As a younger immigration lawyer in California’s Central Valley, Matthew Barragan minimize his tooth defending the rights of indigent employees dealing with deportation.
Now a decade and a half later, he’s chargeable for civilian oversight of the Los Angeles Police Division at a time when issues are working excessive about stepped-up federal immigration enforcement.
For the document:
7:20 a.m. April 30, 2025An earlier model of this text mentioned Matthew Barragan is 51. He’s 39.
Barragan, 39, was appointed final month because the LAPD’s inspector normal. His workplace, which is unbiased of the 8,700-officer division, screens misconduct complaints and conducts inner opinions of police shootings, together with audits and research on the Police Fee’s request.
Activists have warned that delicate knowledge gathered by the LAPD’s license plate readers and different applied sciences may very well be accessed by the Trump administration, citing Chief Jim McDonnell’s previous willingness to interact with immigration brokers as additional trigger for concern.
On Monday, President Trump signed an government order that the White Home mentioned will “unleash America’s legislation enforcement to pursue criminals” and direct federal companies to publish an inventory of “sanctuary cities” that don’t cooperate with immigration brokers.
McDonnell, who served as L.A. County sheriff throughout Trump’s first time period, has mentioned he handed over solely essentially the most harmful jailed criminals to federal authorities for deportation, consistent with the legal guidelines. And he has pledged to honor long-standing LAPD guidelines that defend delicate details about witnesses and crime victims, together with a coverage that prohibits arrests solely for immigration causes.
The division’s interfacing with federal authorities can be among the many many points that the Police Fee is relying on Barragan to assist monitor. A relative unknown in LAPD circles earlier than his hiring, Barragan was picked by the five-member civilian panel unanimously to interchange Florence Yu, an workplace veteran who served as interim inspector normal after the departure of Mark Smith final spring.
Barragan mentioned his background as each a civil rights lawyer and federal prosecutor — defending the rights of people that had been trampled by the felony justice system, in addition to legislation enforcement officers who had been discriminated towards by their very own departments — offers him a singular perspective on policing points.
He informed The Instances in an interview earlier this 12 months that he intends to spend his first few weeks on the job getting on top of things on the expectations of the group and the division, whereas searching for methods to carry extra transparency to the workplace.
“It’s vital that our communities really feel that these complaints and audits or systemic points are going to be addressed and have belief that it will likely be executed so via the views of the various group that lives on this area,” he mentioned.
Barragan mentioned he was formed by his upbringing within the Kern County city of Delano, the place his household was lively within the United Farm Staff motion that staged marches, boycotts and strikes in defiance of highly effective Central Valley growers within the Nineteen Sixties and ‘70s.
On the identical time, he recalled, the socially conservative rural group may be an isolating place for a younger Latino who got here out as homosexual early in life; he confronted ridicule for “having a unique model of speaking or sexual orientation.” He finally left for school, incomes a bachelor’s diploma and a legislation diploma from UCLA.
He bought his skilled begin on the Mexican American Authorized Protection and Instructional Fund, a Latino civil rights group, beginning as an intern and finally getting employed as a employees lawyer.
“I used to be representing people that I utterly recognized with in quite a lot of methods,” Barragan mentioned. “They had been from my background, like I discussed — sexual orientation, trans people — and I felt very snug working with that group.”
Considered one of his early circumstances was defending a Latina professor who challenged tenure discrimination at her faculty. He additionally filed a lawsuit towards the Westminster Police Division on behalf of three Latino cops who mentioned that they had been handled unfairly on the premise of their ethnicity.
“I feel we had been in a position to sign to Westminster that it wanted to make some modifications within the division,” Barragan mentioned.
He was a part of a workforce that efficiently sued the Baldwin Park Police Division for violating the Belief Act, a 2013 state legislation that prohibits police and sheriff’s officers from detaining individuals for attainable deportation except that they had been charged with or convicted of a severe offense.
Barragan mentioned he takes delight in overcoming early obstacles to enter “locations that perhaps weren’t regarded as meant for me” within the authorized career. He labored as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. lawyer’s workplace within the Central District of California, becoming a member of in 2017.
“To have the ability to come right into a courtroom and say ‘Matthew Barragan for the US of America’ was fairly an enormous second for me and the gravity of that illustration and my household, my father having immigrated from Mexico and my household having labored within the fields.”
Amongst different duties, he dealt with civil rights circumstances, together with going after the San Luis Obispo County jail system for points associated to make use of of power and suicide prevention.
Barragan impressed his boss on the time, former U.S. Atty. E. Martin Estrada, who praised his dealing with of circumstances wherein “it’s worthwhile to do quite a lot of investigative work and dig into points and be persistent.”
“He’s a improbable lawyer, however on the identical time a real chief and somebody who cares deeply concerning the group,” Estrada mentioned.
Barragan additionally took an lively function within the workplace’s group outreach efforts, together with “United Towards Hate,” which educated individuals on tips on how to report hate crimes, Estrada mentioned.
In LAPD circles, the inspector normal place is seen as a tricky job that requires political and institutional savvy to attain ends in a division that has lengthy resisted outdoors oversight. The workplace is also known as the Police Fee’s eyes and ears.
Some previous inspectors normal have confronted accusations of being too combative — or too cozy — with division management. The workplace has carried out wide-ranging audits of the LAPD’s packages and practices, scrutinizing the much-maligned disciplinary system and an in-field coaching program for brand new officers — although it has produced far fewer experiences in recent times.
Not even an hour into his first Police Fee assembly late final month, a longtime division observer rose in the course of the public remark interval and bluntly demanded that Barragan audit the LAPD’s “For those who see one thing, say one thing” program, which inspires residents to report suspected terrorist exercise.
Police officers say the marketing campaign has helped maintain town protected, but it surely has drawn concern from civil libertarians and Muslim teams. The involved citizen needed the division’s new watchdog to know the division had stopped releasing statistics about this system.
“Barragan, you’re going to must work on that and get it executed,” the speaker mentioned.
Barragan’s supporters say he has at all times fought for the pursuits of marginalized communities.
Thomas Saenz, president and normal counsel of the Mexican American Authorized Protection and Instructional Fund, mentioned his former worker is nicely suited to deal with no matter battles lie forward.
“It’s so vital that somebody who’s ready like his is conscious of [immigrant rights] and why they should be defended and guarded within the nationwide context of at the moment,” Saenz mentioned.
