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It was the morning shift at Ambiance Apparel, a clothing wholesaler on the edge of Los Angeles’s fashion district, and along with a crowded showroom of mannequins and women’s skirts was a sprawling warehouse, where immigrant workers were bustling about.
On any other day, the inventory would have flowed smoothly, from folded piles to cardboard boxes stacked on wooden pallets to be loaded onto trucks. But on June 6, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed the premises, dozens of employees at the warehouse and at a second facility nearby fled their workstations, ducking between shelves and inside boxes.
They couldn’t hide for long.
One of the workers, Tomas Anastacio, 55, who has three U.S.-born, college-educated children and has lived in Los Angeles for three decades, texted his son Carlos at around 10 a.m.
“Ca,” he wrote, “Immigration is at work.”
Carlos responded, “Oh no, I love you very much.”
When Carlos arrived at the downtown warehouse a few minutes later, Mr. Anastacio was already gone. Carlos stood in disbelief as his father’s co-workers were hauled away and their loved ones screamed, cried and bid them goodbye.
By the end of the day, about 40 people had been taken into custody, and hundreds of protesters were clashing with the police in downtown Los Angeles. It was the opening salvo in days of turmoil that have upended parts of the nation’s second-largest city and touched off protests across the country. The day after the raid, as scattered protests grew, President Trump ordered thousands of National Guard and Marine Corps troops to Los Angeles in an extraordinary, and to many excessive, show of force.
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