The sound of rattling chains breaks the silence at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transfer center in Los Angeles. Brenda, a short woman in her 60s, has come out of her cell. She wears jeans, a striped sweater and black boots. And she has cuffs on her hands and shackles on her feet—a measure that seems exaggerated in a building staffed by armed guards.

"Get up," says a guard, while Brenda wipes away tears. She is about to be transported to an ICE jail in Southern California.

Antonio Zúñiga was here just a few minutes earlier, wearing paint-stained tennis shoes. And next up is a Guatemalan father and his young son, who appeared before immigration officials on a routine visit and are now being taken into custody.

The father has been deported three times and the boy has a deportation order in absentia (he failed to appear at a hearing), according to Christian Menjívar, an assistant to the director of ICE here.

In the background, the father looks heartbroken. His child plays without seeming to understand what’s happening.

On this afternoon in November 2019, during a Univision News tour of the facility, most cells are empty. But seven years ago, at the end of President Barack Obama's first term, it was buzzing; in 2013, ICE officers in the city arrested 25,163 undocumented immigrants and deported more than 15,000 people.

In the third year of the Donald Trump administration, immigration authorities saw far less action in the facility. Between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019 there were 6,657 arrests and 8,598 deportations, a decrease of 73.5% and 44%, respectively, compared to 2013.

Though many in California feared that anti-immigration activity would worsen under Trump, it hasn’t.

That’s because Trump's aggressive anti-immigrant rhetoric sparked a pro-immigrant movement that has led the state to enact sanctuary laws that limit cooperation between local police and ICE agents. Over the last three years, Trump’s harsh “zero tolerance” policy has been defeated through a number of measures in California, which has become a nationwide leader in sanctuary laws.

Despite Trump’s threats, there have been no large-scale immigration raids in California; certainly nothing like what occurred at a Mississippi meat processing plant in August 2019, when 680 undocumented workers were taken into federal custody—the largest operation of its kind in one state.

California has limited Trump’s ability to deport immigrants and managed to shake off the painful legacy of mass deportations under Obama, who still holds the record.

Paradoxically, it took anti-immigrant rhetoric from the White House to build up such a “sanctuary.”

Most recently, the Supreme Court rejected a Trump administration lawsuit that sought to challenge the state’s sanctuary law. That means local police officers are still prohibited from cooperating with immigration authorities.

In Los Angeles, home to more than a million undocumented immigrants, the local ICE office received a blow on February 1, 2019, when new sheriff Alex Villanueva delivered on his campaign promise and removed all ICE officers from seven jails and 23 police stations. The previous sheriff had partnered with ICE to deport more immigrants even than controversial sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa, Arizona.

"I recognized the risk that came from sheriffs participating in immigration enforcement or from the perception that we are working together with ICE agents," Villanueva said in an interview with Univision News.

Following the officers’ removal, Villanueva was stripped of $3 million in annual federal funding that he describes as being "stained with blood." He also received death threats.

The space at the sheriff’s office formerly used by immigration officials is now a breakfast and break room. ICE now uses two private companies to take custody of undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes, such as murder, rape and drug trafficking.

Previously, ICE was entitled to hold people like street vendors, bricklayers and parents who ended up in the custody of law enforcement. But Senate Bill 54, which went into effect January 1, 2018, established a list of 151 crimes for which law enforcement can collaborate with ICE, all of them serious.

Not everyone shares Sheriff Villanueva’s beliefs. Some police chiefs are angered by the changes. Among them is Don Barnes, head of the Orange County Sheriff's Department, located in a conservative region that has long fought for various anti-immigrant initiatives.

"The two-year social science experiment in sanctuary law must end,” he said in February. “It has allowed for the release of criminals.”

Barnes claims that in the past two years, his agents released more than 1,100 inmates without notifying ICE. Among them, 411 were later arrested for sex crimes, sex crimes against children or assault with a deadly weapon, according to figures from his department.

Several reports, however, refute the sheriff's claim that his community is now “less safe.” For example, a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) notes that in Santa Ana, the city with the most immigrants in Orange County, reports of violent crime dropped slightly from 1,640 in 2017 to 1,571 in 2018.

The Orange County Sheriff's statistics also show a gradual decrease in homicides since the pro-immigrant law went into effect. In 2019, there were 56 murders, down from 77 in 2018 and 85 in 2017.

Sheriff Villanueva, son of a Puerto Rican father and white mother, says transfers of undocumented immigrants to ICE decreased by 53% in 2019 compared to the previous year. When taking into account only those who committed minor crimes, the drop was 73%.

And the changes go beyond jails. The police have stopped taking part in operations to capture fugitives and asked the local ICE director to force his officers to stop wearing vests that identify them as police. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has also made this a priority, claiming the vests are a trap to get undocumented immigrants to open their doors when officers approach.

"They’re doing that because they want confusion, they want to increase fear in the community and that’s not right," Villanueva said.

But calls to cut ties between ICE and the Los Angeles Police (LAPD) are nothing new. Forty-one years ago, the LAPD established an order that prevented officers from asking about immigration status. Over time, the department gradually relaxed its regulations.

"I once stood in their shoes, seeking a better life, not committing crimes," said LAPD Assistant Commanding Officer Alfred Labrada, who illegally crossed the border as a child with his family.

The son of a widow who worked cleaning houses and in an egg packager, Labrada, who was born in Mexico, was five years old when his family crossed the border in a van. He lived undocumented for four years.

"I understand the fear and despair that parents and children feel, not knowing if they are going to be deported," said the commander, who thinks the decrease in crime is due in part to growing trust of police in immigrant communities, including those in Southern California known to be violent.

According to Labrada, more people who work in the informal economy, many of them undocumented, now feel safe enough to report crimes.

“In other words, they have the confidence to know that we are not going to call immigration because they are the victims,” he said.

Although some argue that sanctuary laws protect criminals, California's two largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have reported a decline in violent crime rates since the SB54 sanctuary law went into effect.

Wearing masks and gloves, ICE agents in Los Angeles continued to arrest undocumented immigrants until mid-March of this year. But around the time a “stay-at-home” order was issued to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, they shifted their strategy to focus more on criminals. The result? Arrests fell from 230 in March to 80 in April, or 65%. The impact was similar across the country.

That followed a trend of declining arrests in the state. In 2019, 14,035 immigrants were arrested across California, a 73% decrease compared to 2013 and the lowest number in the past seven years. Last year, ICE made more arrests in Dallas, Texas, and nearly the same amount in Atlanta, Georgia.

According to ICE, officers have been “handcuffed” due to municipal law enforcement agencies who refuse to cooperate and their forced ejection from prisons due to new laws.

"I’ve spoken to state legislators and told them that their policies, which may have been well-intentioned, only protect undocumented criminals," said David Marin, head of the ICE office in Los Angeles.

Neither the provisions of SB54 nor the resulting crime rates support Marin’s statement.

ICE officers have a much tougher time without collaboration from law enforcement. Now, 75 officers seek out immigrants in seven counties, from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo, a 33,000-square-mile territory home to 19 million people. Each operation requires several days of surveillance before it can be executed.

It was much easier when municipal jails helped with arrests. From October 1, 2018, to September 30, 2019, ICE sent 11,500 inmate arrest requests (known as detainers) to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office. The agency only honored 472.

“We used to arrest them inside a prison, in a safe environment—safe not only for ourselves, but for the public,” Marin said. “Now we have to go out into the community. It is inevitable that we’ll come across other people … maybe family members, maybe friends."

Marin said it’s more difficult now for the families of those arrested, who may face a traumatic experience. “You have to arrest someone in front of their children,” he said. “I have done it and as a parent it is difficult, it is very difficult.”

Many communities that once feared ICE raids say they now feel more calm.

"We are no longer in the days when we didn't even want to go shopping at the store,” said Rubén, a street vendor who has lived in Santa Ana since 2010 and is the father of two American children. “We let go of all that fear.”

Others, such as activist Patty Chávez, prefer not to let their guard down and remain vigilant on social media in case ICE operations do occur. “They used to have a little more mercy, a little more humanity,” she said. “Now we see that the hunt against our community has intensified.”

The immigrant resistance movement in California has been brewing since the 1994 fight to eliminate Proposition 187, a law proposed by then governor Pete Wilson which sought to deny health and education services to the undocumented.

Among those who took to the streets to oppose that initiative are former California senator Kevin de León, the author of SB54; state attorney Xavier Becerra, one of Trump's fiercest opponents in court; and other Hispanic politicians from California.

Becerra's office has filed more than 60 lawsuits against the Trump administration, several of which defend the undocumented. Lawsuits oppose the construction of the border wall, the prolonged detention of minors requesting asylum and the new public charge rule, which makes it difficult for those who receive government assistance to gain citizenship.

"In California, we lead the resistance against Donald Trump's politics," said councilmember Gil Cedillo, who managed to officially proclaim Los Angeles a "sanctuary city” last year.

In February 2017, the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park became the site of an emblematic case when Mexican cook Rómulo Avélica was arrested by ICE while taking his 14-year-old daughter, Fátima, to school. The teenager recorded the incident on her cell phone.

The video went viral, and pressure from the community—including protests, community discussions and a fundraiser to support the family—played a big role in Avélica’s legal case. ICE had arrested him for two old crimes: a DUI and possession of stolen property. His defense team convinced a judge to downgrade his sentence.

Avélica's deportation was suspended six months later and, according to his own account, he was received as a hero by his community. He now has a temporary permit to work in the country and his fight for permanent residence continues. A judge is expected to decide on his case in October.

"The video set off a lot of action,” the 51-year-old immigrant says. “Protests, actions against ICE, outrage against the raids. As the saying goes: ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’.”

His daughter Fatima, now 16, continues to defend immigrants. She says her father's case forced her to mature, conquer her shyness and fight for the undocumented. "Talking and not staying silent is important, because if you stay silent who will listen to you?,” she says.

And if she could say anything to President Trump?

“I would tell President Trump to put himself in our shoes, she says. “He would see how difficult it is.”