On Saturday, Madera will lead the 28th annual Pasadena Latino Heritage Parade as its grand marshal, in a year when the parade committee is honoring “Unsung Heroes,” among them day laborers, street vendors, caregivers and house cleaners. It is the first parade in two years; the 2025 parade was canceled. It comes nine months after Pasadena police arrested Madera as he followed a vehicle he believed carried an immigration agent, a case the city declined to prosecute. Looking back on the year, Madera said he thought about going “from being arrested to being grand marshal.”
City staff called to tell him he had been selected after multiple nominations, he said, and “it was a great honor to be grand marshal, especially in the city that watched me grow.”
The city’s announcement describes Madera as a Pasadena native and a longtime advocate for residents, particularly members of the immigrant community. After college in San Diego, he came back because “I always wanted to work in Pasadena and organize and work with the families that I grew up with,” he said.
As a program manager running mentoring programs for elementary, middle and high school students, he brought students to the center to hear from the workers, and he backed center campaigns, including one for the minimum wage, he said. He joined the staff a little more than four years ago.
The center, part of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, has been open since 2000, Madera said. It connects workers with employers “in a safe and just way,” he said.
When the Eaton Fire broke out the evening of Jan. 7, 2025, workers from the center lost jobs at Altadena homes that burned, Madera said. The next day, he said, the workers asked, “Well, how can we support this community that has always supported us and also that we’re part of this community?” About 15 workers started by cutting down a windstorm-felled tree blocking the street across from the center, he said.
That was the start of the center’s fire relief brigade. Volunteers followed, about 50 the next day, then 100, then 200, and at one point about 1,000, Madera said. Workers packed food, hygiene kits, shoes and clothing for fire survivors. “The corner there basically turned into this big mutual aid hub,” he said.
Brigade crews have done remediation in homes contaminated by the fire and home hardening, and some are clearing weeds from Altadena lots where burned homes stood, Madera said. “So then when a homeowner is ready to rebuild, they have their lot cleaned to rebuild.”
The brigades kept working despite fear of immigration raids, Madera said, and “they weren’t going street by street asking who these homeowners voted for.” On June 18, 2025, witnesses and advocates reported that federal immigration agents detained people at a bus stop near Orange Grove Boulevard and Los Robles Avenue. Mayor Victor Gordo said men detained there had been waiting for a bus to Altadena, where they were helping rebuild. At a vigil the center helped organize, families made clear who had been taken, Madera said: “This person that was taken was my father, this person was my uncle, this person was my neighbor.”
On Jan. 7, 2026, the fire’s first anniversary, Madera was on his way to Altadena to help coordinate a commemoration when he received an alert about an immigration agent nearby, he said. He followed the vehicle around the city to the Pasadena Police Department, he said. An ICE agent had called 911 to report that a car was tailing him and being driven recklessly. Police arrested Madera for misdemeanor resisting or obstructing an officer, cited him and released him.
Madera disputes the police account.
“Instead of the police department stopping the ICE agent, they stopped me and they questioned me saying that I was driving recklessly and running red lights, which I was not,” he said.
The City Prosecutor’s Office later declined to file charges, finding insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, according to city chief communications officer Lisa Derderian. Madera called the decision “a victory for the community.”
City officials have repeatedly said Pasadena police do not take part in federal civil immigration enforcement.
“We will not coordinate nor participate in ICE operations,” Gordo said in January. Madera said about 200 people attended a March 24 forum on policing and immigration enforcement that community groups, including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, organized after his arrest.
Madera said community members rallied and held meetings and a press conference for AB 1537, a bill by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan that would have barred California peace officers from working for agencies or contractors engaged in immigration enforcement. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it at the end of September, objecting to limits on secondary employment officers choose to do in their free time.
“When we heard that this bill was vetoed, again, it was a big disappointment,” Madera said. Of the residents who observe and document enforcement, he said, “it’s not a crime to love your community. It’s not a crime to protect your community.”
“Every time when they’re on the news talking about rebuilding Altadena and houses being rebuilt, there’s never a mention of the workers,” he said.
He said he shares the recognition with workers, observers and community organizations, and with young people who walk the same streets, go to the same schools and visit the same taco stands he did, in the hope “that they will see me and then they will see themselves also.”
The parade steps off at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, at Los Robles Avenue and Buckeye Street and heads south on Los Robles toward City Hall, 100 N. Garfield Ave., where the festival runs from 5 to 9 p.m. Los Robles will be closed between Mountain and Walnut streets from noon to 6 p.m.
For more information, visit PasadenaLatinoHeritageParade.
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