AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We look now how protests over immigration raids and arrests are continuing around the country. In Milford, Massachusetts, this weekend, students walked out of school Monday to show support for Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 18-year-old high school honor student detained Saturday by ICE agents in three unmarked vehicles as he drove his volleyball teammates to practice at 7:45 in the morning. Marcelo was born in Brazil, had lived in the Milford area since he was 5 years old. He was also a member of the school band and was scheduled to perform the next day at the school’s graduation ceremony. So, on Sunday, many students marched in their gowns from their graduation to join hundreds of others at a protest outside Milford’s town hall. That’s Massachusetts.

Let’s go across the country now to San Diego, where outrage is growing after 20 armed and masked ICE agents in full tactical gear raided a popular Italian restaurant Friday. The agents handcuffed the staff, demanded IDs, arrested four workers. Local residents reacted angrily to the raid, attempted to block ICE vehicles from leaving the scene. ICE agents responded by throwing flash-bang smoke grenades at the crowd.

Just two examples of communities expressing outrage over ICE raids. This comes as immigrant communities are also pushing back on the raids and arrests. In San Diego, the Unión del Barrio is conducting community patrols of ICE agents in their neighborhood. This is a clip from a patrol in May. They speak in English and Spanish.

UNIÓN DEL BARRIO MEMBER 1: [Estamos aquí, vigilando la (calle) 39 y] Hemlock. Parece unos vehículos sospechosos. [translated: We’re here, watching 39th (Street) and Hemlock. Looks like some suspicious vehicles.]

UNIÓN DEL BARRIO MEMBER 2: Aquí están. They’re in front of us. [translated: Here they are. They’re in front of us.]

UNIÓN DEL BARRIO MEMBER 3: Sí, sí, los vemos. Estamos al frente de ustedes. ¿Qué vehículos, más o menos? [translated: Yes, yes, we see them. We are in front of you. What vehicles, more or less?]

UNIÓN DEL BARRIO MEMBER 2: Son tres vehículos. [translated: There are three vehicles.]

AMY GOODMAN: One of the people helping on these patrols by Unión del Barrio is Adriana Jasso, who will join us in a minute. This is a clip of her on another patrol, using a bullhorn to alert the community that ICE agents are on site. She speaks in Spanish.

UNIÓN DEL BARRIO MEMBER 4: Aqui tenemos al ICE. Sí era, sí era. [translated: Here we have ICE. Yes, it was (ICE). Yes, it was.]

ADRIANA JASSO: Aquí está ICE. Este es un vehículo de ICE. Un vehículo de ICE que está haciendo inteligencia a nuestra comunidades. [translated: Here is ICE. This is an ICE vehicle. An ICE vehicle that is doing intelligence on our communities.]

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in San Diego by Adriana Jasso, immigration and human rights advocate with the longtime group Unión del Barrio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Adriana. It’s great to have you with us. So, we are describing these different stories. Can you tell us first what happened on Friday at this Italian eatery? It was just opening up. Armed, heavily armed, ICE agents, various immigration parts of the government move in. And tell us what happened, and then how the community is responding.

ADRIANA JASSO: Thank you, Amy, for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Yes, on Friday evening, around 5 p.m., as members of the community of South Park, which is a middle-class community in — one of the many communities in San Diego was getting ready for dinner, and this particular restaurant has been popular for many years by local families and people who are just about to enjoy an evening of family time. And on Friday, HSI, the investigative branch of CBP, of DHS, came to that location and requested for customers to exit the restaurant, as well as put under arrest and detention to every person working and serving a function in the restaurant.

AMY GOODMAN: And could you tell us, Adriana, in terms of this move toward actual raids, rather than just going in to arrest individual peoples, which the Trump administration started, but now raids in the community, how frequently have these begun to crop up?

ADRIANA JASSO: Yes, thank you, Dr. González.

We have seen an increase in the level of fear, intimidation and terror that our communities are experiencing. We have had a clear escalation of work raids, and including this latest one at this restaurant. At the end of March, a construction site was raided in the East County of El Cajon. And the images and the level of escalation and aggression and excessive use of force, intimidation and terror that some of the images showed in South Park do not compare to what we saw and witnessed in the city of El Cajon, wherein over 80 agents exercised an operation at a work site that lasted six-and-a-half hours, and they detained over 200 workers, with a conclusion of taking into custody 17 of those over 100 workers that they detained for over six hours.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the situation of farmworkers? The whole nation, not just California, depends on the work of farmworkers in California, many of them immigrant workers. What’s the situation, that you’ve been able to tell of, in the fields?

ADRIANA JASSO: Specifically to the community in the county of Bakersfield and the Central Valley, where most of the food comes from and is cared for and harvested by the hands and the labor of migrant workers and workers of Latino, Mexicano descent, as well as Central America, we have had two major work raids or targeting farmworkers in the Bakersfield, early — mid-December, and a second one that had an impact took place in the farmworkers community in the Orange County, as well, in the Orange County about a month ago. This has been the escalation of targeting, and this came from Border Patrol, another branch of CBP, where over a hundred workers were detained, the first operation, and the second one, over 20 workers were detained. What is particular to highlight is that many of the workers were able to exercise and defend themselves from the excessive use of force and the abusive psychological harm that border agents and ICE agents were trying to inflict at the time of the interaction with the workers.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk, Adriana Jasso, about how the community is organizing? We’re seeing communities where a sudden arrest happens, and just the community rises up, from Missouri to Massachusetts. But you’ve been organizing for years. How are you moving on now? What are you — what are people doing in their organizing as Stephen Miller talks about ramping up to 3,000 arrests each day?

ADRIANA JASSO: We understand and have adhered to our historical responsibility to fight back, to resist and to denounce and take the moral imperative to say that the legal framework, due process, constitutional rights, civil rights, human rights, that were protection to our communities and to the working class of the West and every and other places in the country, this administration has made sure to erase and to try to attack and violate every human right, every constitutional right. Unión del Barrio stands in very much the assessment and the understanding that we have the responsibility to defend our communities. We are organizing night and date, weekend, weekdays, every single possible energy and time that we are able to put into community work and say that we have the right and the responsibility to defend ourselves.

You had a chance to see the community patrols that we have in place from L.A., from Riverside, from San Diego, from Escondido, and we’re developing relationships to implement this model in Santa, Barbara and San Francisco, and also potentially looking at growing in places like Utah, New York, Chicago. We are having those conversations because we know and we understand that the moral imperative to fight back, to resist and to not ask for permission or apologize for the right to exist. These are exciting times, yet they are difficult times, painful times. But this also could be an opportunity for the movement to gain the strength to stand up and face a fascistic, harmful government that has done away with the fundamental human rights and constitutional rights that we as communities deserve.

AMY GOODMAN: Adriana Jasso, I want to thank you for being with us, immigration and human rights advocate based in San Diego, California, a member of Unión del Barrio.