‘The experiment is on us’: Los Angeles keeps trying to defy Trump, with mixed results
Washington: The famous MacArthur Park, a splash of green in the grimy centre of Los Angeles, became a focal point for the ongoing war between California and the Trump administration last week when nearly 100 soldiers in tactical gear and federal officers on horseback marched through it in broad daylight in front of children.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who made a beeline for the park when she heard about the display of force, said the “absolutely outrageous” stunt was meant to instil fear and “put the city in its place”.
Federal agents marched through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles last week.Credit: AP
“You have the federal government that has seized power from a governor and is attempting to seize authority and power in a city,” she said on the weekend. “Los Angeles is a Petri dish, and they are practising on us. The experiment is on us.”
For six weeks, California has been at the centre of the Trump administration’s efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration, with agents undertaking raids at car washes, textile factories, farms and Home Depot stores. The raids sparked a wave of protests, including clashes with law enforcement, which have ebbed in intensity but continue to this day.
In raids at two cannabis farms last week, ICE agents arrested 361 people. One man, 57-year-old Jaime Alanis, was severely injured after falling from a roof. He later succumbed to his injuries in hospital, becoming the first known person to die as a result of such raids.
While the government says it is focusing on violent criminals, the LA operations have marked a broadening of US President Donald Trump’s deportation drive to include anyone suspected of being in the US unlawfully.
On Friday, a judge ordered the administration to cease “indiscriminate” immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles, while a legal challenge is heard in which the government is accused of targeting people based on their skin colour.
The administration formally appealed on Monday (Tuesday AEST), arguing the injunction was indefensible and “appears to be a first step toward placing federal immigration enforcement under judicial monitorship”.
In a series of interviews, Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, a hardline former Border Patrol officer, outlined the latitude Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had to approach, detain and question someone on the street about their immigration status.
Officers were not required to show “probable cause”, he said, but “reasonable suspicion” that a person was in the US illegally. Such suspicion could be aroused by several factors, he said, including the way someone looked.
“It’s the totality of the circumstances … based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions,” Homan told Fox News. He later clarified that physical appearance could not be the sole factor that led an agent to detain someone.
The dynamic playing out in LA, where a city and state are in open defiance of the federal government, is unlike anything Australians would witness at home.
As a so-called sanctuary city, LA authorities do not actively assist in immigration enforcement, although they follow the law, Bass says. Since 1979, Special Order 40 has prevented LA police from questioning people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status.
Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, are pushing back hard against what they frame as the Trump administration’s deliberate, politically motivated targeting of liberal California.
“People have been terrorised and terrified. People don’t leave home,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says.Credit: AP
The federal government, led by the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, views this as treason. “Los Angeles is waging insurrection against the federal government,” he said on Friday as Bass signed an executive order to help local officials resist ICE raids at public locations such as libraries, and inform them of their rights.
LA is also helping to co-ordinate cash cards for families affected by the raids, which will reportedly have about $US200 ($305) on them. The cash will not come from public coffers but from philanthropic partners.
The latest raids have changed LA, where about half of the 3.8 million inhabitants are Latino. Streets in the usually bustling garment district went quiet after ICE swept through an apparel store in June. In a city where the car is king, people are having trouble getting their vehicles washed because migrant workers are scared to go to work.
“It’s hard for me to believe cartels are hanging out in car washes,” Bass told MSNBC. She said masked agents without uniforms had been jumping out of unmarked cars to snatch people off the streets. “People have been terrorised and terrified. People don’t leave home.”
Donald Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, outside the White House.Credit: AP
But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) paints an entirely different picture.
It said 361 illegal aliens were arrested at the two marijuana farms alone, including criminals with convictions for rape, kidnapping, child molestation, serial burglary and hit-and-run.
The raids also bring to the fore questions about the tenuous state of migrant labour, on which California and much of the US economy rely. These workplaces are typically out of sight and out of mind: farms, restaurant kitchens, textile houses in the fashion district.
This undated photo provided by his family shows Jaime Alanis, who was fatally injured during an immigration raid on July 10.Credit: AP
Where there are illegal migrants, there is often exploitation. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said agents found 14 minors at the marijuana farms, including 10 who were unaccompanied.
“They were likely being exploited: potential slave or forced labour, potential child and human trafficking,” she told Fox News.
Alanis, the man who died following one of the cannabis farm raids, was incorrectly reported dead days ago by the United Farm Workers union. At the time, he was hospitalised with severe injuries. But an update to the family’s GoFundMe page confirmed he later died. It said Alanis had suffered a broken neck, fractured skull and severed artery, and described the raid as “reckless”.
McLaughlin said Alanis was not being pursued by law enforcement officers but “climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet”.
Meanwhile, the California judge’s order to limit the circumstances in which ICE agents can ask for papers has reignited the White House’s war against the judiciary, which had softened following a major Supreme Court victory in late June.
A “No Kings” protest in downtown Los Angeles on June 14.Credit: AP
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which brought the challenge, said the temporary ruling showed it was unconstitutional to stop individuals based on their skin colour, apparent race or accent.
Miller said of the decision: “A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs, not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
Lodging the appeal on Tuesday (AEST), Justice Department chief-of-staff Chad Mizelle said the injunction was an “egregious order” based on incorrect application of the law.
With AP
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.