(RNS) — Since the beginning of June, federal agents, often with covered faces and badge numbers, have arrested over 2,500 immigrants in Southern California. Almost 57,000 people are being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers nationwide.
People are being taken in broad daylight. A 6-year-old Honduran boy with leukemia and his mother were arrested outside of immigration court in May. U.S. citizens, including American military veterans, have been forced into unmarked SUVs and detained. Across our city, lawn mowers, food trucks and street vending carts have been found unattended after their owners were taken off the street in the middle of the workday.
A U.S. district court judge in Los Angeles earlier this month issued a temporary restraining order against what she described as “roving patrols” of federal agents detaining people “without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.”
The immigrant experience is deeply embedded in our Jewish tradition, our communal culture and psyche. For most of the last 2,000 years, we have lived as guests and provisional citizens — often refugees — subject to the whims of those in power. When leaders blamed us for society’s ills, we were ostracized, policed and imprisoned without due process. We were expelled and deported. Our families were torn apart. Some neighbors stood with us and helped keep us safe. But many stayed silent — or participated in our oppression.
As the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote, “To be Jew is to be a stranger. … It is terrifying in retrospect to grasp how seriously the Torah took the phenomenon of xenophobia, hatred of the stranger. It is as if the Torah were saying with the utmost clarity: reason is insufficient. Sympathy is inadequate. Only the force of history and memory is strong enough to form a counterweight to hate.”
Again and again, our liturgy demands we carry this memory forward — that we welcome the stranger, stand with the immigrant and resist oppression in all its forms.
But where is the outrage from our Jewish institutions?
In recent weeks, individual Jews have protested, donated and posted on social media. A handful of leading LA Jewish organizations have stood in support of immigrants, such as Leo Baeck Temple, Temple Israel of Hollywood, IKAR, Shtibl Minyan, Nefesh and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, and Jewish elected officials including LA City Council members Katy Yaroslavsky and Bob Blumenfield. Their solidarity reflects the best of our tradition.
But far too many Jewish institutions have said nothing. We understand that they may believe that the immigration raids are not our problem. They are wrong.
We are deeply connected to the broader community. About 8% of Angelenos are undocumented, according to county data, and over 30% are immigrants. The immigrants being targeted are our friends, our teachers, our co-workers, our local business owners, our artists and our care workers. These raids are tearing through the very fabric of our city as workers are staying home, businesses are shuttered, and schools are moving classes online for families concerned about leaving home and risking arrest.
This affects our Jewish community, too. According to the 2021 Brandeis University Study of Jewish Los Angeles, half of Jewish households in our city include an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. And history shows that all minorities are at risk when one group of Americans is scapegoated and stripped of their rights.
Our community’s security is no different. Jews have thrived when civil liberties are protected, the rule of law is respected and the dignity of every person is upheld.
Members of Jewish Partnership for Los Angeles at a Prayer Walk for Family Unity in downtown Los Angeles in June 2025. (Photo courtesy of JPLA)
We founded Jewish Partnership for Los Angeles and Jewish Action for Los Angeles for moments like this that demand bold, collective action. These new organizations are creating a home for Jewish Angelenos to work for a more just city, where Jews and all people can live with dignity, security and opportunity.
Over the past year, we’ve brought people together from across the Southland to build community. At public celebrations of Passover and Sukkot, we’ve drawn from Jewish tradition to confront the urgent challenges we face — from homelessness to immigration to workers’ rights. At a June panel, we honored our ancestors and explored the deep history of Jewish activism in Los Angeles, and the lessons it offers for rebuilding coalitions and pursuing justice.
Hundreds of Jews from all neighborhoods and denominations have also signed our statement against the ICE raids.
Some federal troops may be leaving Los Angeles, but this crisis is not over. In the coming year, the Trump administration will turn ICE into the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government, increasing its annual budget from $8 billion to almost $28 billion. The administration plans to deport millions of people and potentially jail 150,000 immigrants in detention centers.
We have a responsibility to speak out and take action. Everyone has a role to play. Talk to your rabbis, synagogue presidents and the Jewish organizations that represent us in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Urge them to act — proudly and publicly — as Jews, in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors.
Now is the time for our community to affirm: We know the heart of the stranger, and we love and welcome the stranger. And we say with moral clarity: ICE out of LA.
(Rachel Sumekh, Aaron Greenberg and Sara Harris are founding board members of Jewish Partnership for Los Angeles. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)