The church pews are empty. Schoolchildren are missing class. Mothers and fathers are chased down in front of their kids. A woman is held without access to water, medicine or a bathroom, despite being a naturalized citizen.
These were the scenes illustrated through testimonies heard during a congressional oversight hearing Monday in Los Angeles, during which civic leaders, attorneys and immigrant advocates recounted damage they say has resulted from the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts in the region over the past few months.
The hearing, led by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, comes one month after the two announced an investigation into reports of misconduct by federal immigration officers.
Officials say this is one of several investigations into the immigration raids. More hearings are scheduled and will be used to gather and document cases that can be used to build lawsuits, set legislation and apply pressure on the Trump administration.
As of Monday, the committee has tallied more than 250 instances of alleged misconduct or abuse, Garcia said. The panel also announced the creation of an online dashboard that will track and share potential or documented instances of misconduct by federal immigration officials.
The hearing marks six months since federal agents first descended on Los Angeles County, driving unmarked cars and chasing people through streets, churches, businesses and farmland. Tense encounters with protestors — where agents say they’re being subjected to violence and harassment — have led to injury and arrest of activists and politicians, and the public has been denied access to basic information on federal operations.
“We owe it to the people to investigate any sort of misconduct at any agency and certainly any law enforcement,” Garcia said.
“We want to establish a record, because when the political winds change, we want to hold those accountable,” Bass said. “We want transparency and accountability for all of the egregious, unconstitutional acts that are taking place.”
As the hearing continued Monday afternoon, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Democratic politicians of fueling attacks on immigration agents by comparing them to “Nazis, the Gestapo, and slave patrols.”
“From January 21, 2025, through November 21, 2025, there have been 238 reported assaults against ICE law enforcement,” she said in a post on X. “There were only 19 during the same period last year.”
Between June 6 and October 31, agents have arrested more than 7,100 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Garcia said the agency has also detained another 170 people, even though they were U.S. citizens.
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said her organization has tracked more than 5,200 people in the L.A. region who have been detained. Of those, more than half were at work, while many more were taken while reporting to immigration court.
In Long Beach, Mayor Rex Richardson said more than 50 people have been taken off his city’s streets. This includes the 11 arrested in a spree of raids last week, including people inside a church and a gardener outside Polly’s Pies restaurant in Bixby Knolls. At least one of those people had already been deported by Monday, according to local immigrant rights group Órale.
Richardson asked Congress to ban the use of masks by federal agents, as well as the use of unmarked vehicles. He asked for the panel to investigate “patterns of racial profiling, excessive force and misconduct.”
“What is happening in my city is not immigration enforcement,” he said. “It is state-sponsored intimidation, targeting families, workers, entire neighborhoods through discriminatory profiling, unconstitutional stops and acts of violence.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it arrested seven people in its latest Long Beach operation for being in the country illegally. A spokesperson said some of them had criminal histories that included “lascivious acts with a child under 14, driving without a license, and illegal re-entry.”
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” the statement said. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
More than 65,000 people are currently detained in federal centers nationwide, with raids seen happening in Democratic cities like Chicago, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte. At least 25 people have died in federal immigration detention centers, according to a letter submitted by members of the panel.
Lindsay Toczylowski with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center described “deplorable” conditions in holding facilities, where people she represents have alleged denial of medical care and physical abuse, or denied access to family or a lawyer.
In some cases, people in the middle of chemotherapy or reliant on dialysis have been taken and sent to a center where they are denied a bathroom and given rotten food, she said. These conditions, she argued, are “designed to get people to give up on their cases” and agree to be deported.
“They’re intentionally cruel, being kept away from their families,” Toczylowski said.
Public testimonies gave a visceral view of the fear that has gripped thousands of families — documented and undocumented alike — who believe that a trip outside, even for medicine, bread or work, could lead them into confrontation with immigration authorities.
One pastor spoke about the empty pews during his church’s Sunday service; a principal shared the panic he felt after finding out one of his students had no parents to return home to; and one woman described being violently arrested and detained without access to water, despite being a U.S. citizen.
The meeting also featured public testimony from those who say people have slowly receded from the habits of their day-to-day life. Some skip visits to the grocery store or the doctor’s office. Others pull their children from school or stop showing up for work.
Long Beach and Los Angeles are among the cities that have joined a lawsuit filed over the summer by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Public Counsel and other immigration and civil rights attorneys who alleged that federal agents were violating the Constitution by targeting people based on their skin color, the way they spoke or where they worked. Federal courts issued a temporary order barring immigration agents from relying solely on those factors to detain people, but the Supreme Court has since lifted that ban as the case is litigated.