L.A. immigration raid protests: Full coverage of curfew, arrests, troops

Flanked by more than two dozen local lawmakers from across the Southland, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the continuing immigration raids in the region and military escalation from the federal government.

“Maybe we are part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in reaching in and taking over power from a governor, power from a local jurisdiction, and frankly, leaving our city and our citizens, our residents, in fear,” the mayor said Wednesday morning, standing in front of a City Hall podium as fellow elected officials crammed into the space behind her.

All of the mayors, vice mayors and city council members standing with Bass represented cities where “immigrants are key” and in some cases make up the majority of the population, she said.

She called the presence “of federalized troops on the heels of these raids” a “drastic and chaotic escalation” that was unnecessary.

“Our communities are not battlegrounds, deploying military forces and conducting militarized ICE raids in immigrant neighborhoods is not about public safety,” Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores said.

“It is about political theater that is rooted in fear.”

Flores, a military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, spoke directly to any of the Marines stationed in Los Angeles who might be watching the newscast.

“When we lifted our hands and we swore the oath to defend the Constitution, to defend this country, that oath was to the American people. It was not to a dictator, it was not to a tyrant, it was not to a president, it was to the American people,” Flores said, adding that any people the Marines might encounter in Southern California communities were Americans, “whether they have a document, or they don’t.”

Former Downey Mayor Mario Trujillo said his community had been targeted by immigration authorities that morning.

“They raided the Home Depot, the L.A. Fitness and I understand they arrested an elderly man in front of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a place of worship. He was dropping off his granddaughter,” Trujillo said.