L.A. Mayor Says Trump Administration Continues ‘Ratcheting Up Chaos' in City

TIME

Dozens of federal officers in tactical gear and about 90 members of the California National Guard were deployed for about an hour Monday to a mostly empty park in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a large immigrant population. It wasn’t immediately known if any arrests were made.

Transcript

00:00Today, I was on my way to the press conference with the governor.

00:04While I was on the way, though, I got alerted that there was an ICE operation, military intervention, who knows, at MacArthur Park.

00:14I turned around, we went to the park, I could see a helicopter in the air, I think it was a Black Hawk helicopter,

00:21and I saw military tanks, it was the Custom and Border Patrol, and it might have been military on the periphery.

00:31To me, this is another example of the administration ratcheting up chaos by deploying what looked like a military operation in an American city.

00:42So I went to MacArthur Park because it is very important that the truth be told about what happened there.

00:48Now, you can spin it any way you like, but in my opinion, it's a political agenda of provoking fear and terror.

00:57Frankly, it is outrageous and un-American.

01:01Who were in the park today were children.

01:04It was their summer camp, their day, their summer day camp.

01:10Those kids now have no activities this afternoon, they have to stay inside.

01:16They were ushered inside so that they didn't get exposed to the troops that were walking in formation across their playground area.

01:26We did not want the children to be aware that it was ICE.

01:31Although I do have to tell you that I went and I spoke to an eight-year-old.

01:36I never let on what was going on upstairs.

01:41But did this eight-year-old tell me that he was afraid of ICE?

01:45Did the eight-year-old tell me that he was afraid of ICE taking his parents and he didn't think it was good to take people away?

01:55So understand that that eight-year-old knows enough of what's going on that he's already traumatized in anticipation.

02:04And I don't know if he had a sixth sense or not to know that they were upstairs.

02:11But I think it's pretty dramatic that a child said to me that he was fearful of ICE.

02:17So what I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege.

02:22I just think it's important that we continue to tell the truth to the American people.

02:26There was no protest.

02:29There was no disorder that required that.

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