Feeling Conflicted as July 4 Approaches; So Long, Blue Screen of Death–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: June 30, 2025

Indy Digest: June 30, 2025

Friday is Independence Day—and I am just not feeling it this year.

Earlier today, Facebook friends were posting about an ICE raid at Vista Chino and Sunrise Drive in Palm Springs. Late this afternoon, Palm Springs Police Chief Andy Mills confirmed the raid—and the confusion surrounding it..

“I am aware that people without uniforms appeared as federal officers, and stopped and detained individuals in Palm Springs,” Mills wrote. “We checked with several federal agencies who denied having agents in Palm Springs. After multiple phone calls, eventually a supervisor with ICE – Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) confirmed they had a team working in Palm Springs. The vehicles used had no outward markings designating them as law enforcement. Because there are no uniforms or identification, the agency’s identity was unclear. If you are contacted or stopped by people claiming to be federal agents in unmarked cars who have no identification, uniforms, or credentials, call 911 and officers will respond to verify their identity. Verified agents will proceed with their duties and impostors will be arrested. Please do not run, flee, or resist federal agents in the performance of their duties. Violence against law enforcement is unacceptable.”

Meanwhile, publications like the Los Angeles Times are running articles with ledes like this:

Increasingly aggressive immigration raids carried out by masked federal agents, sometimes using unmarked vehicles, are creating problems for local law enforcement agencies.

Police have little or no insight into where the federal enforcement actions are taking place but often have to deal with the aftermath, including protests and questions from residents about what exactly happened. In some cases, local cops have been mistaken for federal agents, eroding years of work to have immigrant communities trust the police.

In Bell, chaos erupted when masked men arrived at a car wash and began detaining its workers, sparking a confrontation with residents and immigration rights advocates before they were forced to hastily drive over curbs and street islands to escape.

In Pasadena last week, a man stepped out of his unmarked vehicle at an intersection, unholstered his pistol and aimed it at a group of pedestrians before returning to his car, turning on its red and blue emergency lights and speeding off. Video of the incident went viral.

That incident left the police chief of Pasadena resigned to figure out whether it was a crime or part of a federal raid.

“There’s no way for us to verify,” Police Chief Gene Harris said.

In some cases, the people claiming to be ICE agents are indeed impersonators.

The Guardian (U.K.) reports:

Police inSouthern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.

The man, Fernando Diaz, was arrested by Huntington Park police after officers said they found a loaded gun and official-looking documents with Department of Homeland Security headings in his SUV, according to NBC Los Angeles. Officers were impounding his vehicle for parking in a handicapped zone when Diaz asked to retrieve items inside, the police said. Among the items seen by officers in the car were “multiple copies of passports not registered under the individual’s name”, NBC reports.

Diaz was arrested for possession of the allegedly unregistered firearm and released on bail. …

The arrest is one of several cases involving people allegedly impersonating immigration officials, as the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies.

Experts have warned that federal agents’ increased practice of masking while carrying out immigration raids and arrests makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers.

As a result, of, well, all of this, some nearby cities are cancelling Fourth of July events entirely.

SFGate says:

Several Southern California cities have discontinued plans for various July Fourth events, citing safety concerns and immigration enforcement in public posts announcing the cancellations. The suburban Los Angeles cities, each overwhelmingly Latino in population, have scuttled planned movie screenings and Independence Day celebrations as fears of ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue to ripple through the state.

In Cudahy, southeast of downtown Los Angeles, officials “decided to postpone” a planned July 3 Independence Day party, “due to recent events and concerns regarding the safety of our residents.” While parks remain open for use, there has been no announcement of a possible rescheduling for the event, which was supposed to run from 3 to 10:30 p.m. and include fireworks. Like many Southeast LA cities, Cudahy (population nearly 22,000) is a deeply Latino community, with nearly 98% of the city’s residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino according to 2024 census data.

Neighboring city Bell Gardens has also decided to drop planned events around the national holiday, including upcoming movie screenings and a July 3 performance by Latin music group Gabrielito y La Verdad. The cancellations are being implemented “out of an abundance of caution regarding concerns for resident safety over federal immigration enforcement activities,” per a post on the city of Bell Gardens’ Instagram page.

This Fourth of July, I’ll pass on the fireworks and the patriotism. I love my country; I really do. But I hate the decidedly un-American things happening here right now.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Related to the ICE-raid messes referenced above: The Trump administration is suing the city of Los Angeles for being a sanctuary city—and saying those sanctuary policies are why the National Guard was deployed.. The Los Angeles Times reports: “The U.S. Department of Justice sued the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass and City Council members Monday, calling L.A.’s sanctuary city law ‘illegal’ and asking that it be blocked from being enforced. The lawsuit, filed by the Trump administration in California’s Central District federal court, said the country is ‘facing a crisis of illegal immigration’ and that its efforts to address it ‘are hindered by Sanctuary Cities such as the City of Los Angeles, which refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities.’ Federal prosecutors said in their filing that Trump campaigned and won the 2024 presidential election on a platform of deporting ‘millions of illegal immigrants.’ By enacting a sanctuary city ordinance, the City Council sought to ‘thwart the will of the American people regarding deportations,’ the lawsuit states. … According to the lawsuit, L.A.’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities since June 6 has resulted in ‘lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism.’ ‘The situation became so dire that the Federal Government deployed the California National Guard and United States Marines to quell the chaos.’”

• A new app is designed to alert people to nearby ICE raids—and the feds are displeased. Time magazine reports: “ICEBlock allows its users—of which there are over 30,000, according to the app’s developer—to upload sightings of ICE activity. They can pinpoint the location on a map, and offer additional information about what they witnessed. Other users, within a five-mile radius, should then receive a push alert notifying them of the sighting. ‘See something, tap something,’ ICEBlock’s slogan instructs. There are also measures in place to prevent spamming activity. Users can only post a sighting within a five-mile radius of their location once every five minutes, and the alerts are automatically deleted after five hours. ‘In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and failures to adhere to constitutional principles and due process, making it crucial for communities to stay informed about its operations,’ reads a statement on the app’s website. … In response to a request for comment, ICE referred TIME to a statement from acting director Todd Lyons, who called the app ‘sickening,’ saying it ‘paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs’ and ‘incites violence.’”

• Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” includes a lot of terrible things—including a work requirement for many people on Medicaid. On paper, a work requirement may not sound like a terrible idea—but it is, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver just aired a wonderful deep dive explaining why. If you have 25 minutes, I strongly recommend watching the piece, which you can do for free via YouTube.

• The CDC is dispersing grant funding veeeerrry slowly—and the slowness is causing big problems. NPR reports: “Health departments around the country have noticed there’s something strange happening with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: It’s not showing up on schedule and there’s been no communication about why. The federal public health agency doles out most of the money it receives from Congress to state and local health departments, which then contract with local organizations. That’s how public health work gets funded in the U.S. According to two CDC staff members with knowledge of the agency’s budget, the CDC has yet to receive its full funding for the 2025 fiscal year. NPR agreed not to name the staff members because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Both CDC staffers say the funding is now months late, and it will soon be too late to disperse the agency’s grants that local health departments are waiting on. In the interim, the CDC has been operating with just 30-days of funding at a time. The staffers say this amounts to impounding the agency’s funding. One of them called it ‘rescission by inertia.‘”

• A new state climate rule goes into effect tomorrow—and it may lead to an increase in gas prices. Our partners at Calmatters report: “California’s revamped Low Carbon Fuel Standard takes effect on Tuesday, despite fierce Republican criticism and increasing Democratic trepidation over its potential to raise gas prices. The new rules—which expand a program to reduce climate-warming gases and clean the air—ratchet up requirements for cleaner fuels and broaden a $2 billion credit market aimed at cutting emissions from cars, trucks and freight. No immediate hike in gas prices will occur and experts say the future impact is uncertain because it depends on how much the oil industry spends on buying credits and then (passing) it onto consumers. The previous fuel standard, which was set in 2011, added 9 cents to the cost of a gallon; a UC Davis researcher estimates that the new one could add 5 to 8 cents per gallon.”

• Today’s recall news involves … bologna! This one has to do with mislabeling, as CBS News explains: “Gaiser’s European Style Provisions Inc. is recalling approximately 143,416 pounds of ready-to-eat bologna due to misbranding, federal health officials said Friday. In the announcement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said the products, which were distributed to wholesale and retail locations nationwide, contain meat or poultry source materials that are not declared on the product labels. The recalled products, which were sold under a variety of names and labels and produced between March 20 and June 20, 2025.”

• And finally … Wired magazine reports that the “Blue Screen of Death”—which has caused every Windows user at some point to shout expletives—is going away. The piece takes a look at the BSOD’s history, and explains why it will be missed. A snippet: “The real BSOD, the one burned into tech lore, arguably arrived with Windows NT 3.1 (1993). When the system hit a critical error, it threw up a wall of white text on a blue background, which might help engineers diagnose an issue—or make the average user stare at it and weep. So why blue? Years ago, former Microsoft architect John Vert explained that the color scheme matched his workstation boot screen and text editor. And when Windows crashed, the display adapter was forced into text mode with a basic color palette. Vert added that he was unaware of other Windows blue screens. In short, then, he chose what he knew and liked. Yet those arbitrary decisions stuck for nearly two decades, aside from minor tweaks to simplify the output to make it a little less terrifying. Significant changes arrived with Windows 8 (2012), which was the first real attempt to make the crash screen user-friendly. But this being Microsoft, that effort included a huge, obnoxious, almost sarcastic sad-face emoji above text that read, ‘Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and now it needs to restart.’ At least the shade of blue was nicer.”

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