Photo Credit: Getty Images
Federal officers and National Guard troops fanned out around a mostly empty Los Angeles park in a largely immigrant neighborhood on foot, horseback and military vehicles on Monday for about an hour before abruptly leaving, an operation that local officials said seemed designed to sow fear.
The Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t say whether anyone had been arrested during the brief operation at MacArthur Park. Federal officials did not respond to requests for comment about why the park was targeted or why the raid ended abruptly.
About 90 members of the California National Guard were present to protect immigration officers, defense officials said.
“What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,” said Mayor Karen Bass, who showed up at the park alongside activists.
She said there were children attending a day camp in the park who were quickly ushered inside to avoid seeing the troops. Still, Bass said an 8-year-old boy told her that “he was fearful of ICE.”
The operation occurred at a park in a neighborhood with large Mexican, Central American and other immigrant populations and is lined by businesses with signs in Spanish and other languages that has been dubbed by local officials as the “Ellis Island of the West Coast.”
Photos show federal officers riding on horseback toward a mostly empty soccer field. Other heavily armed authorities stood guard around the area alongside armored vehicles.
“The world needs to see the troop formation on horses walking through the park, in search of what? In search of what? They’re walking through the area where the children play,” Bass said.
Eunisses Hernandez, a council member whose district includes MacArthur Park said “it was chosen as this administration’s latest target precisely because of who lives there and what it represents.”
