USC Students Turn Punk Show Into Anti-ICE Fundraiser in Immigrant-Heavy Boyle Heights

When USC students were assigned to produce a live music event for their Music Industry 425 class, five of them decided to make it count. Tonight at 7 p.m., Ugly Flower Productions will host "Boyle ICE: Anti-ICE Benefit Event" at The Paramount in Boyle Heights -- a punk show that doubles as direct action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The play-on-words title references both the heavily immigrant Los Angeles neighborhood and the students' explicit political stance. Every dollar from ticket sales will go to three organizations supporting documented and undocumented immigrants: The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of L.A. (CHIRLA), L.A. Taco, and Mad Collective.

"Being in L.A., we're seeing ICE raids consistently attack our neighborhoods," said Vincent Vasquez, the group's director of communications and an L.A. native. "I have experienced, seen, and know of people who've been affected by these raids."

For Vasquez and his teammates -- Ariane Villanueva, Aadi Pitre, Kai Tano, and Michael Tringale -- the choice to center the show around anti-ICE advocacy wasn't just political posturing. Most are descendants of immigrants themselves, and they've watched enforcement actions tear through their communities.

"The presence of ICE and the excessive use of their force is something that we were all very on board campaigning against," said Pitre, a third-year student serving as communications manager.

The students deliberately chose punk as the vehicle for their message, tapping into a genre with deep roots in L.A.'s political resistance movements. According to a 2022 analysis by the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, early 1980s punk challenged dominant politics and rejected materialistic culture through grassroots organizing.

"The whole punk ethos is to be against the man, and against the oppression of marginalized people in society," Pitre explained. "Punk is a very rich music genre in L.A. It has a huge underground scene that I am very tapped into."

Vasquez leveraged those connections to book headliners Spunk, American Women, and Integra Pink -- up-and-coming bands aligned with the event's anti-enforcement message.

But turning a class project into meaningful political action required more than booking talent. Each of the five students contributed $200 out of pocket to cover early costs, from venue rental to promotional materials. They handled every aspect of production themselves: securing the space, marketing to audiences, and coordinating logistics.

The payoff goes entirely to the cause. CHIRLA fights to advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees, with Ugly Flower Productions specifically directing funds to scholarships for undocumented and documented immigrants pursuing higher education. L.A. Taco amplifies stories from marginalized L.A. communities like Boyle Heights. Mad Collective provides meals and essential resources to underserved populations.

"I come from a family of immigrants, Armenian parents," said Ellen Petrosyan, a third-year music industry major planning to attend. "So the whole mission of the show really hits close to home."

Petrosyan noted that music events supporting anti-ICE causes remain rare, making the students' work especially important. "I'm so proud of them for taking the hard route, being loud, being disruptive," she said. "It's so important what they're doing, and they're not afraid."

For the organizers, music offers a unique form of resistance precisely because it transcends the divisions ICE enforcement exploits.

"You can be of any background, any religion, any sex, any creed, whatever identifiers you have," Pitre said, "but if you all like the same music, you can kind of bridge the gap between all those disparities."

Tickets remain available for $15 until the 8 p.m. show on Wednesday. The students turned a class assignment into community organizing -- proof that the next generation isn't waiting for permission to fight back.