By: Javier Hernandez, Executive Director, Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice

People keep asking me whether I have ever seen anything like the immigration raids happening today. The truth is, yes and no.

The scale of what we witnessed in 2025 up to today is staggering. Families are being torn apart in broad daylight. Communities are living in fear. Federal agents are carrying out aggressive operations that have shocked the conscience of the nation.

But for those of us who grew up as immigrants in the Inland Empire, violence against our communities did not suddenly arrive this year. I was eight years old on April 1, 1996.

I remember watching the horrifying images of Riverside County sheriff’s deputies beating two Mexican immigrants after a freeway pursuit. The footage reminded many people of Rodney King. For immigrant children like me, it was a different lesson. It taught us that our communities could be treated as less than human simply because of who we were.

That memory has stayed with me my entire life. Over the decades, the names of the presidents have changed. Clinton. Bush. Obama. Trump. Biden. Trump again. But immigrant families have continued to experience raids, detention, deportation, family separation and the constant fear that a knock at the door could change everything overnight.

Every administration has made choices that have left scars on immigrant communities. Some expanded detention. Others increased deportations. Others failed to dismantle systems that were already causing harm. Today’s cruelty did not emerge from nowhere. It was built over decades by leaders in both political parties who too often treated immigrants as political bargaining chips instead of human beings.

What makes this moment different is not that the violence exists. It is that it has become more visible, more public, and more unapologetic.

For decades, our region has been used as a testing ground for detention, enforcement, and criminalization. We have watched our neighbors beaten, detained, deported, and separated from their families. We have also watched generations of community members organize, resist, and refuse to surrender their dignity. That history is why the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice exists.

Our movement was not created because of one president. It was built because our communities understood that lasting justice would never come from waiting for Washington to change. It would come from organizing our neighbors, defending our families, and building power here at home.

What we are witnessing today is alarming. But we should not pretend this story began in 2025.

It began decades ago, and the Inland Empire has been living through it ever since.

The difference today is that more people are finally paying attention. Our responsibility now is to make sure they never look away again.