Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Southern Nevadans demonstrated Monday evening in Las Vegas, demanding an end to federal immigration raids and the dismissal of charges against a California union president arrested during the weekend's protests in Los Angeles.
David Huerta, who leads California’s influential Service Employees International Union, was arrested by federal agents Friday outside a Los Angeles garment warehouse. SEIU California said Huerta was serving as a community observer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids taking place.
Huerta has since been charged with conspiracy to impede an officer.
“For them to say that he interfered with … what they were doing — I feel ICE is interfering with what people are trying to do and living their lives,” Nevada SEIU President Michelle Maese told the Sun before Monday’s protest outside the Lloyd D. George U.S. Courthouse. “Immigrants built this country and continue to do so.”
More than 100 people stood outside the courthouse Monday, with union apparel filling up much of the crowd: SEIU-branded shirts, Culinary Union hats and an umbrella from the LiUNA union. SEIU represents health care and public employees; Culinary is the state's largest union and represents hospitality service workers; LiUNA represents construction workers.
“We use the First Amendment and use our rights, but ICE attacks against a union leader and workers is something we’ve never seen before,” said Erika Watanabe, a local chief steward with SEIU Local 1107 and treasurer of the local's Latino caucus. “This is upping the ante against all of us — all workers.”
The rally in Las Vegas was one of several across the nation Monday decrying the Trump administration's immigration raids and the arrest of Huerta. Other rallies, many sponsored by SEIU, took place in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, Calif., Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Denver, Portland, Ore., and St. Paul.
Videos on social media captured officers shoving Huerta to the ground and handcuffing him outside the garment warehouse. Injuries sustained during his arrest landed Huerta in a hospital for a brief time Friday
One of the main goals of the Las Vegas protest was achieved before it even started. While many of the signs outside the courthouse read “Free David,” he was released on a $50,000 bond just hours before the protest started.
The rally was bigger than just Huerta, said Alexis Esparza, another steward with SEIU Local 1107 and the Latino caucus’ secretary.
“This is about every immigrant who’s been torn from their family, every worker who’s been told to stay quiet or else, every person who contributes to this country but is treated like they’re disposable,” Esparza said. “We see through it. This isn’t about security. This is about control.”
The surge in immigration enforcement in Los Angeles that landed Huerta under arrest has prompted massive protests throughout Southern California.
Maese said the Los Angeles protests were mostly peaceful until Republican President Donald Trump, against the wishes of California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Saturday deployed 2,000 members of the California National Guard to deal with the protesters. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also criticized Trump's mobilization of Guard members.
Trump on Monday mobilized 700 Marines to Los Angeles and called up an additional 2,000 California National Guard troops.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday over Trump's first deployment of National Guard troops. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, seeks an order declaring Trump’s use of the National Guard unlawful and a restraining order to stop the deployment.
Trump said the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he had not deployed the Guard.
Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom said at Monday's courthouse rally that if Trump deployed the National Guard to Las Vegas, it would forever destroy the city’s economy.
“Without undocumented workers, this town would shut down,” Segerblom said. “If (Trump) wants to dare to bring the National Guard in here or, even better, the Marines, this town is going to blow up and he’s going to be sorry.”
Nevada state Sens. Edgar Flores and Dina Neal, both Democrats from Southern Nevada, told the crowd outside the courthouse that the Trump administration’s attacks on the rights of immigrants were an attack on everyone.
Flores warned rally-goers that the administration, which already has shipped undocumented immigrants to El Salvador without court hearings, is coming after due process. Neal added that the Trump administration was trampling over freedom of assembly rights.
In videos, “I see people on the way to work on construction sites getting arrested. That is our great enemy; humans that are feeding their families?” Flores said. “That is who’s so terrifying to this administration because they got nothing else to offer to us.”
While not as intense as California, Nevada has had its own surge of immigration enforcement, most notably in mid-April. ICE has not yet released how many people were arrested during that time.
Multiple people who attended their scheduled immigration court hearings last month in Las Vegas were also detained shortly after leaving, according to the UNLV Immigration Clinic.
Clinic director Michael Kagan, who made a point of saying he wasn't speaking for the organization, told attendees that their fight was not currently about changing laws around immigration, though he said that was important.
“At this point, the fight is a lot more basic. Even in court, the fight right now is just for basic due process. The fight is just for the right to be heard,” Kagan said. “For immigrants, yes, but for everyone, because when they take that away … they will come for someone else next.”
Culinary Local 226 Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge said that Nevada’s unions needed to stick together to resist the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“They want reactions. We’re going to give them a reaction, all right,” Pappageorge said.“We’re going to build this organization and we’re going to go after these right-wing extremists.”
“We’re going to tell Trump his term is only two years,” he added, referencing the 2026 midterms.