Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and officials from more than a dozen other cities in L.A. County banded together on Wednesday, June 11, offering a unified message to President Donald Trump and his administration: End the immigration raids and stop sowing unnecessary fear in our communities.
The city leaders, many of them mayors, who gathered for a joint press conference “reflect the concerns that are going on in our communities right now,” Bass said, leading off the event.
Paramount Mayor Peggy Lemons speaks during a media event with Karen Bass and other mayors. Photo: Screenshot from YouTube videoFive days ago, federal immigration sweeps in and around Los Angeles began, which have led to daily protests that at times have turned violent or unruly. Trump, in response, sent in the National Guard and U.S. Marines over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Bass, who have criticized the idea of staging active military personnel on American home soil.
Usually, it is the governor of a state that decides when to deploy National Guard troops, but Trump federalized the California National Guard over the weekend.
“I posit that maybe we are part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in reaching in and taking over power from a governor, power from a local jurisdiction, and frankly leaving our city and our citizens, our residents, in fear,” Bass said.
As she spoke, she referenced the group of city officials standing behind her, saying they all represent municipalities where immigrants play a key role in the community, and that the group was calling for federal immigration raids to end.
Peggy Lemons, the mayor of Paramount – where protesters clashed with law enforcement agents on Saturday following reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents planned to raid a Home Depot – said during the news conference that residents in her city have faced loss and uncertainty and are afraid to leave their homes.
“To see the presence of the National Guard in our city, it only makes things worse and leads to unnecessary escalation,” Lemons said.
Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the “militarization of immigration enforcement has no place in our neighborhoods.”
“The deployment of Marines on U.S. soil is an alarming escalation that undermines the values of democracy,” he said.
Flores had a message for the Marines who have been deployed to Los Angeles: “Brothers,” he said, “I, myself, have fought in different theaters. … When we lifted our hands and we swore the oath to defend the Constitution and to defend the country, that oath was to the American people. It was not to a dictator. It was not to a tyrant. It was not to a president. It was to the American people.”
Cities that sent an official to Wednesday’s press conference were: Artesia, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Downey, El Monte, Fillmore, Huntington Park, Lynwood, Montebello, Paramount, Pico Rivera, Santa Monica, South Gate, Vernon and West Hollywood. Representatives from Santa Paula and Ventura, in Ventura County, also attended.
Bass said the mayors and other city officials who joined her at the press conference understood that what is happening in Los Angeles could happen to their communities in the future.
Earlier this week, her office sent out a press release with statements from the Democratic Mayors Association and from the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors condemning Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard.
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