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‘Carry passports’: Retired LA professor warns Hispanic stepchildren after ICE raids
In response to violent protests against immigration raids, retired professor Peter Arenella advised his stepchildren to always carry identification.
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Peter Arenella, a retired professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has sounded alarm over the state of things in Los Angeles, where protests against Trump administration’s immigration raids have taken a violent turn.
Arenella is now based in Mexico with his Mexico-born wife Mia. His three adult stepchildren, however, are still in the United States. In a post shared on the social media platform X, the retired professor of law said he has urged his stepchildren to carry their passports with them at all times after one of them witnessed an ICE raid where people with “brown skin” were taken into custody.
What is happening in Los Angeles?
Tensions in Los Angeles began on June 6, when federal immigration officers associated with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided several locations across the city, including a Home Depot in Westlake. By the afternoon, protestors were gathered outside the federal detention center in LA, as per a report in The Guardian.
While initially peaceful, the stand-off against the police took a violent turn over the next few days, with police officers firing tear gas and flash grenades at the crowd of protestors. Amid escalating tensions, Waymo self-driving cars have been burnt down, riots have broken out in several parts of the city and an effigy of Donald Trump was violently beaten with sticks by protestors.
A law professor’s take on climate of fear
Arenella, 77, had a long and distinguished career as a law professor at UCLA. After retiring from active teaching in 2012, he and his wife Mia moved to Mexico to live out their retirement years. “One of the many reasons I moved from California to my wife's tiny rural village in Mexico was the desire to experience a peaceful and safe environment,” he once revealed.
In his earlier posts, Arenella has mentioned that his wife moved to the United States with her four children after escaping an abusive marriage. She is today a legal American citizen with a US passport, but the recent climate of anti-immigration sentiments and fear of ICE has made her wary of travelling to the United States.
Her adult children, meanwhile, are still based in the United States. One of them witnessed an ICE raid in Los Angeles while shopping at a Home Depot.
“My wife's son was shopping at a Home Depot Sunday when ICE agents engaged in a massive sweep of the store where they detained many customers with brown skins,” Peter Arenella wrote on X.
Peter Arenella’s advice to Hispanic stepchildren
“I have urged Mia's three adult children to carry their drivers licenses and passports with them at all times,” Arenella said in his X post.
“The fear and hysteria in LA has become so widespread that black and brown Latinos who always shop at public swap meets to purchase bargain items have become ‘ghost’ spaces because of the fear of ICE detention,” added the Harvard-educated retired UCLA professor.
Arenella said that the Latino and Hispanic communities in Los Angeles are living in fear because ICE agents focus on the colour of their skin while taking them into detention, not their legal status.
He ended his post with a criticism of US President Donald Trump and his policies - which Arenella says are a threat to freedom of speech.
“Such fascist terror tactics should enrage all Americans who care about their civil liberties and trigger large protests across the nation.
“My generation did so to protest the Vietnam war. However, Trump has discouraged such lawful and constitutionally protected conduct by instilling fear in the targeted communities,” wrote Arenella.
