Federal agents descended upon MacArthur Park in the Westlake district of Los Angeles on Monday as part of an apparent immigration raid that was quickly condemned by local leaders.
KTLA’s Rich Prickett reported that Department of Homeland Security and military vehicles were positioned at the park late Monday morning. He also counted at least four white vans similar to those used by federal agents to transport people to jails and detention sites.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass shared footage on social media of officers, including some on horseback, traversing a soccer field.
“Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through,” she wrote. “The SECOND I heard about this, I went to the park to speak to the person in charge to tell them it needed to end NOW. Absolutely outrageous.”
Children in the park were attending a summer day camp around the time of the raid, Bass said.
One of the officials in the raid told the Associated Press that the raid was “going to be more overt and larger than we usually participate in,” though the news organization added that raid ended abruptly with no explanation.
Bass, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson later decried the raids at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
Bass said it “was another example of the [Trump] administration ratcheting up chaos by deploying what looked like a military operation in an American city.”
“It’s outrageous and unAmerican that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in the parks,” Bass said. “It’s outrageous and unAmerican that the federal government seized our state’s National Guard.”
“We will continue to have each other’s backs, and we will continue to demand the immediate withdrawal of federal troops and ICE from our city,” added Hernandez, who also said that she believes Los Angeles is a “canary in a coal mine” for other cities.
“What you saw happening in MacArthur Park is coming to you,” she said in a message to leaders of other cities.
The Los Angeles Times identified the agents as members of the Border Patrol and confirmed that Bass spoke via phone with someone she identified as “the head of customs,” asking “you’re getting ready to leave? Can you leave ASAP?”
Presumably, she was referring to Rodney Scott, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, though the Times did not name him.
KTLA reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, which responded Tuesday afternoon with a one-sentence statement: “We don’t comment on ongoing enforcement operations.”
The Los Angeles Police Department told KTLA they are not assisting in the federal actions, though officers were present for crowd control.
The National Guard has deployed approximately 90 troops to support the federal agents, according to the AP.
While the number of people detained on Monday was unclear, more than 1,600 people were arrested between June 6 and 22, according to the Times.
Monday’s incident, however, appears to be more for optics than an actual crackdown, Harris-Dawson said.
“This morning looked like the staging for a TikTok video,” he said. “And what we say to Border Patrol as the Council, if you want to film in L.A., you should apply for a film permit like everybody else and stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody in this great city.”
Sofia Pop Perez and Luis Zuniga contributed to this report.
The post ‘Staging for a TikTok video’: Mayor Bass, council members decry federal raid in L.A.’s MacArthur Park appeared first on KTLA.
