Federal agents carried out a major immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, despite objections from Mayor Karen Bass, who appeared at the scene in protest.
“We are with hundreds of federal agents and military as a massive federal immigration enforcement operation is underway in the MacArthur Park area of the sanctuary city of Los Angeles, an area with heavy MS-13 influence,” Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin noted on the X platform.
“Mayor Bass has demanded raids stop, Feds respond with one of the largest yet, including Border Patrol agents on horseback. Protesters already showing up,” he added.
Melugin also shared a video of Bass speaking with a Border Patrol agent, who seemed to call someone and then handed the phone to her.
Local Fox affiliate KTTV-TV reported that the Democratic mayor could be heard saying on the phone, “They have completed their mission here,” and “What’s the timeframe before they leave?”
Asked by a reporter if she wanted to make a statement, Bass responded: “They need to leave and they need to leave right now, because this is unacceptable!”
Monday’s raid followed a wave of anti-ICE protests and riots in Los Angeles last month in response to ongoing immigration enforcement. Tensions escalated further last month, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, was forcibly removed from a news conference in L.A. led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
She said that immigration enforcement operations would be ongoing in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
“We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and mayor have placed on this country and what they’ve tried to insert in this city,” she said.