Little Tokyo advocates urge stronger sanctuary protections after ICE operation near JANM

At a regularly scheduled Los Angeles City Council meeting in August 2025, community leaders from Little Tokyo and a council member urged the city to strengthen enforcement of its sanctuary-city protections after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operation outside the Japanese American National Museum during Nisei Week.

Council member, Council District 14, opened the remarks by describing two back-to-back impressions in the neighborhood: "Yesterday, we celebrated the grand opening of the Skid Row care campus... But while one neighborhood celebrated, another braced itself." The council member said the ICE operation involved agents who detained "a worker delivering produce" without a warrant and that the action occurred during a cultural celebration near the museum.

June Hibino, of the Nikkei Progressives and the Little Tokyo Rapid Response Network, said the community has organized "Know Your Rights" trainings and rapid-response outreach and warned that the ICE presence echoed the community's history of exclusion and wartime incarceration. "Our Japanese American story... is one of exclusion,…