Transcript: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 20, 2025
MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Good morning, Madam Mayor.
LOS ANGELES MAYOR KAREN BASS: Good morning, good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Glad you can hear me. We are looking at immigration issues six months in. You have had such a firsthand experience out in LA, given the deployment of U.S. troops. The President ordered the early release of nearly half of the National Guard from LA. Have they departed yet? What are the remaining ones doing?
MAYOR BASS: Well, I believe they've departed, but they were never needed in the first place, and the remaining ones are doing what they were doing all along, which is essentially protecting two federal buildings, one of which in Westwood, where there never has been a big protest against the immigration raids. This is just such an incredible misuse of, not only taxpayers money, but of the young people who are in the National Guard, who have had to leave their families, their jobs and their education for this deployment that is completely unnecessary. 4,000 troops, my understanding, is, most of their time has been spent in complete boredom, playing video games and essentially waiting around. Because again, 4,000 deployed, and about 200 actually used.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The White House, of course, argues they deployed them because there was interference with the operations of law enforcement in carrying out some of the roundups. There are still enforcement actions by ICE taking place. You have talked about your objections, as you described them to "masked men, unmarked cars, drawing guns, snatching people off the street." You filed a Freedom of Information request to quote, "know who these masked men are." Why, though, is their identity important to you? Do you plan to prosecute them?
MAYOR BASS: Well, no, let me just explain, because you have people who are literally walking down the street, sitting at bus stops, are individual vendors selling fruit on the street. These masked men pull up in unmarked cars and jump out of the cars with rifles and detain people. So for the average citizen, it looks like it's a violent kidnapping. So you should never have that. They don't identify themselves. And furthermore, to your previous guest, how on earth do they know that they're a threat when they're just chasing random people through parking lots at Home Depots, going to car washes and rounding up people. It's difficult to get your car washed in Los Angeles now, because most of the car washes, the employees won't come to work out of fear that a raid will take place.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the acting director says that his agents, some of them fear that their families will be retaliated against, and that's why they are covering their faces, that they do wear markings for the agencies that they work with. How do you respond?
MAYOR BASS: Well, well, first of all, let me just tell you that the masked men are not from Los Angeles, and so how their families could be retaliated against. And then what is that to say to local law enforcement, the Los Angeles Police Department, none of whom are ever masked who always identify themselves and even hand someone a business card. So that makes absolutely no sense at all. And I don't know, but I have a hard time believing that the woman selling pineapples on the corner is going to attack an ICE agent. And then when he says that there's identification, the problem is many of these men are in plain clothes with vests on that say 'police,' it looks like something that they could have gotten online. I think it's really important to point out the extreme nature of the randomness. And you know, Homan has said, he's mentioned a number of criteria for why they stop people. One of the points of criteria is physical appearance. Los Angeles is 3.8 million people, and about 50% of our population is Latino, so I guess that means 50% of Los Angeles could be possible suspects in an immigration raid.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Tom Homan has- Tom Homan has said physical description cannot be the sole factor for reasonable suspicion, but things like location, occupation, physical appearance add up, particularly if a person runs away, or if there's a tattoo or something. You don't seem to believe that.
MAYOR BASS: Location, sitting at a- well, location, sitting at a bus stop, walking down the street, selling fruit? No, I do dispute that, absolutely. And you know, again, the National Guard should have never been deployed in the first place. We did not ask for them. This is the federal seizure of power from a governor deploying the National Guard when the National Guard were not even needed. We had protests at the end of the- at the end of the peaceful protest, there absolutely was some violence and some looting and vandalism, we brought that completely under control. The troops have never been involved in crowd control, never involved in the protest. They have been guarding a building. Our police department and our sheriff's department are the ones that brought the protests, when it devolved into violence, under control. We never needed the National Guard in the first place. This is a political stunt, a terrible misuse of taxpayers' dollars.
MARGARET BRENNAN: There's more we could talk about here but I want to ask you about fires, because we are now officially in fire season. It was just six months ago we saw those blazes in LA, you fired the then fire chief for you said a failure to prepare. But you still don't have a permanent fire chief in that role. Isn't that a problem? Are you prepared?
MAYOR BASS: No, no, I don't think that that's a problem at all. Our interim fire chief has 40 years of experience. In fact, he had just recently retired. I called him in, out of retirement, during the fires. He was doing the emergency operation center. So he stepped in, didn't miss a beat by taking over the fire department. And we are prepared. We do know that it's fire season.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So is your plan to keep him in place since you brought him out of retirement?--
MAYOR BASS: --No--
MARGARET BRENNAN:--put him in an interim basis?
MAYOR BASS: I'm sorry, no, we're doing a national search, and he is certainly open to apply. But the nation's second-largest city needs to make sure that we search the nation for the best talent. And I'm sure that there will be people in the department that apply, but we want to cast the net wide. We did the same type of search for our police chief--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --Well okay--
MAYOR BASS:--in the meantime he is more than capable of managing well.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, wish the city well. We will be watching as you move through fire season. Thank you--
MAYOR BASS:--Sure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --We'll be right back.
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