'The fascists have tried to occupy our area': how Trump's raids unleashed a firestorm

It started with seizures of immigrants in factories and troops on the streets — and ended with nannies grabbed from parks and a tide of resistance that has even surprised activists.

- Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles

It began with an early morning text message, circulated among immigrant workers as Donald Trump's immigration enforcement teams conducted sweeps in and around Los Angeles last weekend.

Federal agents had been spotted at a hotel 10 minutes north of downtown, the message said. Someone posted the warning to social media expecting, perhaps, that it would encourage people to hunker down. Instead, the opposite happened.

Protesters gathered outside the AC hotel in Pasadena with placards telling ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, to get out of town. Soon a band was playing, the local mayor and officials gave speeches, and church leaders arrived to swell the growing ranks of ordinary citizens standing up for their immigrant brothers and sisters.

"We're talking white Americans, African Americans. Soccer moms!" said Pablo Alvarado, who leads an organisation that campaigns for day labourers. “People coming out because they don’t like what they see.”

At first, hotel managers would not confirm to Alvarado that ICE agents were staying there. But many of the staff were strangely absent, and it wasn't hard to guess that they were terrified of showing up.

While thousands of other anti-Trump protesters thronged outside federal buildings, grabbing all the headlines because police with riot shields were firing foam-rubber bullets, and a few demonstrators were setting light to cars and throwing rocks, the Pasadena protest continued peacefully, even joyfully, until the hotel told the ICE agents they needed somewhere else to stay.

“We were there to guarantee there was no violence,” Alvarado said. “If it gets violent, it only impacts the most vulnerable.”