9,8,1767,84608,84607,5528,3979,2303,63,100,592,38738,1439,1009,24937],"class_list":{"0":"post-177989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-activity","9":"tag-agent","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-headlines","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-community-member","14":"tag-community-volunteer","15":"tag-harbor-area-peace-patrols","16":"tag-immigration-enforcement","17":"tag-immigration-raid","18":"tag-l-a","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-people","22":"tag-picture","23":"tag-san-pedro","24":"tag-southern-california","25":"tag-terminal-island"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}