Inside el Don’s 2025 Immigration Issue

Download the Special Issue: Immigration Vol. 103 Issue 1

Letter from the editor

After grabbing lunch with a close friend, we headed to the June 11 protest against the raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Fourth Street. We drove past City Hall and saw armored vehicles posted around barricades and police officers in tactical gear hanging on the side of a police SUV.

When we eventually made our way through the crowd of picket signs, flags and chanting, I picked up my camera from around my neck and looked through the viewfinder. Instead of focusing on the breakfast restaurants and bars that I’ve been to with my friends, I focused on a National Guard Humvee. Faster than my camera could focus, I thought, “This shit is real.”

As the realization began to set in, I felt my face get hot. Not because of the tear gas or pepper balls the Santa Ana Police Department had used against protesters a few days prior, but because these armed soldiers and masked agents were here uninvited in the city I call home.

Since ICE showed up in our city four months ago, residents have been helping those who have been targeted in any way they can. With nearly a quarter of the population being noncitizens, the act of reporting feels like an act of resistance during this time.

From coffee carts raising funds for mutual aid groups to people celebrating their culture and heritage through events like the Chicano Moratorium and Fiestas Patrias, the stories in this issue show how the community responded to the federal presence in our city.

That’s what sets local newsrooms like ours apart from mainstream outlets and social media accounts that post emotionally driven clickbait. For the entirety of the summer, our city’s stories were told through viral social media clips seen around the country that don’t tell the whole story. The best and most impactful reporting comes from those who are on the ground as history is happening.

We are still here when the dust settles, and because we live, learn and spend our money here, we can do what other news outlets can’t. We can humanize heavy topics like immigration. We can give faces and names to the statistics, and in these pages, you’ll get to meet the people.

el Don will continue to tell our community’s stories because they are our stories to tell. And if we don’t, no one else will.

Check out each story included in our issue below: