What Trump Is Doing to Latinos Is Literally Out of Cheech & Chong
The video of an American wrongly accused of being an undocumented immigrant echoes the music video for Born in East L.A.
What Trump Is Doing to Latinos Is Literally Out of Cheech & Chong
The video of an American wrongly accused of being an undocumented immigrant echoes the music video for Born in East L.A.
by Bill Scher
On Thursday June 12, two Border Patrol agents, during a raid of an East Los Angeles auto body shop called DJ’s Towing, pinned Jason Brian Gavidia to a fence and accused him of being in America illegally. Video taken by his friend captured the scene.
GAVIDIA: Look how you got my hand, you’re twisting that shit, bro. I’m American, bro.
AGENT: What hospital were you born at?
GAVIDIA: I don’t know, dog. I’ll show you my ID. I was born here in the United States, East L.A. I can fucking show you, I got it right here.
The scene was little different from the music video for Born in East L.A., released 40 years ago by the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, in which an immigration agent accosts Cheech Marin and other Latinos outside a grocery store.
AGENT: Watch my lips. Where were you born?
CHEECH [singing]: I was born in East L.A. Man, I was born in East L.A.
AGENT: Oh yeah, you were born in East L.A. Well, let’s see your green card.
CHEECH: Green card? [Singing] I’m from East L.A.
AGENT: Alright, well then, who`s President of the United States?
CHEECH: Oh, that`s easy, man. That guy that used to be on Death Valley Days: John Wayne.
AGENT: Alright, let’s go, come on.
Today’s authoritarianism may be farcical, but it isn’t funny.
Gavidia told a reporter from KCAL-TV that he only avoided arrest because his friend was filming, but the agent “took my ID. He took my phone. He never gave me back my ID. Is this guy going to come back and pick me up at 2:30 in the morning?”
Another friend of Gavidia’s, Javier Ramirez, was arrested at the scene. Gavidia says, “I see my friend stating that he is an American. He gets slammed to the floor. He’s bleeding from his forehead.”
Ramirez was arrested for resisting arrest and assault, not violating immigration law, but there is reason to be skeptical of the charges. Surveillance video that captured part of the incident shows agents throwing Ramirez to the ground for no apparent reason. “His family believes he was arrested for warning others about ICE being on the property,” and that Ramirez did not assault anyone, reported FOX 11 news. Also, Ramirez’s lawyer told The New York Times that the agents lacked a warrant to enter DJ’s Towing. Moreover, when a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Brittny Mejia, posted the video of the incident on X, the Department of Homeland Security shared the post with the comment, “The facts are a [sic] U.S. citizens was arrested because they ASSAULTED U.S. Border Patrol Agents.” Yet Mejia observed that Gavidia was not arrested for assault, so what was the trigger for the rough treatment by border agents?
On the same day of the raid, President Donald Trump seemingly scaled back immigration enforcement. Reacting to complaints from various industries relayed to him by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and several campaign donors, according to The New York Times, Trump had a top official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) send “an email to regional leaders at the agency informing them of the new guidance. Agents were to ‘hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants, and operating hotels.’”
This shift in tactic didn’t last long. The Washington Post reported that ICE officials “told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants.” Apparently, despite the blowback from donors, the Trump administration remains determined to meet its arbitrary quota of 3,000 ICE arrests per day, and the Post noted “some immigration experts say ICE would need to ramp up worksite enforcement to meet the administration’s ambitious arrest quotas.”
Exactly 10 years since Trump came down the Trump Tower escalator and put the expulsion of immigrants at the center of his agenda, he still can’t settle on how to do it. Much like his tariff policy, the particulars of Trump’s immigration policy zig and zag as he tries to appease disparate constituencies.
But his goals are constant. He wants high tariffs. He wants fewer immigrants. Or, considering what happened in East L.A. maybe he just wants fewer Democrats. After all, he recently posted on his Truth Social:
“We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State[.]”
Trump will never deliver a more reasonable enforcement strategy like Barack Obama’s, which prioritized the removal of serious criminals and national security threats. We have little reason to believe public safety is Trump’s objective
As Trump chases big deportation numbers, expect more cases like the DJ’s Towing raid, where Latinos are profiled without warrants, asked ridiculous questions, and suffer physical abuse and wrongful arrests.
Cheech gets the last laugh in the video for Born in East L.A. After getting wrongly deported, he sneaks back into the country through an underground pipe, then cruises around East L.A. with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, on his arm. Life was simpler in the 1980s. Today’s wrongly deported or arrested, though, may get the last laugh, too, but only if the independent judiciary continues to do its job and check Trump’s authoritarian impulses.
Bill Scher is the Politics Editor of the Washington Monthly
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