Within his first few days back in office, President Donald Trump pushed long-promised restrictions on U.S. immigration and began pursuing mass deportations of those without legal status, promising to focus efforts on violent criminals. As a result, reporting hotlines — and the immigrant rights organizations behind them — were overwhelmed with a flood of calls from panicked community members across Southern California and nationwide, wanting information and resources.
Just under six months later, growing sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have rippled through diverse immigrant communities, resulting in even more calls, verified sightings and arrests — plus a growth in resources, including community-run rapid response networks.
Volunteers and advocates across Southern California said they have been working around the clock, verifying ICE reports and offering resources, to help communities during this time of rampant fear and anxiety.
“The hotline was much more manageable under (Joe) Biden, but now we’re getting a record amount of calls,” said Sandra De Anda, director of policy and legal strategy for the OC Rapid Response Network, or OCRRN.
OCRRN is a community-run coalition that has become a centralized “hub” for residents to find updates about local ICE sightings and activity. It was founded in 2016 under Trump’s first presidency as a response hotline, which De Anda said would get around “maybe three or four calls, here or there.”
But over the last month, De Anda estimates that the coalition receives anywhere from 60 to 100 rings a day — which she called a low estimate. She said the calls range from ICE sightings in neighborhoods, to people seeking legal aid, mental health resources, or help with housing. The group also monitors courthouse arrests and holds weekly meetings with families of those detained, helping them navigate the complex immigration system.
“I’ve never heard or seen the word ‘help’ so much in my life,” De Anda said of the recent influx in outreach. “It’s really telling of where we are.”
Over 1,600 immigrants were arrested for deportation since the wave of Southern California raids began in June, Department of Homeland Security officials said, and promised more round-ups under Trump’s goal of around 3,000 daily arrests nationwide.
ICE did not reply to multiple requests for comment. Officials have previously declined to confirm specific actions, citing officer safety, and the agency will “publicly announce the results of operations when appropriate,” it said.
Officials also condemned a new iPhone app that lets users anonymously report ICE sightings in real time, which ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons called “dangerous.”
At the OCRRN, volunteer “ICE watchers” across the county field residents’ calls, gather eyewitness accounts, review photos, contact city officials and other community members, or go check out the site to document the reported incident, get any identifying information of the officers involved, and verify any details, De Anda said. Verification is important to fight any widespread paranoia.
Once a tip is deemed credible with details, the response teams work on getting more information if someone was detained, and connect families to resources.
De Anda said she noticed more concerned residents also independently starting their own volunteer response networks in local neighborhoods, working their own contacts to verify ICE sightings and arrests out of an “increased desire to help inform people of their rights,” and deter what De Anda called “kidnappings off the streets.”
“Our local government has been slow to react and respond for its constituents,” she said. “There is a strong local movement growing, of trusting and supporting mutual aid and nonprofit groups to protect communities.”
In mid-June, student volunteers from colleges including USC, UCLA and UC Irvine started working with L.A.-based lawyer Olu Orange, who launched a hotline through his civil rights program at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
De Anda, who has been doing this kind of advocacy work since 2017, said things under Trump have felt “scarier” due to the volume of ICE raids and, for many immigrants without legal status, narrowing pathways to citizenship. Other reports of masked federal agents waiting outside of courtrooms and entering private spaces, like churches, have only added to growing fears in the community, she said.
“It can be very sad and maddening to hear that people from all walks of life and backgrounds are now scared for their loved ones or themselves,” De Anda said. “Fascism is at our door. Our organization and communities who help us aren’t aligning with it.”
Law enforcement officers wearing identity-concealing masks have also raised concerns about their legitimacy. With several statewide reports of people posing as immigration officers, California Attorney General Bonta in a statement warned communities to protect themselves from false actors and scammers “looking to take advantage of the fear and uncertainty created by President Trump’s inhumane mass deportation policies.”
Immigration centers and organizations across the Southland have also ramped up efforts, aiming for a truly “rapid” response amid federal activity.
Officials from the TODEC Legal Center, which serves the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley, said that while the sprawling region has mostly seen smaller targeted ICE operations, phone lines have been very active. The Perris-based nonprofit serves migrant farmworkers through labor rights workshops, legal and housing support, and operates an ICE reporting line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
“In the last six months, calls have easily been in the thousands,” said Luz Gallegos, TODEC’s executive director. “We get a high number of calls in the morning, before workers go out to work in the fields. Many are only going to work and back to lessen risks.”
As part of its efforts, TODEC has volunteer teams who regularly patrol site areas for ICE activity, so that when people call, they can be more accurately informed.
She cited a recent operation in Thermal, which involved a task force including ICE, the National Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs and Border Patrol and other federal agencies; around 500 federal officers who came to the Coachella Valley. Gallegos said TODEC’s hotline received over 200 calls in one hour from residents fearing growing ICE activity.
The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, which has maintained its ICE hotline for nearly a decade, has been busier than ever over the last few months, officials said. Like many other groups, ICIJ has been hosting legal clinics and “Know Your Rights” workshops, while recruiting more volunteers to help with the rapid response network.
The group’s Emergency Response Network was formed in 2008 in response to a wave of local Customs and Border Patrol raids, organizers said. Over the years, its network helped increase reporting of immigration arrests, created a streamlined process to document human rights violations, and grown its roster of bilingual volunteers-responding to urgent needs.
Los Angeles, a heavy target of ICE raids over the past few weeks, has seen a flurry of activity in its own response networks.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) received over 9,000 calls to its hotlines since January, spokesperson Jorge Mario Cabrera said. The need for referrals and legal support has “increased tenfold” in the past month. CHIRLA is also part of the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, a diverse collaboration of labor, legal, religious, and LGBTQ+ organizations working towards immigrant rights. Recently, the nonprofit joined a class action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to condemn the raids.
CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas called the Trump administration’s latest actions “putting the deportation machine on steroids.”
The Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a pro bono provider of deportation defense with offices in L.A., Santa Ana, Riverside and San Diego, launched its own bilingual rapid response and legal hotline back in January, to “protect immigrants from the Trump administration’s mass detention agenda… meant to instill fear and sow chaos,” officials said.
“When leadership fails us, we must build community power,” program director Laura Urias said in a press release. “ImmDef has created this hotline to stand with Southern California’s immigrant residents, because no immigrant should stand alone in the face of an anti-immigrant federal administration.”
Long Beach immigrant justice group ÓRALE, for Organizing Rooted in Abolition, Liberation and Empowerment, started its own community defense network hotline in February. The group mobilizes trained community members to the site of reported ICE raids in the city, where they document any interactions, verify arrests, and get people connected to local resources, such as the Long Beach Justice Fund, organizers said. They also post regular updates on social media, warning people of reported activities or possible scams. Over $85,000 has been raised so far to continue funding the efforts.
“This is not just a moment,” organizers said, “it’s a movement for survival, resistance and justice.”
Southern California area immigration hotlines:
OC Rapid Response Network: 714-881-1558
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights: 888-624-4752
ÓRALE Community Defense Network: 562-245-9575
TODEC Legal Center (24/7): 951-388-2008
Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice: 909-361-4588
Staff writers Alex Crosnoe, Hanna Kang, Allyson Vergara and Pat Maio contributed to this report.