The city of Pasadena canceled swimming lessons and other recreation programs at three of its parks on Saturday, citing concerns about possible immigration enforcement by federal agents.<\/p>\n
Lisa Derderian, a spokesperson for the city, said officials made the decision after seeing posts on social media that showed \u201cwhat appears to be federal enforcement activity\u201d at Villa Parke, a city park located a block north of the 210 Freeway.<\/p>\n
Programs were canceled \u201cout of an abundance of caution\u201d at Villa Parke, Robinson Park and Victory Park to avoid \u201cthe potential escalation of conflict that unannounced federal enforcement activity causes,\u201d the city said in a social media post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs Border Protection agencies did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Times.<\/p>\n Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo said men with long guns, masks and tactical vests had shown up earlier in the day at Villa Parke, which has playing fields, a swimming pool and other youth sports facilities. Those men chased after people who had been standing on the sidewalk next to the park\u2019s soccer field, he said.<\/p>\n Federal law enforcement officials have not disclosed such activities to Pasadena officials ahead of time, Gordo said, raising the potential for clashes with residents or even police officers who might be called about masked men carrying guns.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not talking to our police chief, to me, or to the city manager,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s introducing volatile situations into our neighborhoods and our parks.\u201d<\/p>\n The city\u2019s announcement comes just days after federal agents detained people<\/a> at a bus stop at Orange Grove Boulevard and Los Robles Avenue, a few blocks from Villa Parke. That operation drew an angry response from U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, whose congressional district<\/a> includes Pasadena, and other politicians.<\/p>\n Chu said one unidentified agent, in an incident caught on video, pointed a gun at a man seeking to take video of the agent\u2019s license plate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ICE agent jumped out of the car and pointed a gun as though he was going to shoot the young man, just for shooting a video of that license plate,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Pasadena canceled swimming lessons and other recreation programs at three of its parks on Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[7611,1582,276,2451,7612,6285,7613,7614,1808,2961,7615,224,5337,1408,6141,5338,7616,7610,989,7609],"class_list":{"0":"post-6058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-block","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-city","12":"tag-fear","13":"tag-federal-agent","14":"tag-federal-enforcement-activity","15":"tag-gun","16":"tag-immigration-raid","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-license-plate","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-official","22":"tag-park","23":"tag-pasadena","24":"tag-possible-immigration-enforcement","25":"tag-swim-program","26":"tag-video","27":"tag-villa-parke"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114728663999512517","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}