Federal authorities on Monday charged David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, in a
criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede an officer in connection with his alleged actions during an immigration enforcement raid last week.
Huerta, 58, has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. since Friday and is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court on Monday afternoon. He is facing a felony charge that carries up to six years in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A.
His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Huerta was
detained and injured while documenting a workplace immigration raid in downtown L.A. on Friday. He was treated at a hospital and transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Nine people tied to the protests have been charged federally, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. Among them is Russell Gomez-Dzul, a Mexican national, who the White House said was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a federal officer.
Rallies are scheduled in more than a dozen cities across the U.S., including in L.A., by union members and other supporters demanding Huerta’s release and an end to the workplace immigration raids. California Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla sent a letter Monday to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice demanding a review of Huerta’s arrest.
The U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, a staunch Trump ally and hard-line conservative who was appointed in April, last week posted a photo on X of Huerta, hands behind his back, after the arrest. Essayli accused Huerta of obstructing the access of federal authorities to a facility where they were conducting a search warrant.
“Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,” Essayli wrote on X. “No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”
The labor union said in a statement Friday that Huerta was detained “while exercising his First Amendment right to observe and document law enforcement activity.”
Schiff, who referred to Huerta as “a very prominent union leader in Los Angeles, a very respected voice,” was waiting to attend the labor leader’s hearing Monday.
Schiff spoke with reporters in front of a building graffitied in expletives aimed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said that Huerta was “exercising his lawful right to be present and observe these immigration raids.”
“It’s obviously a very traumatic thing, and now that it looks like the Justice Department wants to try and make an example out of him, it’s all the more traumatic,” Schiff said, when asked how Huerta was doing. “But this is part of the Trump playbook. They selectively use the Justice Department to go after their adversaries. It’s what they do.”
According to the criminal complaint, U.S. Magistrate Judge Margo A. Rocconi authorized search warrants Thursday for four business locations “suspected of unlawfully employing illegal aliens and falsifying employment records related to the status of its employees.”
In an affidavit filed with the federal complaint, a supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, whose name was redacted, said news quickly spread about “ICE raids” taking place throughout L.A.
According to the complaint, Huerta arrived at Ambiance Apparel in the downtown Los Angeles Fashion District before noon Friday, joining several other protesters. The company was one of the sites of a workplace raid.
“The protesters, including HUERTA appeared to be communicating with each other in a concerted effort to disrupt the law enforcement operations,” the agent wrote.
The agent wrote that Huerta was yelling at and taunting officers and later sat cross-legged in front of a vehicle gate to the location where law enforcement authorities were serving a search warrant.
“In addition to sitting in front of the gate, HUERTA at various times stood up and paced in front of the gate, effectively preventing law enforcement vehicles from entering or exiting the premises through the gate to execute the search warrant,” the agent wrote in the affidavit. “As far as I was aware, this gate was the only location through which vehicles could enter or exit the premises.”
The agent wrote that they told Huerta that, if he kept blocking the Ambiance gate, he would be arrested.
Huerta responded that he couldn’t hear the agent through his mask, according to the affidavit. Huerta used a curse word, the agent wrote.
According to the complaint, as a white law enforcement van tried to get through the gate, Huerta stood in its path.
Because Huerta “was being uncooperative, the officer put his hands on HUERTA in an attempt to move him out of the path of the vehicle.”
“I saw HUERTA push back, and in response, the officer pushed HUERTA to the ground,” the agent wrote. “The officer and I then handcuffed HUERTA and arrested him.”
Huerta on Friday released a
statement through his union, saying: “What happened to me is not about me; This is about something much bigger.
“This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”
Ahead of the Monday afternoon hearing, Huerta’s cousin, Marta Gonzales, said she was there to represent the family.
“We’re all heartbroken. We have family all over the world,” she said. “Everyone’s been watching.”
Gonzales called Huerta “a giant in our family.”
“This is so unjust,” she said.
Asked about the protests over the weekend, she said she wondered if Huerta “was the spark for a lot of it. It just angered so many people.”
