At 8 o’clock on a stormy weeknight within the chilly Chinatown workplaces of L.A. Taco, Memo Torres lastly was worn out.
Since President Trump unleashed his deportation deluge on Los Angeles in June, the 45-year-old has chronicled almost each immigration enforcement motion within the area in three-minute “Each day Memo” movies for the net publication. He and his colleagues observe down movie footage and images, attain out to officers to confirm what they’ve discovered and hammer out a script for Torres to relate.
The audio that performed from Torres’ double-screen pc and good cellphone as he reviewed the proof on the day I visited contained snippets of the Southland’s unhappy soundtrack beneath what he frequently calls the “siege” of ICE. Males pleading to la migra to cease hurting them. Activists cursing out brokers. Whistles, screams, honks and sirens. Sobbing members of the family.
“If I needed to cry, I don’t suppose that I might,” Torres stated once I requested how he coped with seeing such movies advert nauseum.
“It’s not wholesome, I do know. It’s not mature. However what I’m going by is nothing like what the individuals I’m seeing are going by … In the present day was laborious, although,” he continued, pounding his hand along with his fist. “They went … additional laborious in the present day. They’re beginning to worsen. Numbers that was once per week’s value of abductions at the moment are a day.”
He sighed. His deep-set eyes had been bleary. Studying glasses did nothing to assist with 12 hours of watching screens. Torres wiped his fingers over his face as if washing off the horrors of the day and pressed the document button.
“In the present day, Border Patrol focused Lengthy Seaside, swarming the streets once more and taking gardeners, outdated males and a 12-pack of beer that they’d,” he started. He talked over footage of masked males piling on high of a gardener at a Polly’s Pie in Lengthy Seaside as a police officer regarded on with fingers in pockets and a deer-in-headlights look.
In one other clip, federal brokers detained an aged man sitting on the sidewalk close to a liquor retailer, “ensuring to place a handcuff on his hand as they helped him up.”
“Keep in mind to remain secure and keep vigilant, people,” Torres concluded.
He turned off the digital camera, blasted hardcore punk and started to splice his reel collectively.
“Each day Memo” has develop into the diary Los Angeles by no means requested for however which is now indispensable, documenting in actual time one of the terrifying chapters within the area’s historical past. Filling the digital camera body along with his broad shoulders, full beard and a baritone that alternates between wry, indignant, calm and reassuring, Torres has been described by followers because the Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite of L.A.’s deportation days — legendary broadcasters he acknowledges by no means having heard of till just lately.
L.A. Taco staffer Memo Torres, proper, presents Victor Villa as L.A. Taco’s Taco Insanity 2024 winner in an impromptu ceremony outdoors the Highland Park restaurant in 2024.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Instances)
“While you’re within the midst of the whole lot, you neglect somebody has to maintain an archive so we are able to return to reference, and also you suppose, ‘Rattling is somebody is doing that?’ Yeah, Memo is doing that,” Sherman Austin stated. The Lengthy Seaside-based activist runs the Cease ICE Raids Alert Community, which sends out textual content alerts with the areas of raids to greater than half 1,000,000 individuals nationwide. “Memo places a human face to what’s occurring, and that resonates with individuals otherwise.”
“He’s a neighborhood hero,” stated Rebecca Brown, supervising lawyer for the Immigrants’ Rights Venture of Public Counsel. The general public curiosity legislation agency has filed or joined a number of lawsuits in opposition to the federal authorities this 12 months over its deportation agenda. “Plenty of these tales of people who find themselves getting picked up can fall by the cracks. However their voices are getting captured by his recording.”
Whereas “Each day Memo” is chronicling a metropolis beneath assault, it’s additionally bringing consolation to an surprising individual: Torres.
The son of a Mexican immigrant from Zacatecas who got here to this nation with out papers, Torres by no means had a full-time journalism job till this 12 months, residing a “Forrest Gump form of life.” He estimates he has labored in at the least 25 completely different trades, from butcher to taquero to sound engineer, social media supervisor and nonprofit employee, none actually becoming his life’s objective to do one thing “significant.”
Nothing lasted longer than landscaping. A 3rd-generation jardinero — his grandfather additionally labored within the U.S. — he at one level employed 28 employees and had contracts throughout the town, with Hollywood studios amongst his greatest purchasers.
Torres, who has two college-age youngsters, bought the enterprise in March to deal with journalism for good.
“My life has ready me for this s—. There’s nothing that scares me anymore,” Torres stated as he started to layer video clips over his “Each day Memo” narration. “So I bury my head into work. My escapism is the merciless actuality of the town proper now.”
Torres grew up in Culver Metropolis and Inglewood. At Loyola Excessive he absorbed the Jesuit maxim of being a person for others. However after graduating from UC Berkeley with a sociology diploma, Torres discovered himself again within the household enterprise, unable to discover a job that happy him.
“Family members would make enjoyable of me by saying, ‘There he goes with a level and a lawnmower at the back of a truck,” he stated. “I hated it, however I used to be good at it.”
His landscaping routes throughout Southern California inadvertently ready him for journalism. He began an Instagram account, El Tragón de Los Angeles (The Glutton from Los Angeles), to share his consuming adventures. That caught the eye of L.A. Taco in 2018, which was revamping at a time when the town’s indie publications had been shuttering or faltering.
“Their mission of street-level reporting referred to as to me,” Torres stated. He volunteered to attach L.A. Taco to native eating places so the publication’s members might rating free meals and reductions. He quickly grew to become director of partnerships, then took over L.A. Taco’s social media accounts, then began to write down articles and shoot movies — principally totally free.
“I name him the Mexican Swiss Military knife — and never these small ones however the massive ones with all of the bizarre issues,” L.A. Taco writer Alex Blazedale stated as he and Torres smoked outdoors throughout a brief break. “Memo might actually do something we requested him to, and he needed to do it and adopted by.”
L.A. Taco staffer Memo Torres edits video clips from day by day ICE raids which he places along with narration on an Instagram reel inside L.A. Taco’s studio in Chinatown.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
Torres’ taco data earned him appearances on the Netflix present “The Taco Chronicles” and a daily slot on KCRW’s “Good Meals with Evan Kleiman.” Blazedale steered this 12 months that he do a day by day information recap beneath the “Each day Memo” banner. However Torres discovered the title “tacky and didn’t know what it was for.”
Then got here the raids.
“I grew up on the Historical past Channel,” Torres stated. “They’d at all times have these documentaries the place they stated they had been discovering new footage that had been thought misplaced. That’s what’s occurring proper now. A lot stuff is being put up that shortly goes down. We have to doc it for historical past.”
L.A. Taco editor Javier Cabral credit “Each day Memo” with bringing in so many new members that the publication is now financially sustainable.
“He’s not your common aspirational journalist who’s both a hobbyist who needs to write down extra or somebody who simply received out of [journalism] college,” Cabral stated. “He’s only a actual paisa” — a working-class man.
Whereas Cabral finds Torres’ lack of reporting expertise “refreshing,” he typically has to remind Torres to not editorialize an excessive amount of.
“It’s that ‘Present, don’t inform’ factor in journalism, you realize? However then I needed to simply verify in with myself — am I being jealous by power-tripping at him?” Cabral stated. “It was a tough dialog to have, however Memo took it [on] the chin and raised it up.”
Blazedale and Cabral imagine a lot in Torres that they just lately employed a part-time assistant for “Each day Memo” and plan to show an workplace at their headquarters into a correct studio. They received Torres a video editor, however the individual stop after 5 minutes of viewing deportation footage — so Torres continues to place collectively the ultimate product.
“We simply can’t have Memo burn out,” Cabral stated. “He’s too essential to have that occur.”
Torres is unfazed, for now.
“It’s similar to once I mowed lawns — let’s seize the day and make it your routine,” he stated.
In addition to, swimming within the chaos of the instances is how Torres has handled a tricky private 12 months. He bought his landscaping firm, not simply due to his elevated L.A. Taco duties — he’s formally the publication’s director of engagement — however as a result of the Hollywood author’s strike and Trump’s deportations decimated his enterprise. Two of his former gardeners have since been deported.
Torres began smoking once more “to cope with all this.” He just lately broke off an engagement after a 10-year-relationship with a girl whose members of the family had been avid Trump supporters. On Election Night time, Torres stated, certainly one of them informed him to return to Mexico. The couple’s Glendale house just lately bought for a lot lower than they paid. Quickly, Torres plans to declare chapter.
L.A. Taco’s workplaces are stuffed with packing containers of his mementos as he settles into a brand new condominium. One is a laminated La Opinión story about him attempting to recruit extra Latino college students to Berkeley after affirmative motion ended.
“I at all times envisioned I might be helpful for one thing,” he stated earlier than mentioning a letter from his mom he unearthed throughout his transfer. She died of most cancers in 2006.
“She stated, ‘I’m so happy with you. You’re attempting to battle for what’s proper. Don’t neglect it.’ She noticed it in me manner again then.”
Torres uploaded his completed reel to L.A. Taco’s social media accounts. It was 10 p.m. — early for him. Exterior the rain was pouring down more durable than ever.
“I hope I can return to writing about tacos,” Torres stated with fun that betrayed he knew it wouldn’t occur for some time. “Simply give me a break from reporting on the trauma and tragedy. However who is aware of if the longer term wants me? Possibly I’m simply good for this second, and I’m good with that.”
He stepped into the storm. Eight hours later, he can be again.
