https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-07/chabria-column-ice-arrest-california-union-leader
The arrest of union leaderr David Huerta is going to have a major impact on the coming months as deportations continue.
Huerta was taken to the hospital for treatment, then into custody, where he remains until a Monday arraignment.
Unions in California are different from those in other places.
More than any state in our troubled country, their ranks are filled with people of color and immigrants. While unions have always been tied closely with the struggles of civil rights, that has become even more pronounced in the years since George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
“They have woke us up,” Tia Orr told me Saturday morning. She’s the executive director of the 700,000-strong Service Employees International Union California, of which Huerta is a part, and the first African American and Latina to lead the organization.
“And I think they’ve woke people up across the nation, certainly in California, and people are ready to get to action,” she added. “I haven’t seen that in a long time. I don’t know that I’ve seen something like that before, and so yes, it is going to result in action that I believe is going to be historical.”
U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli wrote on social media that “Federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant at a LA worksite this morning when David Huerta deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle. He was arrested for interfering with federal officers … Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are—if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted. No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”
I have covered protests, violent and nonviolent, for more than two decades. In one of the first such events I covered, I watched an iconic union leader, Bill Camp, sit down in the middle of the road in a Santa suit and refuse to move. Police arrested him. But they managed to do it without violence, and without Camp’s resistance. This is how unions do good trouble — without fear, without violence.
Huerta understands the rules and power of peaceful protest better than most. The union he is president of — SEIU United Service Workers West — started the Justice for Janitors campaign in 1990, a bottom-up movement that in Los Angeles was mostly powered by the immigrant Latina women who cleaned commercial office space for wages as low as $7 an hour.
After weeks of protests, police attacked those Latina workers in June of that year in what became known as the “Battle of Century City.” Two dozen workers were injured but the union did not back down. Eventually, it won the contracts it was seeking, and equally as important, it won public support.
To say he is a beloved and respected leader in both the union and California in general is an understatement. You can still find his bio on the White House website, since he was honored as a “Champion of Change,” by President Obama. Within hours of his arrest, political leaders across the state were voicing support.
“David Huerta is a respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people. No one should ever be harmed for witnessing government action,” Gov. Gavin Newsom posted online.
Perhaps more importantly, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, speaking for her 15 million members, issued a statement.
Huerta “was doing what he has always done, and what we do in unions: putting solidarity into practice and defending our fellow workers,” she said. “The labor movement stands with David and we will continue to demand justice for our union brother until he is released.”
Similar statements came from the Teamsters and other unions. Solidarity isn’t a buzzword to unions. It’s the bedrock of their power. In arresting Huerta, that solidarity has been supercharged. Already, union members from across the state are making plans to gather Monday for Huerta’s arraignment in downtown Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, the Santa Monica native and architect of Trump’s deportation plans, has said the raids we are seeing now are just the beginning, and that he would like to see thousands of arrests every day, because our immigrant communities are filled with “every kind of criminal thug that you can imagine on planet earth.”
But in arresting Huerta, the battleground has been redrawn in ways we don’t fully yet appreciate. No doubt, Miller will have his way and the raids will not only continue, but increase.
But also, the unions are not going to back down.
“Right now, just in the last 14 hours, labor unions are joining together from far and wide, communities are reaching out in ways I’ve never seen,” Orr told me. “Something is different.”