Professor Robert Mendoza scrolled through the photos and video he took last Friday morning. Mendoza teaches English at a university in Ventura County.
As he queued for McDonald's at the drive-thru in Downtown Los Angeles, he wasn't expecting anything other than a quiet morning. Suddenly, he heard shouts that ICE was in the area.
"I heard 'La Migra! La Migra! La Migra!'" Mendoza explained, referring to the slang Spanish term for Immigration Enforcement.
"As I heard the screams that were terrifying and were coming from a terrified voice, I saw workers looking terrified, running as fast as they could. I've never seen this before. It's typically filled with workers who are just looking to survive," he said.
It wasn’t just a shout or a rumor. Mendoza said he saw individuals being taken into custody, as many others panicked and fled.
"People in the McDonald's drive-thru abandoned their cars, so the drive-through was no longer capable of taking orders because people just left their cars in order to flee ICE," he said.
"They were not only taking away these people but creating fear in this whole community, creating anger in the whole community. Hearing that scream, you could really tell that this was just a nightmare for some people," he recalled.
What he saw that morning was enough to spur Mendoza to take part in protests that started later that day outside the federal building in Downtown Los Angeles.
"The community of Los Angeles showed up," said Mendoza. "Not only were people like me there...I saw families there, people bringing in children. I saw people of all races, of all classes, showing up to let ICE know we don't want them there."
Mendoza said the atmosphere was mostly peaceful but shifted "from moment to moment, from person to person."
He said he felt "anger percolating" in the crowd, "when there are moments where police officers are getting too aggressive."
The university professor said he experienced tear gas for the first time. "I was coughing, getting teary-eyed. I feared for younger children who had tears in their eyes and who were crying," he said.
Mendoza said it was important for him to photograph and document what he saw to show his family and students.
"I wanted to show my family what was happening, to show that there's a kind of solidarity around this movement," he said.
"I also wanted to document this to show my students that I'm out here because I care for the undocumented students that I know, and I care for their safety," he said.
"Although there are these narratives out there circulating about deporting individuals as being a right thing, I want them to know that there are these other voices that do not agree with them and want ICE to be abolished."
