Karen Bass didn’t seem the least bit worried that a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson left open the possibility that the Los Angeles mayor would be arrested for showing up during a recent ICE sweep at MacArthur Park.
Armed federal agents in face masks and military gear on Monday trod through the Westlake park, in the heart of an immigrant neighborhood. Bass described the scene at the Westlake park – “where nothing was going on,” she noted – as what a city looks like “before a coup.”
MSNBC host Chris Hayes said Tuesday night that “the whole operation was intended as a show of presence, according to internal Army documents he obtained, which have not been independently verified by NBC News.” Bass – who said she had no formal communication about the raid beforehand – arrived on the scene shortly after the raid began, asking the agents to leave immediately.
“I was sitting in a room and everybody’s phone started blowing up, and that told me that the military had arrived in a park,” Bass said. “And to see the soldiers march through … they literally marched through the kids’ summer camp. The kids had to be ushered in a building so that they weren’t exposed to the scene.”
Bass said she wasn’t even certain what kind of agents were marching through the park.
“That that is one of the mysteries of what is going on in our town,” Bass said. “What I do know is that the Customs Border Patrol was definitely there. I have been told that the National Guard and the Marines were playing different roles, some on the periphery, but we don’t know that for sure.”
She said officers in plainclothes were also on-site, “Jumping out of unmarked cars with tinted windows, no license plate, wielding guns, pulling people off the street. That is the scene in LA right now.”
Hayes cut to a clip of DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who was asked whether Bass’ presence would warrant an arrest. McLaughlin said the idea was “on the table.”
Bass was at least somewhat amused.
“They’re going to arrest me for doing my job as mayor?” she said. “My number one responsibility is to keep Angelenos safe. Now, it never dawned on me that I would have to worry about keeping Angelenos safe from my own government — from military that are supposed to be overseas fighting foreign enemies, from the Customs and Border Patrol — we’re about 2.5 hours away from a border — or from the National Guard that have been federalized unnecessarily.”
Hayes next cut to a clip of Southern California’s the Border Patrol sector chief Greg Bovino, who madd it clear that, in the MSNBC’s words, “It’s my city now” – and, in his, that the federal government “doesn’t work for Karen Bass.”
“I just have to say that I think that it’s pathetic,” Bass said. “I mean, last I checked, all of us work for the American people. And so, as I said, I am the duly elected official here to represent the city, and it is my job to protect the city.”
Bass denied interfering with the raid by just showing up and asking the agents to leave.
“It is my responsibility to ask, ‘What are you doing here in this park where nothing is going on? Why are you grabbing people off the street?’ Making a lot of people believe that kidnappings are taking place,” she said.
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
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