(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Carlos Aranibar, a former Downey public works commissioner, is active in local Democratic politics. However, until a few weeks ago, the son of Bolivian and Mexican immigrants had not taken any action against the immigration sweeps that had swept Southern California.
Life always seems to get in the way. Downey has not been as heavily damaged as other communities in Southeast Los Angeles County, where elected authorities and local leaders exhorted locals to fight and assisted in organising. Furthermore, we’re talking about Downey, which admirers and foes alike refer to as the “Mexican Beverly Hills” because of its middle-class Latino population and conservative leanings.
The council voted the next year to prohibit the Pride flag from flying on municipal property after voters recalled a council member in 2023 for being too woke. A few months later, Donald Trump saw an 18.8% rise in votes over 2020, which was a part of the historic Republican Party shift among Latino voters.
That is now on fire. Although it took some time for Aranibar to fully embrace the anti-immigration movement, he and others like him are posing a serious challenge to President Trump and the Republican Party in the next midterm elections and beyond. On his way home from work on January 27, Aranibar saw a Customs and Border Protection vehicle.
An electrician with Local 11 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was startled into action by that. The 46-year-old said, “It’s not something like that; I was in a bubble and I was finally mad I’ve been mad.” “But I thought, ‘That’s not cool,’ seeing [immigration patrols] so close to my city.”
He phoned others and looked for ways to join others in resisting. Eventually, he heard of a gathering that night at a music venue in downtown Downey. It was only a few weeks after immigration officials attempted to detain two Downey gardeners with legal status before locals chased them away and captured the incident on camera, and a few days after Border Patrol officers shot and killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti after he attempted to protect a fellow protester from pepper spray.
At the opening of a Downey ICE Watch group, Aranibar stood side by side with almost 200 others. They signed up for email updates and learnt how to identify and follow immigration authorities. To let neighbours know if la migra was around, a box of whistles was distributed.
From the podium, an organiser questioned, “Has anyone here served in a patrol?” Only a few people raised their hands. Following the event, Aranibar remarked, “I saw familiar faces and new faces, energized it was really nice.” “I had the impression that people in Downey were motivated to take action, and now it was materialising.”
On the opposite side of the political spectrum, at Downey City Hall, an equally surprising political awakening appeared to be underway. When a video of Mayor Claudia Frometa having a great time with other Latino Trump supporters the night he won his reelection attempt surfaced, it caused a stir across the community.
Activists have since demanded she speak out against the president’s deportation deluge, protesting in front of City Hall and speaking out during council meetings when they didn’t buy her rationale that local government officials couldn’t do much about federal actions.
Prior to the Jan. 27 council meeting, Councilmember Mario Trujillo informed me that Mayor Frometa was currently not a good Californian. At the last meeting, Trujillo pushed Frometa to halt what was happening and speak to “her president,” so Frometa shut off his microphone and announced a recess. “This is an opportunity to take a stance, not to hedge or dodge. She’s telling us a bullshit story.
Frometa wore a weary smile as she listened to detractors like Trujillo attack her again that night. She appeared to be reading from prepared statements when it was her turn to speak at the end of the evening, but her gestures and voice suggested she was coming from a deeper place.
“This issue [of deportations], which we have been witnessing develop into something really unsightly, is no longer about politics,” Frometa stated. “It concerns government actions that do not conform to our Constitution, our laws, and fundamental principles of justice and humanity.”
Frometa urged people to record immigration officers while she kept putting on and taking off her spectacles. She also said that the council had just authorised more financing for city-sponsored legal aid and know-your-rights training. The mayor concluded, “This is beyond party affiliation and we will stand together as a community.”
All at once, Trump was being attacked from both the left and the right by the so-called “Mexican Beverly Hills.” Memes regarding Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime concert are exploding throughout the nation among Latinos. Ileana Garcia, a Florida state legislator and co-founder of Latinas for Trump, told the New York Times that Trump “will lose the midterms” due to his harsh stance on immigrants, demonstrating how far his popularity among former backers has fallen.
Hector de la Torre, a former Assembly member, stated that he is not shocked by the events in a city like Downey. “It’s no longer hypothetical when it hits home like that; it’s real,” he stated. De La Torre, who works with Fromenta as executive director of the Gateway communities Council of Governments, which supports 27 communities from Montebello to Long Beach to Cerritos and all of the cities in southeast Los Angeles, attended the Downey ICE Watch conference.
“People are coming out in ways that they may not have in the past,” he added. “It’s the knowledge that [raids] can even occur here.” Former mayor and longtime chaplain for the Downey Police Department, Mario Guerra, remains a powerful figure in local politics, having assisted the full council in winning elections.
He expressed doubt about the attendees of the Downey ICE Watch, asking, “How many of then were actual residents?” Nevertheless, he pointed out that other Latino Republicans were “frustrated” with Trump and his raids.
Guerra stated, “I didn’t vote for masked men picking people up at random,” before bringing up the January migra incident with the gardeners. “You’ve got some problems if it doesn’t bother you. The midterms will undoubtedly be affected by all of this.
I could already tell what was going to happen before Frometa’s little remarks. I spoke with the term-limited mayor in her office before the council meeting. As one of the few Republican Latino elected officials in Los Angeles and the first Republican from California to lead the nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the 51-year-old former Democrat is seen as a rising GOP star.
Her family moved to Downey from Juarez, Mexico, when she was 12. The suburban community, once primarily white, gained notoriety as the birthplace of the Space Shuttle and the Carpenters. She answered, “I thought he would enforce our laws.” “To close our border in order to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from entering without authorization.” I thought he would be harsh on crime.
Nevertheless, the methods and enforcement used are not what we voted for. Frometa called Trump’s wanton deportation program “heartbreaking,” “racial profiling,” “problematic,” “devastating,” and “not what America stands for” throughout our 45-minute conversation.
Republicans, she knows, feel “dreadful” about it, the mayor said, adding, “You cannot say you are pro-humanity and be OK with what’s happening.” When asked if she was carrying a passport like many Latinos are, myself included, she said she was “almost” at that point.
Frometa justified her rather quiet stance on the issue compared to that of other elected Latino authorities. “People want their elected officials to come out fighting because we live in such a polarising time,” she added. “And I believe that a lot more can be achieved in a variety of ways.”
She declined to provide specifics or the identities of other GOP members engaged, but she said part of that involves discussing how to effectively advise the Trump administration to “change course and change fast” with other Southern California Republicans “at different levels within the party.”
I asked her if she would vote for Trump again if given the opportunity, as I wrapped up our conversation. Frometa sighed and said, “It’s a very hard It’s a hard question to answer.” Our communities should be handled compassionately and equitably, in accordance with our wishes. Is that how they’re being handled now? They’re not. And it doesn’t sit well with me. So you don’t know at the moment? “Mm-hmm.” You may be sure that many more Latinos on the right are currently thinking the same thing.
