The number of arrests by the Department of Homeland Security in the Los Angeles region has spiked over the last month as the Trump administration has deployed hundreds of agents and military members to crack down on the area.
Since the beginning of June, homeland security agents and officers have arrested nearly 2,800 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area, according to the agency. The previous monthly high for immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025 was just over 850 arrests in May, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Deportation Data Project at the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
The sweeping enforcement campaign in the region has sent chills through immigrant communities. Many neighborhoods, once vibrant and bustling with foot traffic and street vendors, have seen their sidewalks and parks empty out. The economic impact can be measured in open barber chairs and empty restaurant booths. The pews in many churches in Latino areas have appeared eerily spacious during Mass on Sundays.
“This isn’t about violent criminals — they’re pulling up to chase people through Home Depot parking lots, summer camps and carwashes,” Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “These reckless, unlawful raids are fueled by racial profiling that has driven fear in communities, tearing families apart, crushing entire sectors of the economy because people are afraid to go to work and flying in the face of American democratic values.”
D.H.S. officials said this week they have no intention of letting up on aggressive enforcement efforts.
“The intensity and pace will continue until we get the terrorists, gang members, murderers, rapists and child abusers off Los Angeles streets,” said Tricia McLaughlin, an agency spokeswoman. “Mayor Bass should get used to it or, better yet, let law enforcement do their jobs.”
On Thursday, federal agents raided a large cannabis farm in nearby Camarillo in Ventura County, firing tear gas and crowd control munitions from helicopters.
The Los Angeles area has emerged as the epicenter of the battle over the administration’s intensifying immigration enforcement. In early June, a raid by federal agents on a clothing factory in downtown Los Angeles kicked off mass protests that lasted for days, spreading to other cities.
In response, President Trump called up 4,200 National Guard members and 700 Marines to assist the hundreds of agents and officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.
While 150 National Guard troops were recently released to help fight wildfires, the vast majority remain deployed in the area, Pentagon officials said. The National Guard, currently on a 60-day deployment, helped provide security when ICE personnel this week swarmed MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles. D.H.S. officials declined to address the purpose of the activity.
Ms. Bass, who rushed to the scene, told reporters that the park “looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.”
The mayor and federal officials have gone back and forth on social media.
“We will not stand for this,” the mayor said in a statement in June.
Stephen Miller, the White House official who has overseen the Trump administration’s immigration policy, responded with his own sharp retort: “You have no say in this at all. Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”
State and local leaders have ramped up their calls for the raids to end, saying the fear caused by the operations and the arrests have created an atmosphere of intimidation among local residents.
“It’s intentional, it’s increasingly inhumane, and it’s increasingly become a spectacle,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said in a statement.
During a meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Janice Hahn, a member of the board, said that since the raids began, St. John’s Community Health clinics in the region had reported a 30 percent increase in people not showing up for appointments. The rate of no-shows for appointments at Los Angeles General Medical Center had doubled, she said.
Ms. Bass announced this week that the city was seeking to join a lawsuit against the Trump administration led by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that accuses the Trump administration of racial profiling and using other unconstitutional tactics to question and detain immigrants. The County of Los Angeles and several other municipalities also asked a judge to let them join the case.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop the raids. California’s attorney general similarly filed an amicus brief in support of the case against the federal government.
Federal officials said they are intent on maintaining the enforcement efforts as they seek to achieve the president’s goal of mass deportations.
“Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon,” said Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official in charge of Los Angeles enforcement, told Fox News on Monday.
Later that day, Mr. Bovino wrote on social media that his agents might return to the park that they had swarmed earlier: “We may well go back to MacArthur Park or other places in and around Los Angeles. Illegal aliens had the opportunity to self deport. Now we’ll help things along a bit.”
Eric Schmitt, Albert Sun, and Allison McCann contributed reporting.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
Orlando Mayorquín is a Times reporter covering California. He is based in Los Angeles.
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