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Back in May, congressional Republicans and the Department of Homeland Security got their feelings hurt when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz compared Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations to a “modern-day Gestapo.” But the scenes and sounds emerging from Los Angeles on Monday showed why Walz’s comparison seems apt, as Trump has deployed ICE and other federal agents in a militaristic immigration crackdown that he’s said is intended to “liberate” Los Angeles.
Viral images and media reports offered harrowing scenes of armed federal agents, flanked by members of the California National Guard, sweeping through MacArthur Park, a public space popular with the city’s various immigrant communities. At one point, the masked, heavily armed agents in tactical gear disrupted playing children in a show of force that resulted in no arrests, according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. The DHS said the production — which included 17 Humvees and four tactical vehicles, according to The Associated Press, as well as officers on horseback — was part of “ongoing enforcement operations.”
After L.A. Mayor Karen Bass showed up at the park and confronted officials, one immigration official sent an ominous response that certainly doesn’t dispel the Gestapo comparisons.
“The federal government is not leaving L.A.,” Border Patrol El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino said in an interview with Fox 11 Los Angeles. “I don’t work for Karen Bass. ... We’re going to be here until that mission is accomplished.”
“Better get used to us now,” he added, “because this is gonna be normal very soon.”
Recent polling by PBS/NPR/Marist showed a majority of Americans think Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gone too far in its enforcement tactics, suggesting broad discomfort with Trump’s crackdowns. And now the so-called One Big, Beautiful Bill Act will grant ICE billions of dollars to make it the largest law enforcement agency in the country and supercharge the president’s anti-immigrant agenda. Disturbing scenes like those in MacArthur Park may soon start playing out in other parts of the country, as well.