To coincide with the broadcast of the latest Unreported World episode on Channel 4, Reporter Ria Chatterjee shares her experience filming around Los Angeles, where she met the ordinary people fighting deportation.The Adelanto Detention Centre in California sits conspicuously in the Mojave Desert.By the time we arrive, one Friday evening, its utilitarian beige façade cuts into the otherwise kaleidoscopic horizon - yellow seeping into orange, seeping into red.Adelanto is the state’s largest immigration detention centre, with roughly 2,000 occupants. One of them is a 59-year-old man named Felix.We are here to meet his son, Fernando, and his daughter-in-law, Fatima. They’ve driven 90 miles, through LA’s intractable rush hour traffic, to see their father.Felix has been in detention since he was arrested outside a Home Depot store a few weeks ago.The home improvement stores have become hotspots for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in which undocumented migrants are prime targets.“They just hit them by surprise,” Fatima had told us a week earlier in her small studio apartment where the bed runs close to the kitchen counter.“They blocked every entrance where he was at. He didn’t see them coming. He was too distracted.”They’d been begging him not to leave the house, terrified of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown that pledged to target the ’worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens’.Fernando, pictured below, scrolls through his phone, pausing at photos of Felix, a small, thin man with a gentle smile, hugging his grandson.Felix has lived in the USA for thirty-five years, he’s undocumented.His family are concerned that he’s not getting his diabetes medicine at the detention centre, not to mention the toll on his mental health.“The first time we went to go see him… he started to tear up,” he said.“It was really bad. I have never seen my dad like that. My dad’s a strong guy. This was the first time I saw him cry again, and it really broke my heart.”The desert light is fading so we wave Fernando, Fatima and their toddler into the facility. There’s one hour of visiting time left.Los Angeles is a self-declared sanctuary city - a supposed haven for migrants. Nearly half of its residents are Latino, and the city’s economy depends on migration.But, it’s become a target in one of the largest deportation drives in US history.Officers from US Immigration and Customs - also known as ICE - say they’re targeting eleven million undocumented immigrants. The administration’s plan is to deport three thousand people a day.One morning we set out for San Bernardino, a city roughly sixty miles east of Los Angeles. We’ve been told that ICE agents start targeting people from roughly seven o’clock in the morning. The pre-dawn freeway is relatively clear and the mountains are black blots. As we drive, I find myself wondering what the agents do before they start work.When we arrive at the offices of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IC4IJ) we are welcomed with warm smiles, coffee and doughnuts.The staff members are eager to show us their offices, the place from which they organise, educate and advocate.On the walls there are colourful posters with slogans like ‘proud to be an immigrant’ and ‘no papers, no fear’.The IC4IJ aims to improve the lives of immigrant communities and, at the moment, it’s working overtime. As we film the comings and goings in the office, we receive information of a raid a few blocks away.On a residential, tree-lined street with apartment blocks on one side and detached, terracotta houses on the other, we encounter suspected masked federal agents.One of them is wearing a black balaclava, two others have gone for army green. They wear flak jackets too.Available for iOS and AndroidA resident in one of the houses is sitting in a rocking chair on her side porch. Darlene tells us that the agents intercepted a vehicle, smashed its window and took the occupant – a young man. She’s in shock. She said she captured the incident on her phone.Brian Sanchez, a lawyer for the IC4IJ, is on location gathering evidence. He examines Darlene’s footage. “This is most likely immigration enforcement,” he tells us.“You can tell by the fact that they are entering unmarked vehicles with no licence plate. Their jackets have no insignia on them which is usually the telltale sign of ICE. These people could be vigilantes for all we know.”I put to Mr Sanchez the perspective of some ICE agents, who say they are forced to wear masks because they’re allegedly being doxxed online and being attacked by members of the public. What does he make of that?“I myself don’t give it much credence,” he says.“Local PD (police) doesn’t wear masks. San Bernardino Police Department doesn’t wear masks.How could that possibly be justified to wear masks without any insignia and without identifying themselves?”Donald Trump’s immigration policies are divisive. On all fronts, they rouse zeal. Over the course of our filming, we meet citizens turned activists who want to defend their communities and those who argue that the US administration is simply acting on pledges for which people voted.Back at Adelanto, north of San Bernardino, it’s 9.30pm and the Mojave Desert is now pitch black.We wait on the public road outside the detention centre where cars hurtle past, temporarily masking the electric buzzing of desert cicadas.The guards that patrol Adelanto’s car parks in white SUVs have asked us to wait on public property.Over Whatsapp, Fatima messages to say she’s waiting in the lobby because her son is upset, but they’ll be out soon.By the roadside, with just the camera light for illumination, Fatima describes her father-in-law’s condition.“He actually looks more skinnier than the last time,” she says.“He’s cold and I’m like, ‘Dad ‘are you okay? Are you cold?’. He said, ‘No I’m not cold. I’m not cold. It’s really warm in here.’Share“But I know he’s cold. It hurts. It honestly hurts. Luckily, I was able to give him his hug. He got to hug his grandson.”I ask Fernando how he thinks his father’s case will develop.“I did tell him that no matter what happens we are always going to be there for [him] and I feel that that gives him a little hope that everything is going to be OK,” he says.Twenty days later, back in the UK we receive a message from the local producer to say that Fernando’s father was released from detention.We receive a photograph of Felix, flanked by his son and grandson. Three generations of one family reunited.To celebrate Unreported World’s 25th anniversary, Channel 4 News is publishing a special series of newsletters on Substack dedicated to the foreign affairs programme.Each newsletter article - written by our award-winning journalists - will examine and reflect on the extraordinary episodes bringing unique insight.Unreported World Correspondent Guillermo Galdos last week wrote about his experience filming in Colombia, where he obtained exclusive access to a rebel group in the rainforests where a 60-year war continues to rage.Share Channel 4 NewsLeave a comment