WESTWOOD—The Los Angeles Police Department arrived on the scene on Thursday, October 5, after dozens of DACA supporters crowded the street and stopped traffic.
Starting at 10 a.m., a group of protestors gathered at the intersection of Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, near the campus of UCLA. Protestors pushed bunk bed frames into the center of the street and used the frames as roadblocks, preventing traffic from moving through. They held up signs in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, and chanted phrases that included “stop deportation” and “black lives matter.”
Officials from the LAPD were dispatched and called the protest an unlawful assembly and illegal. Authorities arrived on the scene at 10:30 a.m. and began taking some of the protestors into custody. The rest were ordered to disperse from the scene.
After given the dispersal order, protestors left the intersection and began chanting “let them go” on the sidewalk. A line of helmeted officers armed with batons lined the side of the street, preventing the protestors from going onto the road.
Thursday is the last day that young immigrants eligible to renew their US work permits under the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals program can do so. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for an end to the program, stating that no new applicants will be able to apply for the work permits after October 5. The program is scheduled to end on March 8, 2018 and at that time all permits renewed will begin to expire. Without the program, roughly 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children will be subject to deportation.
California Governor Jerry Brown signed bill 54, the “sanctuary state” bill. The new bill limits interactions between local California police and federal immigration officers. California officers can no longer transfer people accused of only minor offenses to immigration officers, unless they were convicted of one of hundreds of crimes in the past 15 years.
