Standing alongside a hundred civic leaders as police sirens blared in the background, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivered her most impassioned critique of the federal response to anti-ICE protests to date Thursday.
The mayor — flanked by faith leaders, business leaders, immigrant rights advocates and others — defended the city’s ability to handle the sometimes chaotic protests that have swept across downtown L.A. for the last week, while accusing the Trump administration of deliberately misrepresenting the city as overwhelmed by violence.
“To characterize what is going on in our city as a city of mayhem is just an outright lie,” Bass said, responding to comments by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem earlier in the day. “I’m not going to call it an untruth. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I’m going to call it for what it is, which is a lie.”
“I served with the Secretary for probably about 10 years in Congress. And Madame Secretary, I do not recognize you. I do not know the Kristi Noem that I served with,” she said.
Noem told the media earlier Thursday that the Trump administration planned to “liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that the governor and the mayor have placed on this country.”
Bass also denounced the brief detention of Sen. Alex Padilla, who showed up at Noem’s press conference and was forcibly removed after he tried to ask questions.
“They just shoved and cuffed a sitting U.S. senator. How could you say you did not know who he was?” Bass asked of Noem.
The hastily-called press conference at City Hall was the clearest representation yet of the two-pronged battle the mayor is currently facing — on the one hand trying to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that have given rise to the protests across the city, while on the other attempting to quell the vandalism, theft and violence that have roiled the Civic Center and surrounding parts of downtown.
At the press conference, Bass once again called for the president to remove the National Guard and the U.S. Marines from the city and to stop the ICE raids. She also extended the 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. downtown Los Angeles curfew that she first announced Tuesday as the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies worked to clear out protesters.
The event came nearly a week after ICE agents began fanning across the region, showing up at workplaces, schools and courthouses, and triggering an array of protests across Southern California.
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the Trump administration had brought cruelty, chaos and violations of human, civil and constitutional rights to L.A.
“What has been brought to our city has been racial profiling in a way that I have never experienced it in my career,” she said.
“The pain that we are witnessing, when we talk to the family members, is unbearable, of children being left behind,” said Salas, as she stood next to Bass. “And I want this president to know that this city is tough, it is organized, it is disciplined and will not tolerate what is happening at this moment.”
