‘It feels like it never ends — the evil’: Pasadena demonstrators protest ICE shootings

Approximately 50 demonstrators gathered Saturday morning in Pasadena as part of a national action to honor lives lost during immigration enforcement operations and in detention centers during the Trump administration.

They wore fliers around their necks, hung with yellow thread, bearing the smiling faces and names of some of the 75 people who have died since January 2025.

“Killed by ICE” was printed above a photo of each person, including local resident Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old killed while trying to flee immigration agents who descended on a Home Depot in Monrovia last year.

The Los Angeles residents, part of the San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible group, carried American flags and held signs that read “No ICE No War” and “Stop ICE Murders.”

“Good morning, Pasadena,” Betsy Hanger, an organizer with the group, boomed into a megaphone as she walked through an intersection. “Honk for democracy. Honk if you want ICE off our streets now.”

A chorus of horns sounded as drivers signaled their support.

Organizer Andra Clarke held a banner in each hand that read “Neighbors Say ICE Out.” The sign around her neck carried the name and photo of Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a 48-year-old who died in a Texas detention center in December.

Clarke, 61, said the group has been gathering at the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Fair Oaks Avenue every Saturday since March. Last weekend, they celebrated civil rights activist John Lewis.

This Saturday, though, their focus was aimed at ICE.

“Now 75 people have died at the hands of ICE,” Clarke said. “We were originally told, ‘Oh they’re going to go after the criminals, the people who are the worst of the worst.’ That’s a lie; that is not what’s happening.

“They’re targeting communities, they’re targeting people of color. It’s fascism. … Anybody who cares about humanity should care about what’s happening.”

Clarke said it hit her hard when she learned of the two recent deaths at the hands of ICE.

The event was also a vigil honoring 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by an ICE agent in Houston on July 7 while driving his construction crew to a job site, and Johan Sebastian Guerrero, 25, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Maine during a traffic stop earlier this month.

“It’s like, again? It just doesn’t end. It feels like it never ends — the evil.”

Shortly before noon, Clarke used a megaphone to read aloud the names of the dozens who have died. After each name read, Hanger struck a singing bowl, the vibrations sounding out in the corner where they stood. At times, she read “unidentified man” or “four unidentified women.”

Next to them was a poster board with a photo of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old woman found unresponsive at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh after ICE released her “into cold winter conditions and no care for mental health episodes or notice to relatives.”

“Let’s take a moment of silence for all those who were taken,” Clarke said, bowing her head.

Among those gathered to listen was Leticia Lopez, a 65-year-old South Pasadena resident whose voice trembled as she talked about the impact of hearing about another arrest or death tied to enforcement operations.

“It gets me to the core,” she said, striking her chest. “It’s not getting any better, it’s getting worse. I just feel like I need to do something.”

Lopez, who wore a shirt that read “Immigrants are not criminals but the president is,” said her mother and grandmother were forcefully repatriated from Arizona to Mexico.

Her mother, who was raised in Mexico, later met her father there. He moved to the U.S. in the 1950s as a bracero. Hearing the stories of today, she said, “triggers everything that they went through.”

“When I see it happening, it’s a generational trauma that I feel,” she said. Lopez said people around her are carrying passports and documents in public to prove they’re citizens.

“Because they’re afraid they might be profiled, picked up, kidnapped by ICE. When my son goes out, I worry,” she said of her 28-year-old.