When Sanctuary Becomes a Hunting Ground
The word sanctuary used to mean safety. Now it means target. Visual by delux multimedia.
Immigration Enforcement × Homelessness in Los Angeles
By Paul Asplund | Letters to the Housed
Every morning now, before she walks a resident to the bus stop, a shelter worker in North Hollywood scans the block. She's not checking the weather. She's looking for SUVs — dark windows, government plates, the kind that started showing up last summer. If the street looks clear, she nods, and they walk. If it doesn't, they wait.
This is the new morning routine at shelters across Los Angeles. The places designed to be safe harbor — shelters, tiny home villages, service centers — have become places of surveillance. The people who were told "come inside, we'll help you" are now hearing "stay inside, it's not safe out there."
I've written about ICE raids and their impact on housing security several times over the past year — the economic devastation, the empty trains, the families losing breadwinners overnight. But this week I want to go deeper. Because what's happening now isn't just raids pushing families toward homelessness. It's something worse: the deliberate transformation of our shelters from sanctuaries into hunting grounds.
With up to 40% of our unhoused community undocumented, this is the most urgent thing I can write about right now.
The Documented Record
Before I make the argument, let me lay out what's been documented. The facts matter here, especially because the federal government is actively denying them.
Hope the Mission, North Hollywood — June 2025
Rowan Vansleve, president of Hope the Mission, watched SUVs with tinted windows and U.S. government plates circle the Whitsett West/Saticoy Tiny Homes Village. At least one vehicle had Department of Homeland Security markings. When security asked for identification or a warrant, none was produced. Vansleve's word for what the agents were doing: "scouting." The DHS called the claims "blatantly false."
Hollywood Homeless Shelter — May 2025 onward
A shelter executive witnessed two Venezuelan men — ages 20 and 22 — handcuffed and arrested by ICE agents after returning from work. The 22-year-old was deported. The younger man's whereabouts became unknown to the staff who had been helping him rebuild his life. After that, staff began physically accompanying residents to work, errands, and court — shelter workers becoming bodyguards because the people they serve can't safely walk to the bus.
Skid Row — Summer 2025
Residents started hiding in tents, avoiding public transit. People living in encampments on Skid Row said community members were hiding in their tents, not going to jobs or riding on buses. People missed graduations, medical appointments, jobs — not because of homelessness, but because of fear.
The Official Denial
ICE released a statement: "ICE is NOT in homeless shelters, ERs and schools."
Multiple shelter executives — people we know running major organizations — describe what they've witnessed firsthand. Federal agents say it isn't happening.
If shelter workers are lying, why? What do they gain from fabricating encounters with federal agents? If ICE is lying, what do they gain from denying what's happening in plain sight?
That gap between official denial and on-the-ground reality is the story.
How We Got Here
In January 2025, the Trump administration rescinded the "protected areas" policy — the long-standing guideline that kept immigration enforcement out of shelters, schools, and hospitals.
This was a deliberate removal of a boundary that existed for a very specific reason: enforcement operations near vulnerable populations cause cascading harm. The government knew this. They had decades of evidence but removed the protection anyway.
By June 2025, LA was in the crosshairs. The raids began with military-style operations across the city — approximately 1,900 arrests in three weeks. Eighty-eight people a day. And the shelters that had always been sanctuaries became something else entirely.
The Cascade
I wrote earlier this year about the domino effect — how raids lead to job loss, which leads to eviction risk, which leads to homelessness. But I want to walk through the full mechanism here, because understanding how this works is the difference between seeing a crisis and seeing a system designed to create one.
Raids hit workplaces. Over 370 car wash workers were detained across 80+ locations in LA, Orange County, and the Inland Empire. Home Depot day labor sites were targeted. These actions were aimed directly at low-wage, visible, immigrant laborers — the people doing the jobs that keep this city running. Andrea González at the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center documented it: agents never presented warrants. Some car washes lost so many workers they temporarily shut down. A 48-year-old U.S. citizen was apprehended while visiting a car wash as a customer with his family.
Families lose income immediately. Detained workers were primary breadwinners. No warning, no transition period. Income drops to zero overnight. More than 300 workers, including 15 women, were detained by immigration agents in LA and Orange counties and the Inland Empire.
Eviction risk spikes. 67% of undocumented households in LA were already rent-burdened before the raids started — already at the breaking point. On February 3, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to raise the eviction protection threshold from one month to two months of unpaid rent, directly citing ICE raid fallout.
Fear drives people away from help. The People Concern reports fewer clients using showers and facilities downtown. CEO John Maceri said even U.S. citizens at the organization's permanent housing facility in the San Fernando Valley are hesitant to go outside because they're afraid they will be stopped and questioned. Mixed-status families, including U.S. citizens, are avoiding services entirely.
Displacement becomes homelessness. Without income, without services, without community support, displacement becomes inevitable. And once you're on the street, you become visible — which brings us right back to the raids.
This isn't a line from crisis to crisis. It's a loop. And every revolution of that loop pushes more of our neighbors into danger.
Radical Hospitality Under Siege
We are under siege. The tools we rely on to help people rebuild their lives and return from homelessness are less and less effective.
Radical Hospitality — the idea that people rise to the level of care they're given, that transformation happens through an unexpected depth of welcome — was built for a world where the government wasn't actively trying to destroy the communities we serve. We designed our care around people who had fallen through the cracks. We didn't plan for the government taking a sledgehammer to the floor.
And yet this is exactly when it matters most.
Across LA right now, staff are physically escorting residents to work and appointments. Know Your Rights trainings are happening everywhere. The CLEAN Carwash Worker Center has launched GoFundMe campaigns and is connecting families with food banks and legal aid. Pro bono legal networks are forming through the Legal Aid Foundation of LA, CHIRLA, and the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project.
The county opened a second round of emergency rent relief on February 9 — $30 million, with tenants eligible for up to six months of relief, a maximum of $15,000 for back rent and utilities. Priority goes to those affected by federal immigration raids and the 2025 wildfires. And last October, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to proclaim a Local Emergency for Federal Immigration Actions.
These responses are heroic. The people doing this work are putting themselves on the line every day.
Still, it is not enough.
Community organizations cannot replace what government is actively destroying. We can walk people to the bus. We can hand out Know Your Rights cards. We can connect families with lawyers. But we cannot undo an enforcement regime that has turned our shelters into surveillance zones and our streets into hunting grounds.
That tension is what I keep sitting with. We are doing everything we can. It is not enough. Both things are true.
Why This Matters Beyond LA
If you're reading this from outside Los Angeles, this is coming for you.
Human Rights Watch stated that LA is "setting the stage" for similar tactics nationwide. The protected areas rescission applies everywhere. What's happening in North Hollywood and on Skid Row is a template.
The ICE detainee population hit a record 73,000 in January — an 84% increase over the previous year. Over 5,000 arrests in LA alone since June 2025. And 92% of the growth in ICE detention this fiscal year has been driven by immigrants with no criminal convictions.
And the context that makes all of this worse: Latino homelessness in LA grew 28% between 2022 and 2023 — before the current enforcement wave even began. The overall count stands at 72,308 unhoused in LA County. ICE raids are just pouring fuel on the fire.
If this can happen in a "sanctuary city," what does sanctuary even mean?
What Comes Next
On March 3, Supervisor Horvath's three-month countywide eviction threshold is due from county counsel. This is a stress test: will the county extend protections to all 88 cities, or just unincorporated areas? The answer will tell us how seriously our elected officials are taking this.
And here's where I need to connect the dots to next week: the communities being hit by ICE raids are the same communities being cleared for 2028 Olympics venue preparations. If you think the displacement pressure is bad now, wait until the world is watching and the city decides it needs to clean up.
That's next week's story. For now, pay attention. Follow the organizations doing this work — Hope the Mission, The People Concern, CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, Legal Aid Foundation of LA, CHIRLA. Listen to the people on the ground, not the official statements denying what's happening in plain sight.
Back to the Door
It's early morning. The shelter worker finishes scanning the block, gives the nod, and they walk. One worker. One resident. One bus stop.
The word sanctuary used to mean safety. Now it means target. The question isn't whether we can restore the old meaning — it's whether we can build something stronger than a word.
The organizations doing this work are not waiting for permission or policy. They're doing it because the person in front of them needs it now. Because Radical Hospitality doesn't ask for a green card. Because dignity is not contingent on documentation.
Eighty-eight people a day. Seventy-three thousand in detention. Seventy-two thousand on the streets.
And every morning, she scans the block.
We will not stop walking our neighbors to the bus.
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