In a city roiled by fear and federal raids, Chavo Romero is still standing — and still fighting.
By Nick Valencia
HUNTINGTON PARK — Chavo Romero is a man at war. Not with weapons or rank, but with a straw hat, a radio signal, and a relentless presence on the street corner.
When I first saw Romero, he was a few blocks up from Flower Street. It was there, days earlier federal agents had blown a hole in the side of someone homes looking for them.
To Romero, what’s happening in Los Angeles isn’t immigration enforcement. It isn’t policing. It’s war.
“This is counterinsurgency,” he told me, referring to the actions of the feds on the streets of LA. “It’s a military strategy: control and contain. First you strike fear down the spine of everybody. Show of force. Call in the Marines. Start flying choppers. Start deploying munitions.”
It would be easy to dismiss this as hyperbole, except that Romero is calm when he says it. Measured. There are no theatrics. He speaks with the quiet conviction of someone who’s already mourned the loss of normalcy. And yet he remains. Still standing. Still organizing. Still on the block.
Romero holds no title. He is, in his words, just a member of Unión del Barrio. But in the eyes of those on the block, he is something else entirely: a foot soldier in the war for Los Angeles.
He was there for what he calls the Battle of Paramount-Compton — a spontaneous community uprising against a wave of federal agents that swept through South LA. He says he saw sheriffs fire rubber bullets into a protester’s face at close range. He wrapped the man in a towel, told him he needed an ambulance. The man refused.
“There was bloodshed in the street. But that was the turning point. That was when the community said: you’re not going to just step all over us.”
In Romero’s view, the government’s strategy isn’t just to arrest and detain — it’s to fracture the community. To make neighbors mistrust one another. To make people scatter.
“They thought we were going to run. But they thought wrong.”
He speaks of helicopters overhead. Vans with masked agents inside. Outsiders watching from parked cars. He accuses the federal government of staging psychological operations — manipulating the media to justify new tactics.
“They claimed we were doxxing agents. Putting their names and faces online. Nobody did that. That was a media op. Now they can mask up. Now they can bring in the mercenaries.”
Romero believes that unmarked federal contractors are operating alongside official agents — distinguishable only by the non-standard gear and handcuffs they use. He calls them paramilitary. And while none of this can be independently verified, the level of paranoia itself tells a story.
He worries about revenge arrests. Targeted prosecutions. Being labeled an interferer in a federal operation. And yet he keeps showing up.
“I know my rights. I exercise them. I defend them. What’s left of them. Because they’re shredding the Constitution every day.”
He speaks of undocumented people being picked up and thrown into vans. Of U.S. citizens claiming their status only to find themselves inside unmarked warehouses minutes later.
“There are black sites here,” he says flatly.
We have no evidence to corroborate this claim. But for Romero, this is a matter of fact. Of community memory. He claims one man was released only after signing a waiver of liability. The others? He doesn’t know.
Still, he says, hope persists.
“We’re launching the next phase,” he says. “Economic pressure. If they won’t listen to us, maybe they’ll listen when we hurt their pockets.”
He names major retailers. Warns of future boycotts. Says political and financial pain might finally register where protest has not.
He speaks with defiance, but it’s grounded in something deeper: belief. Not in institutions. Not in politics. But in people — in their ability to organize, to resist, to endure.
“We won already,” he tells me.
Not because the fight is over. But because the people are still standing. Romero means the moral center has shifted and the people no longer believe in the illusion of justice.
That even if the federal government doesn’t change, the people have.
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