Dozens of immigration agents, some on horseback, others carrying rifles in armored vehicles, swept through MacArthur Park on Monday in an extraordinary show of force at the heart of Los Angeles’ immigrant community.
Heavily armored Border Patrol officers with a fleet of white minibuses partially blocked the streets surrounding the park, which has become a source of crime and drugs in the area in the last few years. Activists with megaphones were able to warn locals at the park before the contingent arrived, according to police sources.
The move comes days after President Trump signed a budget that will provide a mass infusion of funds to the Department of Homeland Security to ramp up its immigration enforcement to levels unseen before in the United States. Los Angeles has become the poster child of Trump’s mass deportation plan, as more than 1,600 people have been arrested between June 6 and 22.
The agents appeared to arrive around 10:30 a.m. after amassing at nearby locations. Once they were at the park, they were met with crowds of people screaming “get the f— out!” and “get out!” Mayor Karen Bass also showed up to the park, which sits just west of downtown Los Angeles. Activists, who have been on high alert for weeks, appeared to be prepared to deploy lawyers to the scene.
At some point, Assistant Chief Patrol Agent David Kim handed his cellphone to Bass. Speaking to the other person over the line she could be heard saying, “You’re getting ready to leave? Can you leave ASAP?”
Demonstrators began to chant, drowning out her conversation. When asked to comment, Bass said the federal immigration agents needed “to leave and they need to leave right now, they need to leave because this is unacceptable.”
When asked who she was talking to on the other end of the line she said it was “the head of customs.”
Bass handed the phone back to a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Shortly afterward, she boarded a black SUV and left the area.
It’s unclear if anyone was arrested during the sweep.
“This was just one big, perverse publicity stunt,” said Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, an independent political organization advocating for immigrant rights and social justice. “It was just to show force, it was just to take pictures.”
The chaos on Wilshire Boulevard around MacArthur Park had mostly calmed by 11:30 a.m., though a few protesters and members of the news media lingered afterward.
Mikema Nahmir, 28, said he was out for his morning walk at 11 a.m. when he saw two women running down the street yelling that “la migra” was at MacArthur Park.
Nahmir joined the group of protesters who chased and yelled after the military-style trucks. At one point, he said, someone from the truck shot out an irritant toward him and another protester.
“L.A. is ours, this is our city,” Nahmir said. “This is what my morning walk turned into. They’re terrorizing our neighborhood.”
Live video from the scene Monday morning broadcast on social media showed a line of white vans that have been used to transport arrestees as well as several agents on horseback. Agents cleared the scene by 11:20 a.m. and it was not immediately clear how many people they had taken into custody.
U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino, who has been leading the operations on the ground in Los Angeles, was present during the operation.
Bovino, who is based near the U.S.-Mexico border along with others in the Trump administration, was sued last week by immigrant rights groups seeking to block what it calls an “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law” during immigration raids. They say raids have targeted individuals based on race, lack due process and some practices are akin to kidnapping rather than legal enforcement. A hearing is set for later this week in federal court.
Asked for comment on whether any arrests had been made, a senior DHS official, said, “We don’t comment on ongoing enforcement operations.”
