The ex-landscaper behind the real-time deportation diary L.A. never wanted

At 8 o'clock on a stormy weeknight in the chilly Chinatown offices of L.A. Taco, Memo Torres finally was worn out.

- GUSTAVO ARELLANO

L.A. TACO staffer Memo Torres edits videos of raids in the publication's studio.

GINA FERAZZI Los Angeles Times

Since President Trump unleashed his deportation deluge on Los Angeles in June, the 45-year-old has chronicled nearly every immigration enforcement action in the region in three-minute “Daily Memo” videos for the online publication.

He and his colleagues track down film footage and photos, reach out to officials to verify what they've found and hammer out a script for Torres to narrate.

The audio that played from Torres' double-screen computer and smartphone as he reviewed the evidence on the day I visited contained snippets of the Southland's sad soundtrack under what he calls the "siege" of ICE. Men pleading to la migra to stop hurting them. Activists cursing out agents. Whistles, screams, honks and sirens. Sobbing family members.

"If I wanted to cry, I don't think that I could," Torres said when I asked how he coped with seeing such videos ad nauseam.

"It's not healthy, I know.

It's not mature. But what I go through is nothing like what the people I'm seeing are going through.... Today was hard, though," he continued, pounding his hand with his fist. "They went... extra hard today. They're starting to get worse. Numbers that used to be a week's worth of abductions are now a day." He sighed. His deep-set eyes were bleary. Reading glasses did nothing to help with 12 hours of staring at screens. Torres wiped his hands over his face as if washing off the horrors of the day and pressed the record button.

"Today, Border Patrol targeted Long Beach, swarming the streets again and taking gardeners, old men and a 12-pack of beer that they had," he began. He talked over video of masked men piling on top of a gardener at a Polly's Pies in Long Beach as a police officer looked on with hands in pockets and a deer-inheadlights look.