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Jun 25, 2026

As aggressive ICE raids rise, we look at the people being targeted and the families they’re leaving behind

Cecelia Lizotte owns Suya Joint, a celebrated Nigerian restaurant in Boston. She’s a rising star in the city who was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2024 and operates two restaurants and a food truck. But last year, a key employee—who happens to be her brother—was detained by ICE. 

“I’m not able to operate the establishment, basically,” Lizotte said. “It’s just, it’s crazy.”

Lizotte’s experience got us wondering what it’s like to run a restaurant, or any business, when a key employee suddenly disappears. 

This week on Reveal, producer Katie Mingle and reporter Julia Lurie tell stories about the people swept up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportations and the families that are left behind. We also talk to LA Taco reporter Memo Torres about how immigration raids continue across Los Angeles almost daily, even though the national spotlight moved on months ago. 

The first two stories are updates from an episode that originally aired in September 2025.

Dig Deeper

Listen: Trump’s Deportation Black Hole (Reveal)

Read: Hiding From ICE in LA (Mother Jones)

Read: “You’re Here Because of Your Tattoos” (Mother Jones)

Read: What It’s Like to Live Through LA’s Long Deportation Summer (CalMatters)

Read: They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan. (The New York Times)

Read: ICE Detention Numbers Have Reached a Record High (Mother Jones)

Read: ICE Is Extremely Desperate for You to Work for Them (Mother Jones)

Read: Report: Teen With Disabilities Detained by ICE Outside School in Los Angeles (Mother Jones)

Read: Alarm After FBI Arrests US Army Veteran for “Conspiracy” Over Protest Against ICE (The Guardian)

Credits

mother jones logo

Reporters: Katie Mingle and Julia Lurie | Producers: Katie Mingle, Steven Rascón, Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, and Michael I Schiller | Editors: Cynthia Rodriguez and Brett Myers | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Fact checker: Artis Curiskis | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Claire Mullen | Legal review: Victoria Baranetsky | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson | Special thanks: Susan Beaty, Priya Patel, Lauren Markham, and UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project

Support for Reveal is provided by Reveal listeners, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.

Transcript

Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.

Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Minneapolis, Maine, Memphis, North Carolina, Chicago, LA. These are just some of the places where masked federal agents have waged battle over the last year.
Speaker 2:A shocking ice arrest was caught on video.
Speaker 3:Protests are breaking out in response.
Speaker 4:(Explosions and sirens)
Kristi Noem: President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally. Leave now.  
Speaker 5:Stay indoors when possible, and know your rights. Do not go out unless necessary. Stay at home
Al Letson:ICE and Border Patrol agents are arresting people in front of their kids at school dropoffs, on the way to church, and at routine check-ins at immigration offices. And more and more, they’re using violent force.
Speaker 4:No!
Speaker 2:They just smashed the window of that SUV and then they forced this man out of the car onto the ground
Al Letson:They’ve shot clergy members in the head with pepper balls. They’re using tear gas on crowds of peaceful protesters. And disturbingly, they have shot and killed multiple people – who video evidence suggests – posed no harm…
Speaker 4:No. No. Shame. Shame!
Al Letson:As the country grapples with the brutal effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, we’re revisiting a show we first brought you last September. One that tells the stories of people whose lives have been upended by the raids.
Al Letson:For years — lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have tried and failed to pass the kinds of immigration reforms that could have created a pathway for undocumented immigrants to remain in this country legally.

Instead, hundreds of thousands of people were deported in 2025 alone, many vanishing with little to no due process. Who are they? And what happens to the family, jobs, and communities they leave behind?
 We begin at Loganville High School in the suburbs of Atlanta. In May, the school held its graduation ceremony. There were speeches from the valedictorian and the principal. An impressive rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. And of course, the handing out of diplomas.  
Speaker 16:Say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light.  
Al Letson:But one graduate wasn’t there to receive his. Josue Trejo Lopezz had been deported just two weeks before the ceremony, along with his brother. Producer, Katie Mingle, has the story.  
Katie Mingle:Let me introduce you to these brothers. There’s Josue, the graduate, and his brother, Jose, who’s older, but just by a year. Their mom wanted them to have similar names they told me because she always liked the idea of having twins. She also had them wearing matching outfits all through their childhood and well into their adolescence. Until finally it occurred to them that it might be nice not to do this anymore.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:We were like, “You know what? Why are we dressing the same?”  
Katie Mingle:This is Jose, he’s the older one.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And I told my brother I want to dress differently than you, I don’t want people to see that we are wearing the same shoes, the same shirt, the same pair of pants. I want to have a different style. It was around the age of 15 to 16. And I told my mom and she was like, “Okay, that’s fine, if that’s what you want, you can do it.” So my mom started buying different type of clothes. It was the same, but it was a different color at least. At least it was a different color, we were not looking the same.  
Katie Mingle:Now the brothers are 19 and 20 and they look different. Jose has glasses and Josue doesn’t. Josue has recently been sporting a long handlebar mustache that Jose is always telling him to trim. But still they’re very close.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:Like something happens to him, well, I will care about it, I’m there for him. And something happens to me, he’s there for me.  
Katie Mingle:That’s Josue. And Jose has something to add.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:Well, what he’s basically trying to say is that we are really supportive to one another. I would call our brother relationship like best friends. We are always together. And if I buy a pair of shoes and he doesn’t buy one, I don’t buy mine because I’m like, “You know what? I feel bad.”  
Katie Mingle:Josue and Jose left El Salvador with their mom when they were 10 and 11. It was 2016, and El Salvador had recently recorded the highest murder rate of any country in the western hemisphere. Jose told me gang members had started approaching kids at school offering them cell phones to join up. The boys’ mom wanted to bring her sons to a place where they’d be safer and have a chance at a better future. Plus a lot of their relatives were already in the US. So the family took a long journey through Guatemala and Mexico, crossing the border into Texas, and eventually making their way to Georgia. Their aunt was living in a suburb of Atlanta and they moved in with her and her kids. Jose remembers how different it felt from El Salvador.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And now going to a country where you see kids playing basketball, playing soccer, or riding a bike in the street. You’re seeing all those beautiful houses, even the grass, the green grass, the landscape, it was so beautiful to me. And I was like, “Dude, I love this.” I really like this type of life.  
Katie Mingle:School was a different story though, a foreign country in and of itself. The brothers didn’t know what their teachers were saying. Jose said he used Google Translate to try to do his homework. Not speaking English was such an immense barrier that it sometimes felt to Jose like the only barrier.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I remember I used to tell myself, hey, when I learn the language, I’m not going to have bad grades, I’m going to have A’s and B’s.  
Katie Mingle:Their cousins told the boys to download Duolingo. And they did. They also watched TV and movies in English. And slowly they got better at the language and started to fit in.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:At the end, I was like, “Dude, this is what basically feeling an American is like.” Having friends, graduating from high school, good grades.  
Katie Mingle:In their early years in the country, an attorney had encouraged the boys and their mother to apply for asylum. In 2018 their claim was denied. And Josue, Jose and their mom, Alma, all received deportation orders. Since coming to the US, Alma had given birth to a third son, Mateo, a US citizen with significant disabilities. Alma didn’t believe Mateo could get the healthcare he needed in El Salvador, so she kept her family in the US and began looking into other pathways to remain here legally. In the meantime, they always went to their check-ins with ICE even when they interfered with other things.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I remember one time that we had a check-in during the finals, and I was like, “What can I do about it?” How am I going to deal with these two things going on at the same time? If I miss the final, I’m going to get a zero. If I miss the check-in, I’m going to be in a big deal with ICE.  
Katie Mingle:What did you do?  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I went to the check-in, I missed my final.  
Katie Mingle:Jose graduated from high school in May of 2023 and moved to New York City to live with a family friend. Josue should have graduated in the spring of 2024, but he was behind on credits. He was determined not to have to do a whole extra year of high school though. And his teacher told him he’d need to do a bunch of extra credits on top of his regular load of classes to be able to finish in December.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:She told me, “Look, you need to do 11 credits.” I was like, “Jeez, 11 credits.” But I tell myself, yeah, if I don’t do this I’m never going to get out of here. I even stop playing video games, I just focus on school. I did three credits in one month.  
Katie Mingle:Josue told me he worked harder than he’d ever worked. And he did it. He finished all of his high school credits in December of 2024. And he joined his brother in New York. His plan was to return to Georgia to walk in his high school graduation ceremony in May of this year. But that’s not what happened.  
 In March, the boys went to a routine check-in at an ICE field office in Manhattan. Their mom had traveled from Georgia to go with them. When they got there, they were told that the building was full and they’d have to send an email requesting another check-in. And then an ICE officer said something strange to Jose.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:He told me, “Good luck.” I was like, “Wait.” That’s kind of strange to me because during this whole time that I have to go check-ins never an ICE officer had told me good luck.  
Katie Mingle:The boys were hoping their next check-in would be in maybe six months or a year. But when they got the email it said they should report back in two days. This is the point where some people might have chosen not to show up, just lay low and hide out. But Jose told me they never considered this, they wanted to follow the rules. When they returned to the ICE office two days later, and were called up to the counter, the officer asked if they knew they had a deportation order.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And I was like, “Yes, I know.” And he was like, “Okay, and are you doing something about it?” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I have all my papers that my attorney gave me.” It was like this big. It was for especially juvenile status.  
Katie Mingle:The previous year in 2024, the boys had begun the process of applying for special immigrant juvenile status. If they got it, the status would allow them to remain in the country legally. Theirs was exactly the kind of situation that didn’t used to be a priority for ICE. In previous administrations, even in Trump’s first term, it was generally the case that if you had a deportation order but you could prove you were pursuing some kind of legal remedy, ICE wouldn’t detain you. This was especially true if you didn’t have a criminal record. And Jose and Josue have never been in trouble with the law. But none of this seemed to matter to the ICE officer who was looking at their paperwork.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:He only looked at the first page. And then he was like, “This is not going to help you, this is worth nothing basically.” And gave it back to me. And he was like, “Okay, give me a minute. I’m going to talk to my supervisor.”  
Katie Mingle:The boys went to sit down. They were nervous. Eventually, the officer came back and asked Jose and Josue to follow him to another area, away from their mom and little brother who they’d come with.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And then he told me, “Okay, you are being detained by ICE and you are going to be put in removing proceeding. If you have anything that you want to give it back to your mom, your phone, your wallet, give it to me right now so I can bring it to her.” I look back and my brother was in handcuff. When they put the handcuffs on me, I was like, “Is this really happening to us?” We had never been put in handcuffs because we had no problems with the law. I couldn’t express the feelings that I was feeling in that moment because I felt like a criminal.  
Katie Mingle:Just like Jose and Josue, more than half of all people arrested by ICE in New York City in the first five months of the Trump administration had no criminal record according to data gathered by The New York Times. And according to federal data, half of those arrested were detained just like this during routine check-ins and court appearances.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:They didn’t let us say at least bye to our mom, not to our little brother.  
Katie Mingle:The boys were taken to a detention facility in Buffalo, New York.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And I told the ICE officer, “Hey, can you keep us together at least? Me and my brother together to the same detention facility on the same unit?” He was like, “Yeah, I’m going to try.” But I guess he didn’t try because we were separated as soon as we got to the detention facility.  
Katie Mingle:After a couple of weeks, their lawyer filed a petition, and they did get to be together. Jose, with the authority vested in his single extra year on this planet, tried to be strong for his younger brother.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:Basically, I was the pillar, I was the one holding everything at that moment. I told my brother, “Hey, bro, don’t cry or don’t act up, just relax, we’re going to go through this. Either way, if we don’t like it, we’re going to go through it.”  
Katie Mingle:Jose only cried once he told me, alone in the bathroom where Josue couldn’t see. Josue, for his part, tried to keep the mood light.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:I was just trying to make this guy laugh.  
Katie Mingle:On May 7th, both boys were deported back to El Salvador. They hadn’t been there in almost 10 years and they had no close family or friends still in the country. Their mom, Alma, is still in the US. It’s possible she’s been spared from deportation thus far because she’s the sole caretaker for her disabled son, Mateo.  
 I asked Alma if knowing what she knows now she regretted bringing Jose and Josue to the US. She told me she doesn’t. Her sons had so many more opportunities here than they would’ve had in El Salvador. But she told me that she does regret allowing them to go to that final check-in appointment with ICE.  
 A distant family friend, who the boys had never met, picked them up from the immigration office in El Salvador and let them live in his house for their first few months in the country. His name is also Jose, which is maybe why they always call him the old man.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:Well, he’s an old man, he’s already 69 years old, so he’s older.  
Katie Mingle:It was from the old man’s apartment near the capital city of San Salvador that Josue watched his high school graduation ceremony on a live stream.  
Speaker 19:We made it. From freshman jitters to senior celebrations, we have navigated some of the most defining years of our lives. Tonight we celebrate  
Katie Mingle:Josue had planned to be there with his friends. He already had his cap and gown. Instead, he watched on YouTube as his former classmates’ names were called. And one by one they walked across the stage to get their diplomas.  
Speaker 20:Robert Torres, honors, going on.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:Now, we’re just watching to see my friends walking. I thought they’re not going to call my name.  
Katie Mingle:But then they did call his name.  
Speaker 20:Josue Trejo Lopezz.  
Katie Mingle:Older brother, Jose, was in another room and he could hear Josue watching the live stream.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I was hearing him watching the ceremony, and then hear they call his name and then he came out. I have a video of it because I was like, “I’m going to record just to have as a memory that this happened to us.”  
Katie Mingle:Jose holds up the phone selfie-style and films while his brother lays his head on his stomach and sobs. “Did they say your name at the graduation?” Jose asks his brother.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:[foreign language 00:16:37]  
Katie Mingle:“The good thing is that you got your diploma,” Jose tells him.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:[foreign language 00:16:46].  
Katie Mingle:“You managed to graduate, that’s good.”  
Jose Trejo Lopez:[foreign language 00:16:55].  
Katie Mingle:At the end of the graduation ceremony, a student speaker emphasizes that it isn’t just the end of one chapter, it’s the beginning of another. “It’s time to embrace the changes ahead,” she tells the crowd, “and walk confidently toward the future.” But when I ask Jose to imagine what a future might look like in El Salvador, he’s at a total loss.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I don’t have an answer to that yet, or soon, because it is hard. It is hard to think about. I don’t know if we’re going to start looking for jobs. I don’t know if we’re going to start thinking about a future in here. First because it’s just going to be me and my brother, right? Being separated from our family is actually one of the biggest trauma that we have right now. Because who is going to be supporting us? Who’s going to be directing us in this country when we don’t know how the system works? I really want to go back to my family. I want to go back to the country that I call my home.  
Katie Mingle:Before they were deported, Jose and Josue both imagined they might attend a trade school of some kind, become mechanics or welders. Help support their mom and their little brother, and eventually have families of their own. Now they’re just hoping some way, somehow they get back to the country where that future still exists.  
Al Letson:That story was produced by Katie Mingle. Since it first aired in September, Katie has stayed in contact with the two brothers. They tell her that they’re still living with “the old man” in El Salvador. Younger brother Josue recently started a job, working a couple days a week at a call center. His older brother Jose says that, on the one hand his life makes him feel sad and alone. But on the other – he’s happy to be healthy, and at least he and his brother are together.
 When we come back, we’ll meet a restaurant owner trying to figure out how to keep her business open after her brother is detained by ICE.
Speaker 21:It’s becoming almost like it’s not sustainable for me to just keep operating the way I’m operating. I did not include my brother being picked up by ICE in my business plan.  
Al Letson:You’re listening to Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Like a lot of restaurants these days, the Nigerian restaurant Suya Joint in Boston has an Instagram account. Scrolling through the last few months of their posts is a mouth-watering experience. Pictures of stir-fried tofu and jollof rice, glistening fried plantains, pineapple upside-down cake. But in late June, there’s a different kind of post. The owner of the restaurant, Cecilia Lizotte, has written a note to her followers that begins, “Dear Suya Joint family, help us bring Paul home.” The note goes on. “Being forced apart like this is tearing through the heart of our home and community.” Cecilia’s brother, Paul, the manager of the restaurant, had been detained by ICE on his way to church.  
 The news over the last few months has been full of stories about restaurant employees being picked up by ICE, and when Mother Jones reporter, Julia Lurie, saw Suya Joint’s news on Instagram, it made her wonder what it’s like for the people left behind, what it’s like to run a restaurant or any business really, when a key employee, who happens to be your brother, suddenly disappears.  
Julia Lurie:I went to eat at Suya Joint for the first time in May with a reporter friend of mine who’d been raving about it. It was just a few weeks later when I saw the post on Instagram. The owner, Cecilia, would later refer to it as a cry for help, and that’s what it seemed like to me. Her post was basically saying, “I’m not sure if I can handle this.” It made me want to know more, so I headed back to Suya Joint.  
Cecelia Lizotte:So you see that this is where all of us have a Hi, hi, hi. Yeah. Those are everybody-  
Julia Lurie:That’s Cecilia greeting a kitchen full of cooks prepping for dinner.  
Cecelia Lizotte:It sounds so good in here.  
Speaker 4:Thank you. Thank you so much.  
Julia Lurie:Cecilia learned to cook from her grandmother, who ran a little restaurant in Central Nigeria. After she came to Boston in 1999, she started catering out of her home, which eventually led to opening Suya Joint as a brick and mortar. Now she has two locations and a food truck, and last year Cecilia was a semi-finalist for the prestigious James Beard Award.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Maybe inside, just it’s a little tighter.  
Speaker 4:Okay.  
Julia Lurie:We duck into a storage room away from the commotion to talk about Paul.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Don’t mind the mess.  
Julia Lurie:No problem. Cecilia and her brother balance each other out. Cecilia is the outgoing one. Loud, chatty, wears chunky jewelry in bold colors. Paul meanwhile is quiet, attentive, the go-to guy for critical behind-the-scenes jobs. It’s Paul who picks up ingredients from New York, who comes in to fix the plumbing in a pinch, or waits tables when Cecilia is short-staffed.  
Cecelia Lizotte:When I see him coming through the door, it’s like, I feel really, really safe. It’s like, “Yes, you are here.”  
Julia Lurie:Paul was on his way to church on Father’s Day when he was picked up by ICE. When I asked ICE about Paul’s case, a representative said that he’d been, quote, “Unlawfully residing in the United States since August 2019 when he violated the terms of his lawful admission.” Records show that Paul came to the US on a visitor visa in 2019 and applied for asylum later that year. When he was arrested, his case was ongoing. He had a social security number and a work authorization that’s valid until 2029. Under previous administrations, people like Paul wouldn’t have been a high priority for ICE, but things are different now. When he was arrested, Paul asked the officers if he could make a phone call to his sister.  
Cecelia Lizotte:I felt like someone just sucked my blood, my air, anything like, “How do you live?”  
Julia Lurie:Yeah. There’s not a playbook for someone in your situation.  
Cecelia Lizotte:No, there’s absolutely not a playbook. You wake up one day, you feel energized, and then within a twinkle of an eye, it’s almost like, “Where do I throw up?” It’s that bad. It’s terrible.  
Julia Lurie:There’s an eerie familiarity to Paul’s detention. The year before he came to the States, he was kidnapped by Boko Haram. The militant group was targeting journalists, and at the time Paul was working as a crime reporter for the Nigerian Television Authority. Paul talked about the kidnapping in a BBC documentary back in 2019.  
Paul Dama:I was scared. I was really, really scared because I started to imagine the trauma my family members were going to go through.  
Julia Lurie:Paul and Cecilia’s mom got the call from Boko Haram telling her he’d been kidnapped. Cecilia says her mom was literally speechless, kept fainting because of the news. The family scrambled to come up with the nearly $13,000 to free him. According to Paul’s asylum application, they even sold most of their property to make it happen. After four hellish days, Paul was released. Nigerian police told him they couldn’t guarantee a safety, advised him to leave the country. In his asylum application, Paul wrote, “This is why I’m here in the United States where I can feel safe and have my freedom guaranteed.”  
Cecelia Lizotte:And now in Boston, in America, literally right now as we speak, I just feel like, “Here’s another second kidnapping, he’s been picked up, and here we are at the mercy of everybody.”  
Julia Lurie:When I met with Cecilia, Paul had been sitting in a detention center in Dover, New Hampshire for two weeks. She seemed to be running on adrenaline moving 1,000 miles a minute. I had the sense that talking to a reporter was just one more item on her mile-long to-do list, which in a way, it was. She had to collect character statements for Paul’s upcoming hearing. She had to be there for her daughters, for her staff, for her relatives in Nigeria who were distraught about what was happening. And then there was Paul’s lawyer who could call at any moment looking for documents.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Before they can finish asking the question, I already know kind of the answer and I know exactly where to find it. And then, “Here you go, here you go.”  
Julia Lurie:Right now Cecelia’s top priority is getting ready for the bond hearing, when a judge will decide if Paul can be released from detention while his asylum case is ongoing.   Cecelia knows he faces an uphill battle. In 2024  Paul was charged with two misdemeanors for “operating a vehicle under the influence”. Both times, he was found sleeping in his stopped car, keys in the ignition, according to police reports.   Cecelia says he was in a dark place at the time, grieving the sudden loss of their mother, and pulled over to sleep. In both cases, a judge sentenced Paul to a yearlong probation. He also had to pay a fine, and complete a program for impaired drivers. Typically, if you complete the terms of the sentence in a case like this, the charges can be dismissed.
Cecelia Lizotte:We all have our own dark, whatever moments that we’re living with. This guy came out and he’s like, “Okay, you know what? This is not it.” And he’s been like in therapy. He has done so much extensive things to make sure that he’s doing the right things.  
Julia Lurie:When I left the restaurant, Cecilia seemed overwhelmed but also focused. She had a mission, which was getting ready for the bond hearing. We agreed we’d check in after it was over. On the day of the hearing, I called Cecilia, no answer, no response to text either. A few days later I call again and she picks up sounding exhausted. Paul’s bond was denied. Paul’s lawyer told Cecilia that the DUIs had come up in the hearing and the judge wasn’t convinced Paul should be released.  
 So are you doing with this news?  
Cecelia Lizotte:Thank you. It’s crazy.  
Julia Lurie:How is it for you to be working? I’m imagining it would be kind of hard to be positive and stuff like that around customers.  
Cecelia Lizotte:No, no. This is very, very difficult. And I think when I met with you all, I was hopeful I was doing okay, but then as time goes on, I’m just getting more and more defeated, just very, very much getting sick mentally, emotionally. It’s becoming almost like it’s not sustainable for me to just keep operating the way I’m operating. I don’t think anybody say like, “Okay, when I’m writing a business plan included this,” so I did not include my brother being picked up by ICE in my whole entire business plan. I’m not able to operate the establishment basically because it’s crazy.  
Julia Lurie:Cecilia told me she’s having trouble sleeping. She’s crying a lot, and this sounds like a bad metaphor, but it’s actually quite literal. Cecilia, the award-winning chef, has lost her appetite.  
Cecelia Lizotte:It’s just little nibbles like cat, and I’m like, “No, this is not good.”  
Julia Lurie:One of the many things weighing on Cecilia are all of the expenses. There are the legal retainers, $2,500 for the bond hearing, $13,000 for the asylum hearing, and then there’s all the cost of living that Paul normally would’ve paid for himself.  
Cecelia Lizotte:We are now left with paying all his rent, insurance, car payment, phone bills. It adds up. It piles up.  
Julia Lurie:This may sound naive, but I never really thought about all the recurring normal life expenses that pile up when a person suddenly disappears. It’s not like when someone dies and there’s no question, you cancel their rent and their phone bill. This is different. Cecilia has to decide, does she keep paying his $1,300 rent in hopes that he comes back, or does she go clean out his apartment? And Paul, of course, hates that she’s been put in this position.  
Cecelia Lizotte:He was very, very devastated, upset with the fact that all these things that now is put on the family is something that he is strong, capable of doing what he’s been doing all this time. So he’s very much distraught.  
Julia Lurie:Ever since news broke of Paul’s arrest, donations have poured in. Within two weeks, a GoFundMe for Paul’s legal expenses raised $32,000. Sometimes customers leave little notes of support in the delivery instructions of takeout orders. Cecilia shared one with me that said to leave the order in the lobby, and then went on, quote, “I’m so disgusted to hear about Paul Dama. I’ll do anything to help. Thank you for being my comfort food for the last five years.”  
Cecelia Lizotte:We’ve been receiving a lot of support from customers that we’ve never seen before based on what they’ve heard maybe on the news or they’ve read on the newspaper just to make sure that the establishment is sustained and it’s going. But me, the owner, is breaking.  
Julia Lurie:In moments when she’s feeling down, Cecilia seriously considers abandoning the life she’s built here, closing down the restaurant, going back to Nigeria even though she’s a US citizen. Her daughters and employees hate when she talks like this. They’re holding onto her and they want her to stay strong for them. But Cecilia’s like, “I’m trying to stay strong, but without Paul, who am I holding onto?” Cecilia talks to Paul almost every day. During one of their recent calls, a friend Paul made in detention got on the phone.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Then he explained to me how Paul is almost like they call him the president. They’re like, “You are our president.” Any question they have go to Paul, anywhere for them to feel some sense of a comfort, “Go to Paul, go to Paul.” I was joking with Paul like, “You can’t leave because you have a lot of almost like followers that are looking up to you to make this whole entire thing make sense.”  
Julia Lurie:Cecilia, of course, knows exactly how they feel.  
Al Letson:That was Mother Jones reporter, Julia Lurie. Since we first aired that story last September Paul was granted asylum. He was released from custody after spending more than three months in ICE detention. It happened late at night, and Cecelia went to pick him up.
Speaker 5:Yes, yes, yes, yes.. I got my brother in the middle of the night…
Al Letson:The asylum ruling means Paul can stay and work in the US. It also means he should be able to apply for a green card. But in December, Trump announced that the Department of Homeland Security was pausing its reviews of immigration applications—including green cards—from several quote, “countries of particular concern.” This list includes Nigeria, where Paul is from.

You can’t talk about the federal government’s deportation efforts without talking about Los Angeles. And even though the spotlight has moved on from that city, immigration raids continue there.
Memo Torres:I’ve been going through hundreds of DMs where they’re being spotted, and So be careful mi raza. Keep your bootstraps tight.
Al Letson:That’s next, on Reveal. Stay with us.
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Let’s go back to last summer when Trump’s massive deportation agenda first took hold. It started with raids at a clothing factory and a Home Depot in Los Angeles. And after protests erupted, Trump called in the National Guard, then the Marines. Soon ICE was everywhere. It was something no one had seen before. Masked officers with military-style weapons snatching up people at bus stops, car washes, food trucks. People were being racially profiled and arrested, even some U.S citizens. A federal judge eventually ordered ICE to stop these tactics in Los Angeles, but the Supreme Court paused her order, allowing them to continue. As all of this was unfolding last year, we checked in with a scrappy news organization that made it their mission to document what was happening. LA Taco covers food culture and the news, and since the immigration raids, they’ve shifted their focus using their reporting to try and protect their community.  
Memo Torres:It’s June 20th, and this is your daily memo as to what’s been going on in LA today. And boy has it been busy. ICE has been everywhere.  
Al Letson:Each day, reporter Memo Torres would go on Instagram to tell followers where ICE was spotted.  
Memo Torres:They were at the Home Depot and a car wash in Huntington Park downtown on 6th and Grand taking people, went back to-  
Al Letson:Many of the restaurants and taco stands, LA Taco featured over the years were now ICE targets. People they knew were getting rounded up.  
Memo Torres:I’ve been going through hundreds of DMs where they’re being spotted, and it’s a pretty general theme. The theme is working Latinos, so be careful [inaudible 00:01:50]. Keep your bootstraps tight.  
Al Letson:Over the following months, thousands of people, mostly Latinos, would be taken and arrested in Los Angeles. National media would pour into the city to capture the start of what would soon spread to Chicago, New Orleans, and most recently Minneapolis. But what we’re learning is that just because the focus shifts, it doesn’t mean things go back to normal because ICE is still in LA and so is Memo.  
Memo Torres:Today is Wednesday, January 28th, and it’s day 236 of this escalation. That’s without a doubt doubling down with signs that it’s about to get exponentially worse.  
Al Letson:His daily memos are still alerting people, letting them know where ICE has been seen.  
Memo Torres:They were in Alhambra, Boyle Heights, Chinatown-  
Al Letson:Who federal agents have been targeting.  
Memo Torres:ICE and border patrol continue their new streak of following and arresting community watchers.  
Al Letson:And how many people ICE has taken away.  
Memo Torres:So thanks to the community, what could have easily been over 50 people taken from us today was reduced to about 20.  
Al Letson:Memo has deep roots in his community. He’s a third generation landscaper and used to own his own landscaping business. In fact, he’s seen some of his former employees get rounded up by ICE. His daily memos have become a way for him to advocate for immigrant communities in LA and fight back. And since LA just doesn’t get that much attention anymore, we wanted to check back in with him. So we asked Memo to come back and talk to us. Memo, how you doing?  
Memo Torres:I’m doing okay, man. Got a little rest this weekend after the marches and the protests and all that.  
Al Letson:The work never ends.  
Memo Torres:It never stops, man.  
Al Letson:So tell me, what’s LA been like? What’s going on in LA now? Because the focus nationwide right now is on Minneapolis, but things are still happening in LA.  
Memo Torres:Yeah, I mean, we’ve been seeing a slow escalation. I feel like while our lives are in Minneapolis, people tend to forget that they’ve never left Los Angeles. I’ve even had to go on and clarify to different people who believe that Border Patrol and ICE left Los Angeles a long time ago, and that’s never been the case. Just actually last week we had about 50 incidents reported in one single day, which is outrageous compared to their previous record, which is about 30 incidents, and we used to do 30 or 40 incidents a week. They blew that out of the water in one day. And we also saw in Adelanto, they have about 28 vehicles, brand new vehicles still with dealer tags there, the same type of vehicles they use for their raids, and so we’re expecting for those to be included on their patrols.  
Al Letson:So the spotlight has moved on from your city, even if the raids themselves have not. What’s it like for residents to keep living under this oppressive force for so long?  
Memo Torres:I mean, every single day we’re verifying raids. We get all these videos. We confirm activity through responders, committee watches. Sometimes we call people, and I think one of these calls I called the car wash to confirm activity and how many people were taken because all we got was a report, so we didn’t have any actual video footage evidence. So I called this car wash. It was the owner of a car wash to ask him if they were there, and he told me, “Yeah, man, they took about four of my employees.” Okay, cool. Do you know if it was ICE or CBP? He’s like, “It was the guys with the green suits.” I’m like, okay, that’s CBP.  
 And at the very end when I said, “Thanks, man,” he’s like, “Hey, man, I appreciate what you do.” And said, “Yeah, man, we live and work in fear every day.” And that’s something he put it best, and it’s something that other people had elaborated, but just not that simple and concise. Every night after I finish my daily memos, I go to a taco stand somewhere in LA, and I ask people how they’re doing and they’ve all told me different ways, that same expression. They’ll tell me, “Look, what are we supposed to do? If we don’t go out to work? We’re going to get kicked out of our home, or we get kicked out of the country. Either way, we’re screwed. So we have to get out here and risk it.”  
Al Letson:So you’ve been watching this play out for more than 200 days. Have you seen federal agents change their tactics? Have you seen resistance from the community shift? How’s that been working?  
Memo Torres:Yeah, it’s like a big cat and mouse game. The community response has the most tactics to try to stop the border patrol raids, and then border patrol will adjust their tactics to try to get around the rapid responders. Recently we’ve been seeing border patrols specifically get super agitated and frustrated when their raids get foiled because of the community watchers, and so they’ve started going after community watchers a lot. We’ve seen several instances where they followed a young lady in their car, pulled her out and pulled her hostage for three hours.  
Speaker 4:You’re breaking my window guys. I’m a U.S. citizen. It’s insane.  
Speaker 3:Maria Sante is a US citizen. She’s also a community observer and believes that has made her target of ICE. Her detention today-  
Memo Torres:We had another gentleman who goes to ICE Melter 93 who in Compton was recording them, and they rushed him. They tackled him, they tased him, they beat him. They held him at the Metropolitan Detention Center for the whole day. Nobody knew where he was until he was released. We saw Ellie Hoodliffe, another community watcher who was also following the patrol. They called Bell PD, Bell Police Department, and arrested him. And community came out to pressure Bell PD to let him go, and he was let go after that. You’re seeing this escalation of border patrol agents getting frustrated and then more cases of pulling their guns out at these people, harassing them, calling police departments. So you’re starting to see a frustration escalate.  
Al Letson:So in order to inform the public on what ICE is doing and stop them from taking people, you guys have created a pretty advanced system?  
Memo Torres:Yeah, it’s a pretty advanced, I would say, counter-intelligence, counter-surveillance system that just monitors border patrol activity strategies, their presence, their movements and alert the community as to how they’re moving, if they’re changing strategies and just a visual observation, not interfering, not impeding, just an alert system. All this starts in the early morning where the community watch group called Harbor Peace Patrol goes out to Terminal Island where border patrol sets up in the morning, and then as they leave, they’ll take pictures of the vehicles and the license plates because border patrol will change out their license plates every single day. In some instances, five cars have one similar license plate tag, and then they’ll alert the whole community, and then the community members will share that with their local response groups and community watch groups, and they’re the ones going around and keeping that eye out in their neighborhoods.  
Al Letson:Who are these people who are alerting these communities?  
Memo Torres:So these community watch groups, they’re basically just folks, just folks out in the streets. They live in the neighborhoods. They’re organizing themselves into group chats, patrolling their local Home Depots, car washes, street corners, their residential neighborhoods, their school dropoffs, and just staying on the lookout for border patrols, raids or ICE during a targeted attack.  
Al Letson:So when community members spot ICE in their neighborhoods, they often pull out their phones and record, right? And since this started in LA, people have sent you a ton of videos. You’ve become like a repository. How many do you think you’ve collected and verified so far?  
Memo Torres:I am getting close to about five terabytes right now. It’s filling up my hard drive.  
Al Letson:Wow. I can’t even imagine how many videos that is.  
Memo Torres:Yeah, I’m in the thousands. I’m easily in the 3,000 to 5,000 range.  
Al Letson:Most of the videos that you have right now are masked ICE agents. If you’re looking to hold them accountable, do you think you’re going to have a hard time identifying who these agents are?  
Memo Torres:Not really actually. We’re starting to get good at identifying which agents are which, especially their body styles. These are not like soldiers bodies, which are all fit and similar. They’re all quirky. Some are fat or lanky or chicken-legged or duck feet. We have nicknames for a lot of these different agents so we can recognize who’s who. Short of doxing and saying what their names are and their addresses and identifying the actual agent, we do recognize them. And when somebody does get doxed and their identity gets revealed, we’re able to go back and figure out, “Oh, he was at this raid. That’s him.” And then I piece it together.  
Al Letson:Memo, I know that people are really watching these videos, even some Los Angeles City council members.  
Speaker 4:He has hundreds of hours of records that he has documented that I hope will be the tools that will be the reckoning, that will hold the individuals accountable that have enacted.  
Al Letson:They even invited you to speak at a hearing last December.  
Speaker 4:And so ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my guest Memo Torres.  
Al Letson:And at that hearing, you took it as an opportunity to call elected officials out. Let’s listen in.  
Memo Torres:It shocks me to know that politicians, our people, our leaders aren’t paying attention to the issue, and I don’t know why. This isn’t going away. I can tell you that it’s escalating. You know who’s out there doing the real fight and doing the standing up? The people. It’s our rapid responders. They’re out there daily using their gas, their time, taking time away from work, organizing themselves, doing counterintelligence surveillance and trying to be out there in the streets to prevent more people getting taken, and they are effective, but they need support.  
 Yeah, it’s crazy to hear that playback. It’s like, “Damn, I said that?”  
Al Letson:You did, Sir. You did.  
Memo Torres:It was in the heat of the moment honestly. Council member Monica Rodriguez invited me to come through and testify as to what’s going on with ICE and the raids. So in my head, I thought I was going to sit down and they were going to ask me questions and I was just going to respond and inform them on things. Instead what happened is that as a city council session was starting, she introduced me and said, “Here, Memo, here’s the mic. Say something.” I had nothing planned. I didn’t know what I was going to say. So I stepped up to the mic, and I was like, “I’m going to call you guys out.” What the hell are you guys doing?  
 This is happening every single day. Our mayor’s not paying attention. Our civic leaders aren’t really doing as much, and not all of them. There’s some council members that are doing the work. There are some people in the county board that are doing the work, but for the most part, it’s very few of them. So, yeah, I just felt like I’m going to call you guys out. Thanks for giving me the mic and the stage.  
Al Letson:How was that taken?  
Memo Torres:After that, I went to the back, and some of the council members came up to thank me for saying this and speaking up, the ones doing the actual work, a couple other ones. One of them came up to me and she was like, “I just want to say you’re calling me out for not doing anything. I just want you to know that I am doing something, but I’m not doing it publicly. I’m doing the hidden because I’m being doxed, and I’m afraid for my life.” I’m like, “Well, then get the fuck off the seat. We’re all putting our life on the line. Your constituents, our community members are putting their lives on the line. What the hell are you doing if you’re not ready to represent? You literally were elected to be the face and representing the voice of people.” I didn’t say that to her, but that’s what I wanted to.  
Al Letson:But that’s what you’re feeling. Yeah.  
Memo Torres:I haven’t really seen much. I just don’t see the city uniting, the mayor, all the city council members, the police commission to unite and be like, “This is our city. We’re going to protect it.”  
Al Letson:I mean, when you look at Minneapolis, it feels like Minneapolis has on a whole come together to at the very least let it be known that this type of action shouldn’t be happening in Minneapolis.  
Memo Torres:Exactly.  
Al Letson:Whereas you don’t feel like that’s happening in LA now?  
Memo Torres:No.  
Al Letson:Do you think that is because the cameras aren’t there anymore?  
Memo Torres:I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. Maybe they’re representing areas that they’re afraid the constituents are pro-ICE or pro-Trump. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t know. It’s beyond me.  
Al Letson:How are you doing? This is your community, your people, what’s it been like for you?  
Memo Torres:You know, it’s a world with emotions, but I like to say that I think my life has prepared me to be able to handle this moment and grab it by the horns and be able to fight it like a bullfighter. I don’t let it get to me. I know how to compartmentalize. I know how to handle my emotions. And for me, it’s motivation to keep going, to keep doing what I want. Where I see something happening that angers me or I’m out there and people are filling me with gratitude and support and appreciation, all of that just fuels me to continue doing what I’m doing.  
 It’s gone from trying to understand what’s happening and dealing with a crisis every single day to now becoming a daily part of life, which is insane. Now every day you wake up like, “Okay, we’re going to go back to covering ICE raids. Where are they going to be at?” We have a routine. We’ve grown. We’ve been able to formalize our procedures here at La Taco. I got some more support now. There’s four of us covering the raids now. So it’s weirdly become something that we’ve systemized, whether how we process our emotions, how the raids happen, how we record them, how we verify. It’s sadly become a part of daily life now.  
Al Letson:Memo Torres, thank you so much for coming onto the show and talking to me again.  
Memo Torres:Yeah, no problem. And thank you guys for keeping attention to this. I appreciate you guys.  
Al Letson:That was Memo Torres from LA Taco, a publication that covers food and the news. You can find Memo’s work on LA Taco’s Instagram and their website, lataco.com. We reached out to the president of LA City Council Marqueece Harris-Dawson. A spokesperson said the council member sympathizes with Memo and that the city council has been trying to limit what ICE can do, but keeps running into legal challenges. Recently though, LA’s Mayor signed a directive that bans ICE from using city property to stage operations. The new rules also require LAPD to collect and preserve evidence during immigration raids as a way to hold federal agents accountable.  
 We also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, and in the statement, DHS said since June 2025, it’s made 12,000 arrests in LA despite “violence from rioters and demonization by sanctuary politicians.” The department did not say when operations would end in Los Angeles.  
 That story was produced by Reveals Steven Rascon. Our lead producer for this week’s show is Katie Mingle with Help from Michael I. Schiller. Brett Myers and Cynthia Rodriguez edited the show. Thanks to Susan Beatty, Priya Patel and Lauren Markham for their help with the show. And to UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.  Artis Curiskis is our fact-checker.  Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production manager is Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando “My Man, Yo” Aruda. They had help from Claire C. Note-Mullen. Taki Telonidis is our deputy executive producer. Our executive producer is Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado Lightning.  Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.  
 Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson, and remember, there is always more to the story.  

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Steven Rascón is an associate producer for Reveal. He previously worked for KQED as a producer for the award-winning podcast On Our Watch: New Folsom, an investigation into the death of two whistleblowers inside California’s most dangerous prison. Its reporting has aired on NPR stations including Capital Public Radio, WHYY's The Pulse, and KCRW. He also helped produce the Peabody-nominated Reveal podcast series Mississippi Goddam. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

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Anayansi Diaz-Cortes is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. She most notably spearheaded After Ayotzinapa, a gripping investigative series that examines the mysterious disappearance of 43 Mexican college students in 2014. The project earned her an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and was named among the New York Times’ Best Podcasts of 2022.

With a commitment to shedding light on critical issues, Anayansi’s storytelling spans a wide spectrum, from exposing wage theft and the dangers of predatory online gaming to unraveling the complexities of the criminal justice system in Mississippi and the challenges of navigating high school life amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Her distinctive approach combines emotional depth with first-person narratives, captivating audiences while unearthing consequential truths.

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Michael I Schiller has worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting since 2013 as a multimedia reporter, producer, and creative director. His work spans radio, animation, visual design, and documentary film. The Dead Unknown, a video series he directed about the crisis of America’s unidentified dead, earned a national News and Documentary Emmy Award, national Edward R. Murrow Award, and national Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award. His animated documentary short film The Box, about youth solitary confinement, was honored with a video journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, a San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award, and a New Orleans Film Festival special jury prize, and it was nominated for a national News and Documentary Emmy for new approaches.

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Cynthia Rodriguez is a senior radio editor for Reveal. She is an award-winning journalist who came to Reveal from New York Public Radio, where she spent nearly two decades covering everything from the city’s dramatic rise in family homelessness to police’s fatal shootings of people with mental illness.

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