Angelica Salas has been shellshocked by the past week.
The immigrants’ advocate had to flee the Eaton fire as it rushed toward Altadena and Pasadena. But even as she and her family were evacuating their home and checking in on friends and neighbors, Salas was scrambling to organize emergency aid for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant families that her organization serves.
“Never have I seen this level of catastrophic damage,” said Salas, the executive director of the non-profit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla), who has lived in Pasadena for nearly five decades. Fires across the LA region had killed at least 25 people and displaced more than 100,000. In Altadena, a historic Black community and home to generations of working-class Latino immigrants, the devastation was unfathomable, she said. “Our neighborhoods look like a bomb landed on them. It’s just horrific.”
And yet, she added, the aftermath of the disaster felt disappointingly familiar. In recent years, mega-fires – as well as other extreme weather catastrophes, including atmospheric river storms and intense heatwaves – have repeatedly upended the lives of immigrant workers across the state. In the wake of disasters, undocumented immigrants are especially vulnerable, and largely ineligible for federal disaster aid. Many have lost work as well as their homes, said Salas – and they are increasingly afraid that seeking help will attract the scrutiny of immigration authorities.
As gale-force winds whipped up the infernos in LA, immigration officials announced that they had conducted raids in Bakersfield – just two hours north of the more populous city. “I cannot begin to describe the horror. We had a hurricane of embers coming down on our community,” Salas said. “And at the same time people were hearing about these raids.”
Within days, false reports of raids in LA began circulating online. “In the middle of our evacuation, I was getting notices about it,” Salas said. “It was horrible, horrible. I can’t even begin to describe it.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency – responsible for providing emergency relief after natural disasters – is part of the Department of Homeland Security, the same body that oversees immigration enforcement. With Donald Trump promising to conduct mass deportations as soon as he is sworn into office on Monday, even citizens and permanent residents who are eligible for government disaster assistance are reluctant to take advantage of aid programs, Salas said, fearing that doing so could endanger family members who are undocumented.
“We worry a lot,” said Hermelinda, a Pasadena-area resident who works as a housekeeper for several homes and as a cleaner at a corporate office. (The Guardian is not using her last name to protect her and her family from immigration enforcement.) On Wednesday, she said, she and her daughter, who also works as a cleaner, were evacuated from the offices as the fires picked up in the Hollywood Hills.
Her family’s home has luckily remained outside the fire and evacuations. “But I am afraid we won’t be able to make rent in two weeks,” she said. “Or how we will afford food.”
Hermelinda had called the owner of one of the houses she cleans and learned that it had burned down. Her employer was crying on the phone. “I got so sad for them, because they lost their house,” she said. “And then I got sad for me, because I lost a job.”
She feels a panic similar to one she felt throughout the Covid-19 pandemic – when so many people she knew died, and so many others lost their jobs and incomes. Many, including Hermelinda, were ineligible for state unemployment benefits. “I worry that more people will end up on the streets,” she said.
Chirla has been collecting donations for a cash-assistance program to assist low-income families affected by the wildfires who do not qualify disaster relief. Other groups, including the Latino Community Foundation, are doing the same.
Advocacy groups are also working to help immigrants with legal status understand the programs they can take advantage of, and helping them apply for aid.
“We have a motto here: ‘solo el pueblo salva al pueblo’ – only the people will save the people,” said Cal Soto, a workers’ rights coordinator at National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which has deployed more than 1,000 volunteers – most of them immigrant workers who have foregone paid work for the opportunity to help – to clear debris and clean up in the aftermath of the fires. NDLON has also been distributing food, water, toiletries and other essentials at its Pasadena Community Job Center, not far from where the Eaton fire broke out.
Because the distributions are being organized by day laborers, domestic workers and trusted community members, immigrant and undocumented residents have felt safe and comfortable driving up and asking for help, Soto said.
“But it’s sad, because we have still seen people who are a little bit afraid,” he added.
