After weeks of decrying federal immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass confronted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on July 7 as they gathered at a city park.
Some 100 ICE agents gathered just before 11 a.m. near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area, about two miles west of City Hall. The officers were in vans and some armored vehicles on the outskirts of the park.
The federal agents were wearing vests, and about a dozen Customs and Border Protection officers were riding horses into the park. They appeared to be staging for deportation activities.
The gathering gained media attention, spurring local activists and protesters to converge on the park.
MacArthur Park is in an area that is home to long-standing criminal street gangs, many affiliated with the Mexican cartels. The park has seen gang shootings, rampant drug use, discarded syringes, homelessness, and people with mental health issues.
One Border Patrol officer called a supervising officer before handing Bass his cellphone.
Bass was seen on video footage speaking on the cellphone, saying: “You’re getting ready to leave? OK. Please, can you leave ASAP? What is the issue?”
The Border Patrol agent asked for his phone back from the mayor, telling her that he was leaving.
Bass told journalists at the park that the federal law enforcement presence was “unacceptable.”
“They need to leave, and they need to leave right now,” she told reporters.
The agents left apparently without making arrests.
According to Fox News, the Customs and Border Protection official Bass spoke with was Chief Gregory Bovino of the agency’s El Centro Sector.
Bovino told Fox News: “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”
She was on her way to join a press conference east of Los Angeles in Pasadena with California Gov. Gavin Newsom to mark the six-month anniversary of the destructive Palisades and Eaton fires.
While en route to the press conference, Bass said, she was alerted that there was an ICE operation at MacArthur Park.
“I turned around, we went to the park,” she said. “To me, this is another example of the [Trump] administration ratcheting up chaos and deploying what looked like a military operation in an American city.”
Bass accused the operation of being a “political agenda provoking fear and terror.”
A children’s summer camp was being held at the park when federal officers arrived, according to the mayor.
“It’s outrageous and un-American that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in the parks,” she said.
“What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation. ... The administration is continuing what I have framed as an all-out assault.”
Local activists and protesters have continued demonstrations throughout the region as immigration agents remain focused on the sanctuary city and state.
ICE officials did not respond to a request for comment about the incident.
