By Ricardo Lezama 
As fascist immigration enforcement intensifies across Los Angeles and federal agents conduct raids in immigrant communities, one figure has emerged at the forefront of resistance efforts: Ron Gochez, a high school teacher turned community organizer who has spent decades fighting for immigrant rights and educational justice.
From Student Activist to Educator
Ron Gochez was born and raised in South Los Angeles, the proud son of two working-class migrants who were undocumented at the time of his birth. His mother left El Salvador because of the civil war, giving him a deeply personal connection to the immigrant experience that would shape his life’s work.
In 2002, Gochez was chairman of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) at San Diego State University, where his activism first gained national attention. During a Fox News interview with Bill O’Reilly that year, when asked about territorial claims, Gochez said: “We understand that we all sit on stolen land…Mexicano land, stolen from us.” When O’Reilly offered Arizona, Gochez responded: “They took a lot more than Arizona”.
A Career in Education and Social Justice
Today, Gochez is a high school social studies teacher at LA’s Maya Angelou High School and advisor to the MEChA club, where he has mentored thousands of students, fostering pride in their cultural heritage and active citizenship.
In his classroom and beyond, Gochez consistently delivers a culturally relevant curriculum that uplifts the histories, identities and contributions of Indigenous, Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x communities. By integrating culturally affirming materials and pedagogy, he ensures that students see themselves reflected in their education.
His most significant educational achievement came in 2014 when he was involved in the resolution that established Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement for the LA Unified School District. This initiative positioned LAUSD among the first districts nationwide to recognize the need for an inclusive curriculum that reflects diverse voices and histories.
In March 2025, Gochez received the California Teachers Association’s Cesar E. Chavez and Dolores Huerta “Si Se Puede” Human Rights Award, recognizing his dedication to education, social justice and community empowerment.
Leading the Fight Against ICE
As the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement in 2025, Gochez emerged as a key organizer with Unión del Barrio, a pro-immigrant political organization. Unión del Barrio formed their community patrols program in San Diego in 1992, at a time when Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Naturalization Service officers were linked to human and civil rights violations in San Diego and other border cities.
Gochez said the community patrols program draws inspiration from the Black Panther Party, a revolutionary organization with armed self-defense that monitored police activity and documented arrests. But this group of community patrol volunteers isn’t armed and they don’t confront ICE agents.
On the Front Lines
Working alongside fellow educator Lupe Carrasco Cardona, Gochez is part of a volunteer network of residents patrolling the streets of Southern California – from South Central to the Eastside. Their mission is simple yet critical: to warn communities of any potential U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, offering a line of defense for families at risk of deportation.
The patrols begin early in the morning. Almost every morning, often before her full-time job as an educator for L.A. Unified, Carrasco Cardona and her husband drive alongside three to four other vehicles, zig-zagging through South Central streets. Before volunteers begin their patrols, they place a rectangular magnet on the sides of their car, indicating the logo and mission of the group they represent: “Protegiendo a la comunidad del terror de ICE y la policia”.
Their efforts have seen concrete results. In February 2025, Gochez reported that during an ICE operation in Alhambra, “Our people had megaphones, and they called for backup of our folks and they went to both locations.” The activists’ presence and recording efforts reportedly led to the agents leaving without making any arrests.
Building a Coalition
Gochez’s work extends beyond individual patrols. More of these kinds of patrols are expected across L.A. and Southern California with the recent launch of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a network of 60 Latino, Black, Filipino and Jewish organizations that are banding together to protect immigrants from being swept up in raids conducted by ICE.
Unión del Barrio, which is part of the coalition, has begun community patrol training for members of the coalition, which represents a wide section of the city. A training in Riverside is already earmarked for March. The aim is to create a map where each organization will have a boundary to patrol.
Confronting Recent Crackdowns
During the intense protests that erupted in Los Angeles in June 2025 following increased ICE raids, Gochez became a prominent voice for the community. Speaking on Democracy Now!, he described the situation: “This weekend was marked with absolute and total violence, brutal repression and attacks, coordinated attacks against our community. ICE agents have been around all over Southern California, kidnapping people, tearing apart families”.
He challenged claims that enforcement was targeting only criminals: “The fascist Trump administration is trying to lie and confuse the American people into supporting this repression, into supporting these immigration raids, by having the general public think that they’re going after criminals. But now what’s publicly known, what’s painfully clear, is that the majority of these raids are going after workers, working-class people. They’re not going after criminals”.