As National Guard Leaves LA, Hollywood Remains Largely Silent Over ICE Raids

Over the past month, Alex Aguilar’s job as business manager of LiUNA Local 724 has taken a darker turn. 

He’s held calls with a handful of his union’s members worried for spouses and family members who are undocumented and are now in the crosshairs of ICE officials sent by the Trump administration to Los Angeles for the first wave of his mass deportation campaign. 

“I received another call from another studio guy who says he has his green card, so he’s a resident, right? But he’s in the process of trying to get his citizenship,” Aguilar told TheWrap. “He told me that he’s not even going to meetings for his citizenship process because he’s worried about getting picked up.” 

Aguilar’s story isn’t unique, with L.A. having been rocked by immigration sweeps from ICE that have detained thousands of people – the majority of whom do not have criminal records and some of whom are U.S. citizens. And while the January wildfires and the subsequent rise of the “Stay in LA” campaign cemented Hollywood as an essential element in the city, the institutional voices of the entertainment industry have largely remained silent.

LiUNA 724 is one of the few exceptions. It is a union in Hollywood’s constellation of labor orgs that gets far less attention than the likes of SAG-AFTRA, WGA, IATSE or Hollywood Teamsters, but the workers it represents are no less important. The local of the Latino-majority union – Aguilar estimates that 70% of members across Southern California are Latino – represents the janitors that keep the offices of Hollywood’s C-suite executives clean as well as utility workers on film and TV sets. The local has also begun a campaign to represent production assistants. 

In terms of the actual citizenship status of workers on set, it’s extremely unlikely you would find anyone who is undocumented. Union employees are required to submit I-9 forms that include proof of citizenship. But as Aguilar points out, that doesn’t mean that those employees don’t have significant others or family members who aren’t citizens or have green cards. 

“I talked with one member who works on the TV side of our local and his wife is undocumented. They have a three-year-old and they’re terrified that they’re going to be separated,” he said. “They’re looking for any help they can get.” 

To that end, LiUNA has been holding “know your rights” trainings for its members so they know what to do if they encounter ICE, including what warrants officials are required to show and who to call if someone they know is detained. 

Such trainings have become a core part of the larger organizing efforts in L.A. to resist ICE detentions after the initial shock of ICE’s arrival in the city and the subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines has faded. What remains is the long-term struggle away from the headlines that were seen last month as protests around the downtown Federal Building led to tear gas being deployed by law enforcement, including an unprovoked use of riot control tools by LAPD on June 14 during the No Kings protests. 

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that half of the 4,000 National Guard troops deployed to L.A. would be called back, just days after those troops appeared in MacArthur Park, one of the city’s most prominent working class immigrant communities, in a show of force that was met with angry protests from residents. But even if that easing of military presence continues in the weeks ahead, organizers expect that ICE will remain in L.A. and throughout California throughout Trump’s term. 

“We’re in this for at least three and a half more years,” L.A. City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez told The Washington Post. “What are the values that we’re leading with? What is the core messaging that we are trying to uplift? What are our demands?”

Media attention

The crises facing undocumented residents have been the subject of various productions, the most recent being the Oscar-nominated short film “A Lien,” about a woman who can only watch as her undocumented husband is taken away by ICE when he attends a mandatory immigration interview. Premiering in 2023, the short demonstrates how ICE’s tactic of using legally mandated immigration hearings as dragnets is one that has been regularly used across U.S. presidencies, even as it is now being escalated under Trump. 

David Gomez, a Latino grip who is just getting started in the entertainment industry, says he’s recently worked on an untitled short film that focuses on ICE deportations that was shooting in June as unrest broke out in the South L.A. neighborhoods Paramount and Downey over the presence of masked immigration officers. 

Gomez recalled how he was at a Home Depot when ICE showed up in the parking lot, one of the most common tactics seen over the past month as immigration officials have targeted undocumented day laborers who gather at the hardware store looking for work. 

“I could hear the employees saying ‘ICE is here’ and there was so much panic. There were customers rushing to hide,” he said. 

Gomez, a U.S. citizen, was not confronted by ICE as he left the store, but he realized after he left that he didn’t have his wallet with him, let alone a passport or other proof of his citizenship. 

I could hear the employees saying ‘ICE is here’ and there was so much panic. There were customers rushing to hide. 

“I do wonder what would have happened if they had questioned me,” he said. 

Jaclyn Granet, an immigration attorney who runs her own practice in L.A., said the anxiety over Trump’s escalation extends to her clients in Hollywood, many of whom are foreign filmmakers and talent who need help with work visas and other documentation to film and promote projects in the U.S.. 

“People with green cards and visas are worried because they don’t know where this is going to stop,” she said.

Staying silent

Aguilar said he’s had a hard time getting Hollywood’s institutions into the fight. While not naming them, he said he spoke with two executives at major studios asking if they would speak out condemning the raids and was told that they planned to stay out of it. The common reason: fear of reprisal from Trump.

Executives aren’t the only ones worried about blowback. The raids have created a chilling effect across the entire city.

“It’s not just the deportation. It’s the fear that sets in when raids occur, when people are snatched off the street,” Mayor Karen Bass told ABC News in an interview on Sunday.

The White House has already made its presence felt on media companies, with Comcast facing a probe from the Federal Communications Commission on its DEI policies while Paramount paid Trump $16 million in a settlement over his issues with a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris amid its pending merger with Skydance.

Aguilar says he gets the fear that has gripped so much of the city – three Hollywood workers who have undocumented relatives declined to comment for this story – but it doesn’t make it any less painful because of how personal the raids feel to him. Born in Mexico City, he came to the U.S. when he was eight years old and followed in his father’s footsteps as a Hollywood laborer. That continues to this day, as the 48-year-old works at LiUNA alongside his father, who is a member of the union’s board. 

Having been a naturalized citizen for decades, Aguilar sees himself in the members who have expressed their fear to him to even take the bus to work amid reports that ICE has gone from raiding car washes and Home Depots to targeting public transit and even personal vehicles. He urges Hollywood’s elite to think about how that fear could be concealed behind the faces of people they pass by in the hallways of their offices every day. 

“You go to a studio commissary, and the vast majority are Latinos. Among them, many are immigrants who came out here and have been working in those commissaries for decades,” he said. “Laborers, electricians, grips, painters, plasters, carpenters … so many of those people that build the soundstages and the sets are immigrants, and they need people to stand up for them.”

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