When the Raids Hit, L.A.'s #1 Party Station Picked Up the Mic

IT WAS THROWBACK THURSDAY on La Mega 96.3, L.A.'s top reggaeton music station. On the live broadcast, morning host DJ Eddie One was serving up a medley of Don Omar, Ivy Queen and Daddy Yankee, laying an occasional air horn blast over the music. Then he got an alert on his phone about an ICE raid happening in Huntington Park.

"Por lo que veo en la foto [from what I see in the photo], it looks like they're in In-N-Out," DJ Eddie said in his colloquial Spanglish. It was July 3, 2025. For nearly a month, L.A. had been overwhelmed by ICE raids ordered by the Trump administration. Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people — a majority of whom had no criminal record — in the greater Los Angeles area. They were taken from places like Home Depot, downtown’s fashion district, even church grounds. 

The events impacted the Latino community so directly that "L.A.'s number one party station," as La Mega dubs itself, found itself regularly putting the party on hold — and becoming both a community lifeline and a forum for processing ICE’s activity in the city. Mendoza announced raids on the air as he learned of them, and opened the phone lines for listeners to share what they were experiencing. Eddie One, whose real name is Eddie Mendoza, had been a DJ at La Mega for almost two decades. His experience spinning the latest Bad Bunny or Shakira track made him a beloved voice in many Latino households. But when the raids began, he developed a new connection with his audience — a direct line to a community in crisis, in the epicenter of Latino life in the U.S.

"I understand and I feel the pain of the people that get taken away," DJ Eddie told me on a recent visit to La Mega’s studio. "Because that could've been me."

La Mega's morning show, "La Mega Mezcla," is primarily a two-man operation: DJ Eddie and his sidekick Smoochy. On my arrival to the studio, Smoochy — real name Ernesto Martinez, 45 years old, wearing braces and a Mexican national soccer team jersey — walked me past a large Aztec calendar in the waiting room to their studios.

Moments earlier, I had been shaking hands with El Terrible, the host of La Mega's sister station, La Raza 97.9, which plays regional Mexican music. La Mega and La Raza's studios sit next to each other and are both operated by Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), the second-largest Spanish-language radio broadcaster in the country. The two stations together reach an audience of more than 2 million listeners in the L.A. area each week.

Eddie greeted me wearing a Raiders cap. He’s 47 but has a baby face with boyish dimples. Eddie and Smoochy aren't just on-air talent — they produce the whole show. The two of them plan out what topics they’re going to discuss each morning. DJ Eddie mixes the music; Smoochy edits audio during commercial breaks and also controls the "hot keys" — sound effects like applause, a woman saying "¿Qué qué?!" incredulously, and Minions laughing, which get layered over the music and their conversations.

La Mega Mezcla’s recurring segments include "Lo Vi en las Redes" (“I Saw It on Social Media”), where Eddie and Smoochy talk about viral online content; "Mega Deportes," in which they discuss the latest sports news; and "Spicy Talk," where they address divisive issues. Spicy Talk traditionally covers relationship etiquette dilemmas (“If your best friend's boyfriend hits on you, would you tell her?”) or questions of decency (“Is it OK for moms to dress provocatively to their kids' high school graduation?”).

But when the raids began on June 6th of last year, Eddie quickly broke from the show’s traditional rhythms and began reporting them as they happened. Soon friends and fans were flooding his personal phone with raid alerts, which he’d attempt to confirm with photo evidence before announcing on air.

"It got overwhelming," Mendoza said. "We couldn't keep up with them." He started recommending apps that people could use to track the raids, like ICEBlock.

Mendoza gradually began carving out space on his show for listeners to share how they were processing the raids. I’ve listened to hours of these segments — in each of them, callers expressed grief over what was happening to and within the community. "Right now we are in a crucial crisis," one caller said in Spanish. "The nation is very divided. It's affecting our families."

The tenor of the Spicy Talk discussion topics also shifted. In one episode during the raids, Mendoza asked his audience, “What would you tell your son if he came to you and said he wanted to be an ICE agent?”

Most messages to the station were from parents dismayed by the idea of their children joining ICE. One caller said it was a betrayal to the community.

"It's incredible how there are people who come to this country without papers," said a mother from the San Fernando Valley. "And then once they get papers, they forget about how they got here."

On July 8, when the Department of Homeland Security announced it was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants, Mendoza addressed it on the show that day — he had personally received TPS as a child. "I remember when I had to renew my permit, how stressful it was," he said in Spanish. "We know we have a lot of Honduran and Nicaraguan listeners, and I know this must be very hard for you all."

Mendoza was born and raised in Santa Ana, El Salvador. His family made the trek to L.A. in 1989, when he was 11. Mendoza remembers crossing into both Mexico and the United States. He was carrying most of the family's money because his father, a tailor, had sewn it into the seams of his pants.

When they crossed the border, the family was driven to L.A. in the back of a pick up truck with a tarp laid over them, “I remember peeking my head out,” Mendoza said, “I was just amazed by the city, seeing those big old skyscrapers for the first time.”

Once his family settled in Koreatown, they were able to obtain Temporary Protected Status because of the civil war raging in the country. "I'm a war kid," Mendoza said.

Mendoza learned to speak English in junior high. Then, like many Latino teens of the 1990s and 2000s, he joined a party crew — groups of young people, mostly teens and young adults, who organized and attended underground raves and social gatherings across the L.A. area, often in warehouses, parks or rented halls.

Mendoza was part of a particularly popular crew called "Invasion." "We were like 100 deep," he said. Mendoza became an expert at throwing events. After he graduated, he went into music promotion — specifically "street promotion," putting up fliers and going to clubs to get DJs to play certain records. He remembers promoting The Roots and the soundtrack for the film "Friday."

He befriended some of the DJs he met through that work, and ultimately decided to become one himself. He started working clubs, bringing with him "one hip-hop crate and one bootleg vinyl of reggaeton, because reggaeton was not pressed on vinyl."

Around that time, Mendoza noticed three songs getting major airplay on hip-hop stations: "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee, "Oye Mi Canto" by N.O.R.E. and "Dale Don Dale" by Don Omar. Radio was responding to what was a developing Latino consumer base: in the mid-2000s, the Latino population in the U.S. grew rapidly, climbing from roughly 35 million in 2000 to 50 million in 2010.

SBS launched Latino 96.3 — which would eventually become La Mega — in 2005, looking to capture that growing audience. Mendoza joined La Mega the following year as a DJ, beginning on the overnight shift. He would go straight from the club to the station to spin records — and dramatically shifted the type of music he played. "I got hired here, then I just went fully Spanish," he told me.

In posing the question about family members joining ICE, Mendoza saw divides within his own audience: A minority of callers said they would have no problem with their child joining ICE. He read a text from a woman in Cudahy: "I would totally support my son if he wanted to become an ICE agent. There is nothing wrong with it — they are just doing a job to apprehend people who are here illegally."

The term "mixed-status family" refers to families with both documented and undocumented members. According to a 2024 report from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, "about 1 in 5 (or 19%) of Angelenos are either undocumented or live with someone who is."

Increasingly, there are Latino families divided in this other way: some members opposed to ICE, others wearing the badge. 

Another listener, writing in Spanish from Sierra Madre answered the question about a family member joining ICE: "Honestly, if you can't beat them, join them. And in this economy, who am I to take away their dreams? My brother is in ICE. I don't like it, but he's family, and it's a job just like any other."

In mid-June, a 19-year-old named Adrian Martinez who worked at the Walmart in Pico Rivera tried to warn and protect undocumented workers at the store by placing himself and a trash can in front of ICE agents, who wrestled him to the ground and arrested him. La Mega Mezcla ran a segment asking listeners whether what Martinez did — obstructing ICE agents — was the right call.

Smoochy said he wouldn't have done it. "Si tu te metes [if you get involved]," Smoochy said, "they're gonna take you, bro."

Mendoza solicited thoughts and reactions from law enforcement, telling listeners they could write in anonymously. He read aloud a message from a Mexican woman who is a police officer and whose brother works in Border Patrol.

"It doesn't mean we are any less Hispanic or Mexican or going against our own people. If a Mexican man robs you, you're going to call the cops. You're not going to feel bad that he's Mexican,” she wrote.

Mendoza told me that he doesn’t try to steer the conversations on his show in any particular direction: "We've got to be as neutral as possible," he said. He wants his listeners to know "they can agree and disagree — they have an open mic."

During the 40 days of raids in their neighborhoods and workplaces, the La Mega Mezcla audience was often grateful just for the chance to talk. "I love that you are covering this on Spicy Talk,” said a woman from the San Fernando Valley, calling in to discuss whether she would allow her son to join ICE. "I love this program." Gustavo, an older Mexican-American listener, wrote in to say he saw how the show had the "magic" ability to reach young people, and encouraged the hosts to keep discussing the political situation affecting the community.

But even as listeners connected and spoke honestly during that period, Mendoza says the ratings slipped.

"Numbers went down a bit because people were not out as much," Mendoza said. "When it comes to listening on the radio — it's on the cars. I remember that all Spanish media was affected."

In the year since the raids, La Mega Mezcla has returned largely to its usual format. A recent Spicy Talk topic was “What would you do if a waiter hit on your wife in front of you?”

Yet Mendoza remains a trusted voice on political issues for his listeners. In the month leading up to the primary election, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appeared on the show. Mendoza says her team reached out to book her; no other mayoral candidate did.

In December 2025, Mendoza was among six Salvadoran-Americans in media honored by the City of Los Angeles. He attended the ceremony at City Hall in a black suit.

"I don't wear suits too often,” Mendoza said. “But after seeing myself in a suit, I was like, you know what? Maybe I can go into politics one day."