The Paramount community of Los Angeles County, California, gained national headlines on June 7 when large protests ensued in response to a raid by immigration enforcement officials.
Brian Warth, founder and lead pastor of Chapel of Change Christian Fellowship, a multisite church with a campus a few blocks away from the Home Depot, witnessed the events and even suffered the effects of tear gas.
Immigration law enforcement agents gathered at a local Home Depot before conducting raids, with law enforcement and protesters clashing throughout the day.
In an interview with The Christian Post on Monday, Warth recounted how he had received reports “that something was going on by our church,” which was scheduled to hold an evening service that night.
Warth decided to check it out, bringing along two of his three children, daughters who were aged 14 and 11. When he got there, he saw that “the streets were blocked off, and there [were] a lot of police officers.”
As he and his daughters parked near the commotion and were getting a closer look, Warth recalled how “out of nowhere, flashbangs were deployed, and tear gas was deployed, and people started running.”
“I found myself with my kids, my young daughters, running from the flashbangs as well as the tea rgas, and we ran in the direction of our church because our church was nearby,” Warth said.
While they ran from the chaos, one of Warth’s daughters yelled that her eyes were burning. When he turned around, Warth saw “a wall of tear gas that was coming our way, and it hit us.”
“From there, things erupted even more,” he continued. “There was major unrest, and violence erupted; cars were set on fire and, riot police were called in, and there was a standoff between the community and riot police. And from there, the National Guard was deployed.”
Chapel of Change ended up canceling their Saturday evening service due to authorities blocking off the street, with confrontations between rioters and police continuing through the evening.
‘A fear of the unknown’
The following Sunday morning, Chapel of Change held its regular worship services, with Warth posting a video to Facebook informing the congregation that the streets were clear.
Despite Sunday morning worship going as planned, Warth said there remained “an atmosphere of fear in the air and uncertainty in the air.”
According to him, a neighboring Spanish congregation opted to cancel their worship in response.
For its part, Chapel of Change has a Spanish-language service, which was still held on Sunday. But Warth and church leadership changed the format of the gathering to be “a prayer service” in which attendees were “praying for peace and praying against anxiety and worry.”
Days later, at a city council meeting where his wife and Chapel of Change co-Pastor Laura Warth gave the invocation prayer, Brian Warth recalled hearing many locals denounce the situation.
“In that meeting, we heard the cries and the anger and the frustration of the community,” he said. “Many people testified about how they were caught up in what was going on just because they were driving by or they were at the Home Depot driving away and tear gas filled their cars, or somebody else will testify that they got shot with rubber bullets.”
Even as the violence dies down, Warth told CP, “there is a fear of the unknown” that persists as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents continue to raid “various locations in our communities and [arrest] people.”
“It’s just pretty wild to see all these raids,” said Warth. “With federal agents that have masks on and they’re in plain clothes and unmarked cars and they’re jumping out on car washes and arresting people.”
‘Whole cities need to be healed’
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has ratcheted up enforcement of immigration law, including a wave of ICE raids targeting individuals who entered the country illegally.
Some have defended these measures as necessary to properly enforce the laws on the books and to secure communities from violent offenders who should have been deported long ago.
Others, among them Virgil Walker of G3 Ministries, have defended the Trump administration’s response to the Los Angeles riots, which involved deploying the National Guard despite objections from state and local officials.
“When President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops and placed 500 Marines on ‘prepared to deploy’ status, he wasn’t escalating the situation — he was fulfilling government’s biblical mandate to bear the sword against evildoers,” wrote Walker in a column published by CP.
“The deployment sends a clear message: The rule of law still means something in America. Federal officers will be protected. Criminal behavior will have consequences. The safety of law-abiding citizens will not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.”
Regarding the need for law and order amid protests and illegal immigration, Warth told CP that “as Christians, we value the police officers and we value them that are in authority and we honor them.”
“At the same time, as pastors, we’re seeing the fear in the average person in society, and we’re seeing people afraid to go to work, or afraid to go to school, we’re seeing families being separated,” Warth said.
Warth believes that it was “a complex balance to strike because ... we’re not against violent people being arrested and being taken off the streets. We’re for a peaceful society.”
“But at the same time, our heart breaks to see the fear in the society and the people being separated from their [families,]” he added. “Yes, we honor the law and we honor police officers, we value them, we pray for them, at the same time, we’re here to help broken families, and broken people and people that are [negatively] affected by what’s going on.”
“It’s not just immigrants that are affected by this. Whole cities are affected by this. Neighbors, you know, are affected by this. Whole cities need to be healed, and we believe as Christians that we have the solution to anxiety and the solution to brokenness, which is No. 1, the Lord Jesus Christ, and No. 2, the love of God to spread over people that helps heal their hearts of fear and anxiety.”