The New Yorker:

The city’s Mexican consul is trying to protect local immigrants, but there are limits to what he can accomplish.

By Geraldo Cadava

On Monday, July 7th, Carlos González Gutiérrez, the consul-general of Mexico in Los Angeles, was about to start his weekly audiencia pública when he heard a helicopter flying overhead. He began as usual, greeting some twenty or twenty-five community members, who had shown up on the third and busiest floor of the consulate to share their concerns and ask questions. These days, they almost all want to discuss immigration raids in the city and what the consulate can do to protect Mexican citizens. As the gathering went on, González Gutiérrez heard, on top of the helicopter, loud voices and a general commotion outside. He kept talking, standing in front of a Mexican flag and a bright-orange wall emblazoned with the official seal of Mexico.

When the event concluded, his deputy consul-general approached him and held up his phone, which was playing videos of beige military trucks, federal officers on horseback, protesters shouting them down, and Mayor Karen Bass saying that the officers needed to leave. González Gutiérrez realized that the melee was taking place in MacArthur Park, directly across the street from the consulate. He walked back up to the microphone he had used for the audiencia and said that an immigration raid was occurring. He didn’t want to cause a panic, but he invited everyone inside the building to stay there, and everyone outside—people waiting in line for their appointments, venders selling food and small Mexican flags—to come in. They would be safe there, he told them. The consulate is inviolable under international law, a sanctuary within the city of Los Angeles.

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