Family worried about an ICE visit spot DHS Secretary Kristi Noem outside their LA-area home

Nathan Solis and Ruben Vives, Los Angeles Times on Jun 12, 2025

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LOS ANGELES — Federal agents stormed a Huntington Park home Thursday morning and were accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Sabrina Medina, 28, was cleaning her patio Wednesday night when she saw a silver minivan slow down in front of her home in Huntington Park.

She said she saw the driver recording her and her brother-in-law at the home.

“I screamed at them: ‘Why are you recording me?’” she said. “I started screaming because I thought, you know, something bad was going to happen to me.”

She said the people in the van didn’t respond. Scared for her four children, Medina went inside the house and called her husband, Jorge Saldana, 30, who was at a nearby laundromat washing clothes. She told him what happened and that he needed to come home.

She and her husband got into an argument about his immigration status, she said. Medina worried immigration officials were now targeting him and their house. At one point, she told her husband she didn’t want him attending his 10-year-old daughter’s graduation.

She said the argument ended with her husband storming out of the house.

“He was upset,” she said. “He wanted to go to the graduation but I told him no and that I was going to take my sister.”

Medina’s husband, Saldana, was wanted for being in the country following his deportation. Eight years ago, Saldana was arrested for a violent crime, but the criminal charges were dropped and he was subsequently deported, Medina said.

Early Thursday morning, Medina was rattled by several loud knocks on the front door. When she looked through the window she saw a man in fatigues and other men dressed in similar clothing with assault rifles pointed toward her. She said the man ordered her to come out of the house. She explained she had just finished showering and needed to get dressed, as well as wake up her kids. Medina asked the man for the soldiers to put down their guns and they did, she said.

Eventually, the family walked out and stood in the driveway as the men in fatigues searched the house for her husband, Medina said. He was not home at the time.

As she, her brother-in-law and her kids waited in the driveway, Medina said she spotted Noem watching the operation.

Cameras inside and outside the home showed the men in fatigues walking around and searching the house. The men left shortly after, Medina said. There were at least about a dozen men in fatigues, according to Medina and videos reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

She hasn’t spoken to her husband since the raid on their home and is now worried how she will be able to pay this month’s $3,000 rent. Her husband was the main breadwinner.

The incident has traumatized her four kids whose ages range from 2 to 10, according to Medina. She said she is four months pregnant with twin boys.

“My daugther is very sad, she wanted to go to her graduation,” she said. “ My 7-year-old has been asking where her father is, they’re very close to one another.”

“This is no way of living,” she added.