Mayor Karen Bass says Los Angeles being used as a ‘test case’ by federal government

Karen Bass says Los Angeles being used as a ‘test case’ and ‘an experiment’

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has accused the federal government of using her city as a “test case” for the federal government taking over from local and state authorities and said the intervention was completely unwarranted.

She told the press conference Los Angeles was being used as “a test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government.” She added:

I don’t think our city should be used for an experiment.

She asked “do you know what the national guard are doing? They are guarding two buildings … that’s what they’re doing, so they need marines on top of it?”

She notes that Trump had congratulated the National Guard on restoring the peace before they had even arrived in the city.

She said that the city had been peaceful before Ice raids that began last week, adding “this is chaos that was started in Washington DC” and that “nothing warranted the raids, nothing was happening”.

She said the Ice raids had induced a “level of fear” in residents, including legal residents. “I can’t emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelinos right now, not knowing if tomorrow or tonight, it might be where they live, it might be their workplace, should you send your kids to school, should you go to work?”

Can you imagine having your annual appointment to Ice… and you are told that you need to go to the facility to check in and then you are detained… when you are legal? …

What this means is that people are going to be afraid to maintain appointments which means they will fall into the closet and they will fall out of status.

She adds that “we are a city of immigrants and we have always embraced that”.

This kinds of atmosphere it creates a chaos in our city .. we did not need this,” she said.

Key events

Here’s Karen Bass speaking at that press conference we reported on not long ago. In it she said Los Angeles was being used as a “test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government”:

Los Angeles mayor says city is being used as a 'test case' and 'an experiment' – video — Los Angeles mayor says city is being used as a ‘test case’ and ‘an experiment’ – video

A few pics from outside the federal building in Los Angeles:

Photograph: Eric Thayer/AP

Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Photograph: Allison Dinner/EPA

Over the past hour LAPD officers have been attempting to push back protesters from outside the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.

Local reporter Sergio Olmos said police had declared an “unlawful gathering” and gave the crowd five minutes to disperse. They later began firing “less lethal rounds” and pepper balls at protesters, including from on top of the building.

Shortly after her press conference ended, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass posted on X:

Don’t buy into Trump’s chaos. Rise to the moment. This is about protecting our immigrant communities, not destruction of our city.

After being released from federal custody, Union leader David Huerta has said he hoped has he not put members of his union “in harm’s way” after being arrested and highlighted the inability of inmates, currently in lockdown, to access their lawyers and attend court hearings.

As we reported earlier, Huerta was violently arrested on Friday while serving as a community observer during an Ice raid in Los Angeles.

Union leader David Huerta fights back tears after release from federal detention in LA – video

Karen Bass says Los Angeles being used as a ‘test case’ and ‘an experiment’

I don’t think our city should be used for an experiment.

She asked “do you know what the national guard are doing? They are guarding two buildings … that’s what they’re doing, so they need marines on top of it?”

She notes that Trump had congratulated the National Guard on restoring the peace before they had even arrived in the city.

Can you imagine having your annual appointment to Ice… and you are told that you need to go to the facility to check in and then you are detained… when you are legal? …

What this means is that people are going to be afraid to maintain appointments which means they will fall into the closet and they will fall out of status.

She adds that “we are a city of immigrants and we have always embraced that”.

This kinds of atmosphere it creates a chaos in our city .. we did not need this,” she said.

LA police chief Jim McDonnell has said the introduction of the National Guard into the protests could create confusion. Speaking at a press conference, he told reporters that it created “two parallel tracks that don’t work together”.

He said the LAPD usually dealt with “the issues on the street” and that there were 14 other agencies they could reach out to and only if they weren’t able to be used would police reach out to the sheriff, who would request the deployment of the National Guard – a federal agency.

He also said told Californians that “we fully support your right to peacefully protest but that “those who chose to incite violence … will be arrested” and added that he expected “many more” people to be arrested.

Gavin Newsom has said he will “surge” more than 800 state and local law enforcement officers into Los Angeles “to clean up President Trump’s mess”. In a post on X he wrote:

Chaos is exactly what Trump wanted, and now California is left to clean up the mess.

The deployment will include 640 highway patrol officers and 240 officers from neighbouring jurisdictions, his office added in a statement.

The statement said 40 people had so far been arrested in relation to vandalism, looting and violence and reminded Californians “that they have a right to speak out, but they must remain peaceful.” Los Angeles county district attorney Nathan Hochman said:

I want to make it crystal clear, you can hurl insults at whoever you want. However, if you hurl cinder blocks, light vehicles on fire, destroy property and assault law enforcement officers, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Donald Trump can’t name the crime he thinks Gavin Newsom should be arrested for

After Donald Trump told reporters earlier on Monday that he would support the arrest of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, the president was asked a simple question: “What crime has Governor Newsom committed”?

“What crime has he committed?” Trump replied. “Uh. I think his primarily – primary crime is running for governor, because he’s done such a bad job”.

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Hegseth claims Marines are needed in LA because Newsom refuses to defend federal law enforcement officers

In what appears to be a deeply partisan statement from the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, the former weekend host of Fox & Friends Donald Trump put in charge of the US military, posted on Monday that he dispatched a marine infantry battalion to Los Angeles, without informing the Los Angeles police department, because California’s Democratic governor was not defending immigration officers from protesters.

Writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform from his official Pentagon account, Hegseth said:

Due to increased threats to federal law enforcement officers and federal buildings, approximately 700 active-duty U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton are being deployed to Los Angeles to restore order. We have an obligation to defend federal law enforcement officers – even if Gavin Newsom will not.

Hegseth’s claim that federal officers are under threat contrasts sharply with the reality on the ground, according to the Los Angeles police department.

“Today, demonstrations across the City of Los Angeles remained peaceful, and we commend all those who exercised their First Amendment rights responsibly” the city’s police force said in a statement on Monday. “The Los Angeles Police Department appreciates the cooperation of organizers, participants, and community partners who helped ensure public safety throughout the day.”

Newsom says Trump is deploying another 2,000 National Guard troops to LA, needlessly

In a social media post, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, just said that he has been informed that another 2,000 Guard troops are being deployed by the president to Los Angeles, where protests have been entirely peaceful on Monday.

Newsom wrote:

I was just informed Trump is deploying another 2,000 Guard troops to L.A. The first 2,000? Given no food or water. Only approx. 300 are deployed — the rest are sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders. This isn’t about public safety. It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego. This is Reckless. Pointless. And Disrespectful to our troops.

LAPD chief says deployment of marines comes as a surprise to him, and could make things harder

The Los Angeles police department still has not been formally notified that a marine infantry battalion will be arriving in the city, the force’s chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

McDonnell also suggested that 700 marines showing up on the streets of Los Angeles could actually make the job of policing the protests over federal immigration raids more difficult.

“The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles – absent clear coordination – presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city” McDonnell said.

“The Los Angeles police department, alongside out mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively,” McDonnell added. “We are urging open and continuous lines of communication between all agencies to prevent confusion, avoid escalation and ensure a coordinated, lawful and orderly response during this critical time.”

Software used in surveillance of immigrants has deep ties to the LAPD

Johana Bhuiyan

The tools that the Trump administration has reportedly used to power its deportation and detention machine have deep ties to Los Angeles.

Back when controversial data analytics firm Palantir, which has been used by the Department of Homeland Security for many years to help compile data and information to identify and deport immigrants, was first making a name for itself, it made considerable effort to convince local police departments to adopt its products. One of the first law enforcement contracts Palantir nabbed was with the Los Angeles police department in 2009. Between 2009 and 2018, the LAPD spent more than $20m on its contract with Palantir.

Palantir’s software merges and centralizes data from various sources, including crime and arrest reports, license plate readers capturing images of vehicles all over the city, and data from police stops. It could include information the LAPD has access to in its own records as well as information from social media or other law enforcement agencies. For instance, the LAPD has previously obtained footage from Waymo self-driving vehicles.

The LAPD notably used Palantir as part of its predictive policing program, Operation Laser, for which the department tried to use historical data to predict future crime. Documents show the program reinforced existing policing decisions to patrol certain people and neighborhoods over others, which led to over-policing of Black and brown neighborhoods.

LAPD’s use of Palantir may be particularly concerning as the city braces for hundreds of marines and additional national guard troops to descend. As my colleagues have reported, the mostly peaceful protests of immigration raids in the city over the weekend escalated when the president sent in the first wave of the National Guard. Already, far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer has called for Palantir to be deployed on LA’s immigrant population.

It is unclear whether Palantir’s software is being used at the moment by the LAPD to help respond to these recent protests, but the LAPD has previously looked to use various tools in its arsenal to monitor political activity. In 2020, documents show the LAPD asked Amazon for Ring Footage specifically to monitor Black Lives Matter protests against police violence.

Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who has served as the chairperson of its board of directors since 2003. Thiel is a billionaire Trump donor who also bankrolled the US senate campaign of his former employee, JD Vance, in 2022.

Andrew Gumbel

The national guard, which played almost no role in policing protests in Los Angeles on Sunday, was once again nowhere to be seen on Monday. Federal authorities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were likewise noticeably absent.

With much of the Los Angeles police department recovering from a long day and night, the streets were largely given over to representatives from neighboring police forces drafted in to help – from Pasadena, South Pasadena, Burbank, Vernon and other cities. South Pasadena had the job of guarding concrete blocks set up overnight on either side of LA city hall on Spring Street. Its officers also stood guard on the building’s western steps.

Much of the city establishment – council members, local elected officials and union leaders – flocked, meanwhile, to a protest of their own in Grand Park, on a hill overlooking City Hall, to demand the release of David Huerta, a leader of the Service Employees’ union who was arrested on Friday while monitoring an immigration raid and was expected in court for his first appearance on Monday afternoon.

Demonstrators at Gloria Molina grand park in Los Angeles on Monday called for the release of union leader David Huerta, who was arrested on Friday during federal immigration operations. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

“David Huerta is my brother,” the national president of his union, April Verrett, told the crowd to rapturous applause and chanting. “What he would say is, use this moment!”

The thousands in attendance blew horns and yelled in approval.

Union volunteers acted as marshals for the event and kept a close eye on the perimeter to watch for troublemakers – there appeared to be none. A sole Los Angeles police helicopter hovered overhead, but otherwise law enforcement was entirely absent.

Andrew Gumbel

A worker in Los Angeles cleaned a wall near the Edward Roybal Federal Building on Monday, following a night of protests in response to federal immigration raids. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Outside the federal courthouse complex in downtown Los Angeles on Monday morning, two cleaners carrying bins on wheels looked uncertainly at the daunting task in front of them – long walls in several directions covered in spray-painted graffiti after a weekend of vigorous street protest.

They donned black plastic gloves and reached for spray bottles and rolls of paper towels, but these seemed hardly adequate even for the black marble plinth bearing the name “Edward R. Roybal Center and Federal Building” where they began. Indeed, the rest of the official writing on the plinth was illegible, defaced by three separate graffiti reading “Fuck ICE” and another saying “Dead Cops”.

The City of Angels was in recovery and clean-up mode after a fraught, boisterous day of protest on Sunday against Donald Trump’s immigration roundups and his inflaming decision to activate the California National Guard against the will of the state’s leaders.

A series of mostly peaceful demonstrations were marred, as night fell, by more serious acts of vandalism and violence. Some people, who the LAPD chief later said were not affiliated with the protesters, tossed rocks and paving stones off freeway overpasses on to police cruisers and officers below, and a line of Waymo driverless vehicles that had already been spray-painted were set on fire.

On Monday morning, street cleaning vehicles were out in force on Alameda Street, on the east side of the federal courthouse complex, where the National Guard was stationed on Sunday and where thousands of protesters converged, starting in the early afternoon. Both the sidewalk and the long block of Alameda flanked by the federal buildings were cordoned off to the public.

The 101 freeway, which had been occupied by protesters the night before, was open to traffic again, but most of the downtown exits were sealed off by California Highway Patrol vehicles. A cleaning crew with a pressure washer was hard at work on the outside of the federal building on Los Angeles Street, which houses a passport office, a social security office and other key federal bureaucratic services.

US military confirms 700 Marines are being deployed to Los Angeles amid protests

The US military’s US Northern Command confirmed on Monday that a Marine infantry battalion is being deployed to Los Angeles.

In a press release from its headquarters at the Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado, US Northern Command said:

Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.

The activation of the Marines is intended to provide Task Force 51 with adequate numbers of forces to provide continuous coverage of the area in support of the lead federal agency.

Task Force 51 is U.S. Army North’s Contingency Command Post, which provides a rapidly deployable capability to partner with civil authorities and DoD entities in response to a Homeland Defense and Homeland Security Operations. It is commanded by Maj. Gen. Scott M. Sherman.

Task Force 51 is comprised of approximately 2,100 National Guard soldiers in a Title 10 status and 700 active-duty Marines. Task Force 51 forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force.

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Mayor Karen Bass says Los Angeles being used as a ‘test case’ by federal government – live

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