By TARA COPP and CHRISTOPHER WEBER Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dozens of federal officers in tactical gear and about 90 members of the California National Guard were deployed for about an hour Monday to a mostly empty park in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a large immigrant population. It wasn’t immediately known if any arrests were made.
Defense officials had said the troops and over a dozen military vehicles would help protect immigration officers as they carried out a raid in MacArthur Park.
“What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,” said Mayor Karen Bass, who called it a “political stunt.”
She said there were children attending a day camp in the park who were quickly ushered inside to avoid seeing the troops. Still, Bass said an 8-year-old boy told her that “he was fearful of ICE.”
Bass showed video of officers on horseback sweeping across an empty soccer field.
Federal officers descend on MacArthur Park
The operation occurred at a park in a neighborhood with large Mexican, Central American and other immigrant populations and is lined by businesses with signs in Spanish and other languages that has been dubbed by local officials as the “Ellis Island of the West Coast.”
Among those who spoke with Bass were health care outreach workers who were working with homeless residents Monday when troops pointed guns at them and told them to get out of the park.
Sprawling MacArthur Park has a murky lake ringed by palm trees, an amphitheater that hosts summer concerts and sports fields where immigrant families line up to play soccer in the evenings and on weekends. A thoroughfare on the east side is often crammed with unlicensed food stands selling tacos and other delicacies, along with vendors speaking multiple languages and hawking cheap T-shirts, toys, knickknacks and household items.
“The world needs to see the troop formation on horses walking through the park, in search of what? In search of what? They’re walking through the area where the children play,” Bass said.
Eunisses Hernandez, a council member whose district includes MacArthur Park said “it was chosen as this administration’s latest target precisely because of who lives there and what it represents.”
Operation escalates Trump’s immigration crackdown
The operation in the large park about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of downtown LA included 17 Humvees, four tactical vehicles, two ambulances and the armed soldiers, defense officials said. It came after President Donald Trump deployed thousands of Guard members and active duty Marines to the city last month following protests over previous immigration raids.
Trump has stepped up efforts to realize his campaign pledge of deporting millions of immigrants in the United States illegally and shown a willingness to use the nation’s military might in ways other U.S. presidents have typically avoided.
In response to questions about the operation in MacArthur Park, the Department of Homeland Security said in an email that the agency would not comment on “ongoing enforcement operations.”
More than 4,000 California National Guard and hundreds of U.S. Marines have been deployed in Los Angeles since June — against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Last week, the military announced about 200 of those troops would be returned to their units to fight wildfires.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called the events at the park “a spectacle.”
“This is not about going after dangerous criminals,” Newsom said of Trump’s mass deportation agenda. “This is about destroying the fabric of this state.”
LA raid ends abruptly
The defense officials told reporters that it was not a military operation but acknowledged that the size and scope of the Guard’s participation could make it look like one to the public. That is why the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details about the raid that were not announced publicly.
“It’s just going to be more overt and larger than we usually participate in,” one of the officials said before the raid ended abruptly with no explanation.
The primary role of the service members would be to protect the immigration enforcement officers in case a hostile crowd gathered, that official said. They are not participating in any law enforcement activities such as arrests, but service members can temporarily detain citizens if necessary before handing them over to law enforcement, the official said.
Local officials say feds are sowing fear
“This morning looked like a staging for a TikTok video,” said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Los Angeles City Council, adding if Border Patrol wants to film in LA, “you should apply for a film permit like everybody else. And stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody who lives in this great city and disrupt our economy every day.”
Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he received a credible tip about the operation Monday.
“It was a demonstration of escalation,” Newman said. “This was a reality TV spectacle much more so than an actual enforcement operation.”
Since federal agents have been making arrests at Home Depot parking lots and elsewhere in Los Angeles, Newman said fewer people have been going to the park and immigrant neighborhoods near the city’s downtown.
“The ghost town-ification of LA is haunting, to say the very least,” he said.
Betsy Bolte, who lives nearby, came to the park after seeing a military-style helicopter circling overhead.
She said it was “gut-wrenching” to witness what appeared to be a federal show of force on the streets of a U.S. city. “It’s terror and, you know, it’s ripping the heart and soul out of Los Angeles,” she said. “I am still in shock, disbelief, and so angry and terrified and heartbroken.”
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Copp reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Damian Dovarganes and Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles; Julie Watson in San Diego; Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; and Amy Taxin in Orange County, California, contributed to this report.