Federal activity in LA's MacArthur Park: Crossing the Rubicon

Beginning on June 6, federal agents and military troops were deployed to Los Angeles for what this presidential administration has called the "single largest Mass Deportation Program in history." What has followed is escalating, unconstitutional searches and seizures, roundups, raids, mass detentions and other aggressive confrontations between groups of armed and masked individuals -- often without visible credentials or identification -- and our residents. The raids have been random, scooping up U.S. citizens as well as lawful permanent residents and individuals who are undocumented -- garment workers, workers washing our cars, picking our crops and building our housing, parishioners worshipping at church, and even children, teachers and administrators trying to continue their lessons at schools.

On July 7, these activities culminated in an extraordinary performative show of force in MacArthur Park, a historic park located in a predominantly immigrant community in Los Angeles dating back to the late 19th century. Even without any detentions or arrests, the symbolism of troops in armed vehicles and vans, on foot and horseback, in tactical gear and carrying rifles lingers, disrupting daily life, intimidating Angelenos and sowing fear in our communities.

Decades before Los Angeles passed an ordinance in 2024 prohibiting city resources from being utilized for enforcement of federal immigration laws, in 1979 the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) adopted Special Order 40. The LAPD recognized then -- as it does now -- that public safety depends on cooperation and trust between the police and the people they protect and serve. Public safety suffers when people concerned about their own immigration status -- or that of a family member or neighbor -- are reluctant to report or provide witness testimony about a crime. Local law enforcement protects and serves the public by enforcing state and local criminal laws, and the cooperation of victims and witnesses is crucial to that mission.

Immigration enforcement inside the United States is the province of the federal government, specifically of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE). A component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE has the responsibility and authority to enforce federal immigration laws. What ICE does not have is the power to require that a local jurisdiction dedicate its resources to immigration enforcement or to assisting ICE. ICE and DHS also do not have the power to conduct immigration enforcement in derogation of the fundamental protections afforded under the Bill of Rights to every person in our nation, regardless of immigration status, including protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, due process and equal protection under the law, and access to counsel in detention or arrests, irrespective of who occupies the Oval office. And the federal government does not have the authority to commandeer local resources or to use the nation's military for civilian law enforcement or in domestic settings in derogation of states' rights and local sovereignty.

On July 8,  I announced that the City of Los Angeles, together with the County of Los Angeles and the Cities of Pasadena, Montebello, Monterey Park, Santa Monica, Culver and West Hollywood, moved to intervene in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Public Counsel and other immigration and civil rights groups. This lawsuit asks the court to prevent ICE and other federal agents from engaging in unconstitutional and unlawful stops, roundups and raids without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, from utilizing disproportionate force in carrying out immigration enforcement activities, and from confining individuals at federal buildings in unlawful conditions without access to their attorneys. On July 11, 2025, the court issued temporary restraining orders (TRO), effective immediately, barring federal agents from illegal conduct, stopping residents without "reasonable suspicion" or holding individuals without access to counsel. The federal government has appealed the TRO.

Our response is about standing up for immigrant communities who are our family members, neighbors, coworkers and classmates, and about defending the basic foundational principles of our system of government. It's about standing together in an unprecedented time where cities are being forced and strong-armed into helping the federal government carry out its agenda using tactics that violate the constitution. These activities, like what took place in MacArthur Park, are unlike other lawful immigration enforcement or any other targeted civil or criminal enforcement activity that has occurred regularly in the Los Angeles region in more than 70 years. Racism and xenophobia last exploded between 1953 and 1954, resulting in the roundup, deportation and death of an indeterminate number of residents of Mexican descent (including citizens and lawful residents), estimated at between 300,000 and 1.3 million. We cannot let that happen again.

What is happening in Los Angeles, and what happened in MacArthur Park, cannot be normalized. Fear is not a sound foundation for democracy, and performative military intimidation in public spaces like MacArthur Park violates the basic principles of our republic as much as crossing the Rubicon violated the fundamental boundaries of the Roman Republic, leading to Caesar's dictatorship.