L.A. Confidential

Is it "societal paranoia" when they really are driving armored vehicles through your soccer field?

I reside these days in Pasadena, just about 10 miles or so from MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. That park is where armed and armored agents and troops performed a strange walk-through Monday. It’s part of an ongoing war of sorts that the United States federal government is waging against the county and region where I live.

The show of force in MacArthur Park was a bizarre sight, of which videos circulated widely. Accompanying the large number of federal agents—lacking identification, according to news reports—were a reported 90 National Guard members, 17 Humvees, four military cargo trucks, and two military ambulances.

It would have been overkill even for a law enforcement unit seeking the arrest of known, dangerous criminals with outstanding warrants. One wouldn’t expect such perps to be holed up in… a popular public park, but surely these folks knew what they were doing there, right?

Well, no. There had been no indication of illicit or dangerous activity in the park. There were no reports afterward of warrants executed against wanted criminals believed to be there, nor any reported arrests or detentions. When a local news station asked DHS for information about who conducted the sweep, why they did so, and who if anyone was taken, it was given a statement saying only that “We don’t comment on ongoing enforcement operations.”

No, apparently all of those personnel and resources were deployed just to send a message, reminding Los Angeles residents that the federal government is here, with thousands of agents, National Guard members, and Marines, and lots of expensive equipment, all with no purpose other than increasing the number of brown-skinned people they can find an excuse to deport.

It's unlikely that anybody in greater LA needs the reminder. The ICE crackdown has been all the talk around here. And not in a good way.

“ICE raids empty once-vibrant spots” blared a local Pasadena headline two weeks ago. Below that headline were two stories: one about the brutal effect on local businesses; the other about health care providers reporting a spike in cancelled appointments from patients terrified to show up. Similar stories can be found in local media outlets pretty much every day. “L.A. neighborhoods clear out as immigration raids send people underground,” says a Los Angeles Times headline. Just today the Press Enterprise of Riverside reported on on the growing problem of false-alarm ICE sightings; a USC professor is quoted calling it “societal paranoia.”

Many Fourth of July events were cancelled, and videos of ghost-town markets circulate on social media. Reporting has made abundantly clear that it’s not just the (very substantial) undocumented population here that’s terrified of detention, nor even legally present members of “blended families” fearing for their deportable relatives. Those who look Hispanic or Asian don’t trust that legal status will protect them. And why would they? Federal enforcers are reportedly trying to fill deportation quotas, however they can. “Border czar” Tom Homan is interviewed daily frothing over his zealousness to snatch up a preposterous 7,000 daily. Stories of citizens and legal residents caught up for hours, days, or indefinitely are everywhere, from reliable media reports to questionable claims on the Next Door app. The President and others openly discuss the desire to strip legal status from whomever they can, and even to deport citizens. The state’s Hispanic United States Senator, Alex Padilla, was recently maltreated and insulted at a Homeland Security Secretary press conference in Los Angeles; what chance does anyone else have?

“No one is safe from these raids, not even U.S. citizens,” my congresswoman, Judy Chu, wrote in the Pasadena Star News recently, citing “the unjust arrest of Job Garcia, a United States citizen and Ph.D. student at Claremont Graduate University in my district.”

A short way down Los Robles Ave. from my house is a Pasadena intersection with several businesses I frequent; Spanish is the predominant language in those shops. A parking lot there serves as the meeting place where day laborers wait for opportunities to work; that lot has gone quiet on recent mornings. A few days after the Padilla incident, ICE agents detained six people at that spot, waiting at the bus stop for their ride to work.

Congresswoman Chu, along with my mayor, went to check on the detained individuals; they were denied entry to the detention center.

Agents have also recently raided a park just a block off that intersection; not with the show of force seen at MacArthur Park this week, but enough, I’m told, to scare off the guy with the tamale cart. That park is more or less right behind the dry cleaner I go to; it now keeps its doors locked all the time, letting in only recognized customers. Signs in the window proclaim that ICE is unwelcome there.

It’s pretty clear that Trump, Homan, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House advisor Stephen Miller, and everybody else involved have no idea how to actualize the promised emptying of undocumented residents from the country. Their strategy seems to be a mighty rattling of sabers to impress supporters and, perhaps, scare millions into leaving on their own.

But when these non-citizens are fully intertwined into the families and communities of a major metropolitan district, how do you make their lives miserable without also harming those who have every lawful right to unfettered lives? You don’t, of course; you ruin everybody’s lives. “The trick is not minding,” as G. Gordon Liddy famously said about holding his finger in a flame.

MAGA conservatives certainly don’t mind. On the contrary, they are reveling in the harm done. Right wing thought leaders circulate the same sort of images of desolated LA markets that Angelinos weep over, but to them these are signs of success. A screen shot purporting to show backup-free freeways throughout the county made the rounds this week, to great elation.

Likewise, they shared and celebrated the videos of the cruel, farcical “raid” of MacArthur Park. Local news media reported that, just before the agents swarmed the scene, some 20 children were playing soccer as part of a summer camp program; there were also health clinic workers providing free care to people in the park. All fled in fear. On social media, conservatives mocked the claims of children in the park; one widely retweeted comment stated that MacArthur Park is too full of “human feces… homeless encampments and gangs” for anyone to play there. (In fact, a Twitter search of “MacArthur Park human feces” reveals that this was a common claim that day.)

To be sure, there are plenty of problems currently faced by Los Angeles and other California cities, homelessness included. The federal government could work with the state to try to make improvements, rather than terrorize the single most populous county in the United States. Folks could at least spare an ounce of compassion for eight-year-olds playing in a park at midday forced to flee by the unexplained appearance of dozens and dozens of unidentified armed men. Easier I suppose to simply deny that the soccer-playing eight-year-olds exist.

The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better, of course. The “Big Beautiful Bill” just passed by Republicans and signed by Trump provides a staggering sum devoted to the chimeric goal of ousting unwanted humans from the United States. LA is an obvious target, but with these bloated funds, similar operations will expand everywhere. Prepare for some societal paranoia, America.