The Charges Were Dropped, but the Damage Was Already Done
The Atlantic · LC · trust 58/100
David Huerta was arrested while protesting ICE raids in L.A.
Damian Dovarganes / AP September 7, 2026, 7 AM ET Share Save D avid Huerta sat on a steel bed too small for his burly frame in a Los Angeles jail last summer and looked out a small rectangular window at Dodger Stadium, where he’d once spent evenings with his two boys. He was the kid who’d made good, although it hadn’t been easy. His mother died from breast cancer when he was 4. He was raised in southeast L.A. by his dad, a veteran of the Korean War turned Teamster, who paid the bills by loading and unloading cargo—and, when he was out of work, took his sons with him to the hiring hall. Huerta steered clear of gangs and instead went to college, became a union organizer, and worked his way up to become president of the largest labor union in the state, the Service Employees International Union of California.
He was sure that he hadn’t done anything illegal. He had screamed at masked federal agents as they executed search warrants at a downtown apparel business that was suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants. He had been angry, no question—especially at President Trump. He had flipped his middle fingers at the masked federal officers. At one point, he sat down in front of the business’s gate; later, he encouraged other protesters to form a picket circle in front of it. When an officer warned him he might be arrested, he replied, “I can’t hear you through your fucking mask.” And when a police van tried to enter, he stood with his hands on his hips nearby. He considered all of that well within the bounds of his First Amendment rights. But he couldn’t stop second-guessing his decision to show up at such a volatile scene alone.
Huerta wondered how his wife and sons, his niece and nephew, and his other family members would react to seeing videos of his arrest. He wondered if he had somehow jeopardized the safety of his union’s hundreds of thousands of members by drawing unwanted headlines. He wondered if his arrest would make others more fearful of opposing this administration’s actions. He wondered when he would be released—or if he would be. He wondered if he could survive prison, should it come to that. And he wondered what his late dad would’ve thought of him sitting on a thin, stained mattress as his cellmate on the top bunk managed a comedown from drugs. Would he have been ashamed, or proud?
Trump’s top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles charged Huerta with conspiracy to impede a federal officer—a felony, under a Civil War–era statute that had rarely been used before last year. If convicted, Huerta faced up to six years in prison. But months later, prosecutors lessened the charges to a misdemeanor count of obstructing, resisting, or opposing a federal officer. This July, the Justice Department said it would drop the charges altogether, adding it to the growing list of federal prosecutions that have fallen apart before going to trial.
Although those dismissals have been celebrated as victories, the cases have taken a financial and psychological toll on the defendants. For Huerta, the past 15 months have been filled with anxiety. He has endured sleepless nights and grown emotionally distant from his wife of 30 years. The public attention continues to make it more difficult to do his job. And despite his pride in standing for what he believed in, he struggles with the shame of being jailed and appearing in court in shackles—an image he worries that his two sons and niece and nephew (whom he has raised as his own) will never forget. As we spoke inside a coffee shop in his neighborhood of Highland Park one recent afternoon, Huerta’s voice rose in anger and indignation while he recounted and, at times, reenacted the minutes before he was shoved to the ground by a federal officer. He teared up.
“The president of the union just got fucking arrested,” he said. “If they can do this to me, imagine what they’re doing to other people.”
O n the morning of June 6, 2025, the phones at the SEIU office were ringing with reported sightings of immigration-enforcement operations in and around downtown L.A. Huerta and his team—along with other labor leaders, Democrats, and social-justice groups—had been preparing for a moment like this ever since Trump was elected to a second term. The administration was trying to detain and deport as many immigrants as possible. Workplaces were being targeted, and even American-born Latinos were getting caught up in immigration dragnets. Huerta and his team would later learn that this day was the opening of a monthslong operation in the L.A. area overseen by then–Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. It aimed to not just increase arrest numbers but also intimidate immigrant communities.
Read: A U.S. citizen detained by ICE for three days tells his story
The union’s rapid-response network was designed to help employees during moments like this. “Shit’s happening,” Huerta recalled thinking that morning, “and we’re now in the fight.” He heard a report of an immigration raid in the apparel district, so he scrapped his plans and headed there.
Federal agents were swarming an industrial complex. A woman stood outside the facility’s gate, prosecutors later claimed in charging documents, filming officers and telling someone by phone what was happening. A federal agent later said that Huerta seemed to be communicating with that woman and other protesters “in a concerted effort to disrupt” the operation.
As the crowd grew, people screamed expletives at the officers, and someone yelled, “I want you to kill yourself,” according to the accounts of federal agents contained in court filings. The agents described Huerta joining in the taunting, urging protesters to “walk in circles and picket,” and pacing in front of the gate, “effectively preventing law enforcement vehicles from entering or exiting.”
Huerta told me that he had never acted quite like this at a protest, but that he had snapped when he saw how the…
Read the original at The Atlantic →
Open in TruthVane →