Approximately 50 demonstrators gathered Saturday morning in Pasadena as part of a national action to honor lives lost during immigration enforcement operations and in detention centers during the Trump administration.
They wore fliers around their necks, hung with yellow thread, bearing the smiling faces and names of some of the 75 people who have died since January 2025.
“Killed by ICE” was printed above a photo of each person, including local resident Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old killed while trying to flee immigration agents who descended on a Home Depot in Monrovia last year.
The Los Angeles residents, part of the San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible group, carried American flags and held signs that read “No ICE No War” and “Stop ICE Murders.”
“Good morning, Pasadena,” Betsy Hanger, an organizer with the group, boomed into a megaphone as she walked through an intersection. “Honk for democracy. Honk if you want ICE off our streets now.”
A chorus of horns sounded as drivers signaled their support.
Organizer Andra Clarke held a banner in each hand that read “Neighbors Say ICE Out.” The sign around her neck carried the name and photo of Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a 48-year-old who died in a Texas detention center in December.
Heba Turner was among protesters demanding justice for those killed by ICE officers.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Clarke, 61, said the group has been gathering at the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Fair Oaks Avenue every Saturday since March. Last weekend, they celebrated civil rights activist John Lewis.
This Saturday, though, their focus was aimed at ICE.
“Now 75 people have died at the hands of ICE,” Clarke said. “We were originally told, ‘Oh they’re going to go after the criminals, the people who are the worst of the worst.’ That’s a lie; that is not what’s happening.
“They’re targeting communities, they’re targeting people of color. It’s fascism. … Anybody who cares about humanity should care about what’s happening.”
Clarke said it hit her hard when she learned of the two recent deaths at the hands of ICE.
The event was also a vigil honoring 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by an ICE agent in Houston on July 7 while driving his construction crew to a job site, and Johan Sebastian Guerrero, 25, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Maine during a traffic stop earlier this month.
“It’s like, again? It just doesn’t end. It feels like it never ends — the evil.”
Shortly before noon, Clarke used a megaphone to read aloud the names of the dozens who have died. After each name read, Hanger struck a singing bowl, the vibrations sounding out in the corner where they stood. At times, she read “unidentified man” or “four unidentified women.”
Next to them was a poster board with a photo of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old woman found unresponsive at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh after ICE released her “into cold winter conditions and no care for mental health episodes or notice to relatives.”
“Let’s take a moment of silence for all those who were taken,” Clarke said, bowing her head.
“It’s like, again? It just doesn’t end. It feels like it never ends — the evil,” said Andra Clarke, an organizer for San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Among those gathered to listen was Leticia Lopez, a 65-year-old South Pasadena resident whose voice trembled as she talked about the impact of hearing about another arrest or death tied to enforcement operations.
“It gets me to the core,” she said, striking her chest. “It’s not getting any better, it’s getting worse. I just feel like I need to do something.”
Lopez, who wore a shirt that read “Immigrants are not criminals but the president is,” said her mother and grandmother were forcefully repatriated from Arizona to Mexico.
Her mother, who was raised in Mexico, later met her father there. He moved to the U.S. in the 1950s as a bracero. Hearing the stories of today, she said, “triggers everything that they went through.”
“When I see it happening, it’s a generational trauma that I feel,” she said. Lopez said people around her are carrying passports and documents in public to prove they’re citizens.
“Because they’re afraid they might be profiled, picked up, kidnapped by ICE. When my son goes out, I worry,” she said of her 28-year-old.
Later that afternoon, about four miles away outside of Home Depot in Pasadena, organizers staked in the ground dozens of white crosses that bore photos of the dead — the majority of them men. Attendees of the vigil laid flowers at the crosses in a makeshift cemetery.
“Shot dead by ICE,” read one with a photo of Keith Porter Jr., who was killed by an off duty ICE officer in California.
Several of them contained details of how the deaths unfolded. A man killed after a tractor trailer struck him as he fled an ICE raid in Florida. A Cuban immigrant who died in a detention center (his death was later ruled a homicide). A Mexican national who fell 30 feet to his death during a raid in California.
Among the photos on crosses were Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“Are we going to wait until 70 more die to do something?” asked Marlom Portillo, an educator with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, as he staked more crosses into the ground.
“What they want us to do is forget them,” Portillo added. “We will never get tired of denouncing this atrocity.”
“There are more people who died than there are people here protesting,” Kathleen Vallee, a Monrovia resident, observed to her friend. “And that says a lot about us.”
Vallee said when she attended the “No Kings” protest, it was “jam-packed.” Only a dozen people had gathered around 20 minutes into the vigil.
“It turns my stomach,” Vallee said, hands clasped. “This just seems to be seeping up from the sewer into our democracy and that motivates me.”
As the small crowd assembled, demonstrators carried signs that read “Every person is sacred,” “we keep us safe” and “neighbors say ICE out.” One woman carried a handmade sign that read: “Who will they come for next?”
Sheri Lochner, a 64-year-old Monrovia resident, is part of East Pasadena Community Defense Corner, a small group that “provides support and a sense of community” for day laborers.
Lochner said she watched as immigrant agents took six or seven men at an Oct. 1 ICE raid at the Monrovia Home Depot.
“So un-American,” Lochner said, as she scanned the rows of crosses. “This isn’t right.”
She added that her mom, who voted for Trump the first time, agreed with her.
“I speak up, I will not be silent,” she added.
