Anya was hiding. Crouched behind the counter at a car wash in Westchester, just outside Los Angeles International Airport, she kept quiet while her co-workers scattered outside. Some ran toward the In-N-Out Burger, others behind the Ralphs. One worker drove away in the car he was detailing. “La Migra” was here.

Federal immigration agents managed to take five of her colleagues into custody, said Anya, a Ukrainian Russian asylum-seeker who asked to have her name changed to protect her pending case. And less than 24 hours later — with the car wash short-staffed and shaken — plain-clothed, undercover agents surrounded the business in unmarked white SUVs.

“You guys came yesterday,” Anya’s boss said in a video of the raid reviewed by The Intercept.

“Did we get car washes?” an agent joked in return. They left with two more workers in handcuffs.

Across Los Angeles County, ICE’s operations played out differently. When combat-ready federal agents gathered in large numbers at staging areas in Paramount and Compton on June 8, protesters swiftly mobilized collective resistance efforts and emergency patrols. Agents responded to large crowds with tear gas, flash bangs, and so-called “less-lethal” weapons. Organizers maintain that this grassroots mobilization sabotaged enforcement operations, putting agents on the defensive and preventing them from conducting raids for the rest of the day.

As ICE raids escalated across Los Angeles in early June, sending protesters into the streets and immigrant communities into hiding, the contrast between how the consequential weekend unfolded in different parts of the city was stark. Divergent outcomes in majority Latino areas further east with a long history of organizing and those largely disconnected from grassroots support highlighted the crucial role of community-led defense in the absence of meaningful government protection.

Unlike Compton or Paramount, the airport-adjacent Westchester is geographically and socially isolated from more established community organizing networks. And while LA’s sanctuary laws prohibit local police from working with ICE, organizers argue that the local law enforcement agencies can’t be trusted to keep immigrants safe.