Latest news with #Bass
USA Today
2 hours ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Pentagon pulls 2,000 National Guard members from Los Angeles in immigration rollback
WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration is pulling half of the California National Guard members it deployed to Los Angeles in a major rollback of President Donald Trump's militarized response to protests in Southern California over immigration arrests and raids. 'Thanks to our troops who stepped up to answer the call, the lawlessness in Los Angeles is subsiding," Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a July 15 statement. "As such, the Secretary has ordered the release of 2,000 California National Guardsmen (79th IBCT) from the federal protection mission." Trump deployed 4,000 California National Guardsmen on June 7 to respond to protests that racked the southern part of the state after he stepped up immigration raids and arrests, targeting farms, restaurants, and hardware stores across the Los Angeles area. He also ordered 700 Marines to the city that were tasked with guarding federal property. The deployment was decried by the state's Democratic lawmakers, who have called an overreach of presidential authority and accused Trump of inciting violence. Trump has claimed that the "Los Angeles would be burning right now" if not for the military presence. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who sued the Trump administration over the guard's deployment, called for Trump to release the remaining National Guard members from Los Angeles now that half have been pulled. 'While nearly 2,000 of them are starting to demobilize, the remaining guards members continue without a mission, without direction and without any hopes of returning to help their communities,' Newsom said in a statement Tuesday. We call on Trump and the Department of Defense to end this theater and send everyone home now.' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claimed victory after Trump's withdrawal of guardsmen. 'This happened because the people of Los Angeles stood united and stood strong," Bass said in a statement. "We organized peaceful protests, we came together at rallies, we took the Trump administration to court ‒ all of this led to today's retreat." Bass added: "We will not stop making our voices heard until this ends, not just here in LA, but throughout our country.' One National Guard brigade is being withdrawn from Los Angeles, according to a Defense official who was not authorized to speak publicly. About one brigade, with several thousand soldiers, remains. An appeals court ruled in June that Trump could keep control over the National Guard troops. Trump, upon his return Tuesday night to the White House after traveling to Pittsburgh, did not respond to a shouted question from a reporter about his decision to pull the guardsmen from Los Angeles.
Mint
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
Trump Administration Pulls Back Deployment of National Guard in LA
The Trump administration has recalled about half of the California National Guard troops that were deployed to Los Angeles under federal orders last month after a series of high-profile immigration raids and anti-deportation protests. About 2,000 National Guard troops will be released from duty because 'the lawlessness in Los Angeles is subsiding,' Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Tuesday. Roughly 700 Marines remain deployed in the city. Trump ordered the federal deployment in early June, the first time in decades that a president used the National Guard in a US city without a request from the state government or local authorities. At the time, he said the troops — which numbered roughly 4,000 — were needed to quell what he described as rioting that would have otherwise destroyed the city. The move drew condemnation from Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass, who accused the president of making the tensions even worse. Days of protests were mostly confined to several city blocks around downtown LA, largely focused on a federal detention center and another government building that houses an immigration court office. Federal immigration agents and troops have continued to confront protesters at the sites of arrest operations, but large-scale protests have generally subsided. Bass lifted a curfew in the downtown area on June 17. Newsom, who is suing the administration to end the deployment, said the remaining troops 'continue without a mission, without direction and without any hopes of returning to help their communities.' 'We call on Trump and the Department of Defense to end this theater and send everyone home now,' the governor said in a statement Tuesday. The National Guard troops were initially tasked with protecting federal property, along with hundreds of active-duty US Marines deployed to the city. Some of those troops later escorted immigration agents during raids at Home Depot parking lots, car washes and agriculture fields in nearby Ventura County. Thousands of immigrants across the LA region have been arrested since early June. Dozens of troops were deployed to a city park earlier this month as heavily armed federal agents marched across the area in an operation that didn't yield any arrests, according to city officials who decried the effort as an unnecessary display of force. The recent focus on LA is part of a broader Trump administration effort to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history. Federal immigration authorities have been ordered to make at least 3,000 arrests a day and have increasingly swept up farm workers and day laborers along with foreigners accused of committing crimes in the US. Bass, a Democrat, said Tuesday's recall of 2,000 troops was a 'retreat.' 'This happened because the people of Los Angeles stood united and stood strong,' Bass said in a statement. 'We will not stop making our voices heard until this ends, not just here in LA, but throughout our country.' With assistance from Catherine Lucey. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘The experiment is on us': Los Angeles keeps trying to defy Trump, with mixed results
In a series of interviews, Trump's border tsar, Tom Homan, a hardline former Border Patrol officer, outlined the latitude Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had to approach, detain and question someone on the street about their immigration status. Officers were not required to show 'probable cause', he said, but 'reasonable suspicion' that a person was in the US illegally. Such suspicion could be aroused by several factors, he said, including the way someone looked. 'It's the totality of the circumstances … based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions,' Homan told Fox News. He later clarified that physical appearance could not be the sole factor that led an agent to detain someone. The dynamic playing out in LA, where a city and state are in open defiance of the federal government, is unlike anything Australians would witness at home. As a so-called sanctuary city, LA authorities do not actively assist in immigration enforcement, although they follow the law, Bass says. Since 1979, Special Order 40 has prevented LA police from questioning people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, are pushing back hard against what they frame as the Trump administration's deliberate, politically motivated targeting of liberal California. The federal government, led by the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, views this as treason. 'Los Angeles is waging insurrection against the federal government,' he said on Friday as Bass signed an executive order to help local officials resist ICE raids at public locations such as libraries, and inform them of their rights. LA is also helping to co-ordinate cash cards for families affected by the raids, which will reportedly have about $US200 ($305) on them. The cash will not come from public coffers but from philanthropic partners. The latest raids have changed LA, where about half of the 3.8 million inhabitants are Latino. Streets in the usually bustling garment district went quiet after ICE swept through an apparel store in June. In a city where the car is king, people are having trouble getting their vehicles washed because migrant workers are scared to go to work. 'It's hard for me to believe cartels are hanging out in car washes,' Bass told MSNBC. She said masked agents without uniforms had been jumping out of unmarked cars to snatch people off the streets. 'People have been terrorised and terrified. People don't leave home.' But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) paints an entirely different picture. It said 361 illegal aliens were arrested at the two marijuana farms alone, including criminals with convictions for rape, kidnapping, child molestation, serial burglary and hit-and-run. The raids also bring to the fore questions about the tenuous state of migrant labour, on which California and much of the US economy rely. These workplaces are typically out of sight and out of mind: farms, restaurant kitchens, textile houses in the fashion district. Where there are illegal migrants, there is often exploitation. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said agents found 14 minors at the marijuana farms, including 10 who were unaccompanied. 'They were likely being exploited: potential slave or forced labour, potential child and human trafficking,' she told Fox News. Alanis, the man who died following one of the cannabis farm raids, was incorrectly reported dead days ago by the United Farm Workers union. At the time, he was hospitalised with severe injuries. But an update to the family's GoFundMe page confirmed he later died. It said Alanis had suffered a broken neck, fractured skull and severed artery, and described the raid as 'reckless'. McLaughlin said Alanis was not being pursued by law enforcement officers but 'climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet'. Meanwhile, the California judge's order to limit the circumstances in which ICE agents can ask for papers has reignited the White House's war against the judiciary, which had softened following a major Supreme Court victory in late June. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which brought the challenge, said the temporary ruling showed it was unconstitutional to stop individuals based on their skin colour, apparent race or accent. Miller said of the decision: 'A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs, not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.'
The Age
a day ago
- Politics
- The Age
‘The experiment is on us': Los Angeles keeps trying to defy Trump, with mixed results
In a series of interviews, Trump's border tsar, Tom Homan, a hardline former Border Patrol officer, outlined the latitude Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had to approach, detain and question someone on the street about their immigration status. Officers were not required to show 'probable cause', he said, but 'reasonable suspicion' that a person was in the US illegally. Such suspicion could be aroused by several factors, he said, including the way someone looked. 'It's the totality of the circumstances … based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions,' Homan told Fox News. He later clarified that physical appearance could not be the sole factor that led an agent to detain someone. The dynamic playing out in LA, where a city and state are in open defiance of the federal government, is unlike anything Australians would witness at home. As a so-called sanctuary city, LA authorities do not actively assist in immigration enforcement, although they follow the law, Bass says. Since 1979, Special Order 40 has prevented LA police from questioning people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, are pushing back hard against what they frame as the Trump administration's deliberate, politically motivated targeting of liberal California. The federal government, led by the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, views this as treason. 'Los Angeles is waging insurrection against the federal government,' he said on Friday as Bass signed an executive order to help local officials resist ICE raids at public locations such as libraries, and inform them of their rights. LA is also helping to co-ordinate cash cards for families affected by the raids, which will reportedly have about $US200 ($305) on them. The cash will not come from public coffers but from philanthropic partners. The latest raids have changed LA, where about half of the 3.8 million inhabitants are Latino. Streets in the usually bustling garment district went quiet after ICE swept through an apparel store in June. In a city where the car is king, people are having trouble getting their vehicles washed because migrant workers are scared to go to work. 'It's hard for me to believe cartels are hanging out in car washes,' Bass told MSNBC. She said masked agents without uniforms had been jumping out of unmarked cars to snatch people off the streets. 'People have been terrorised and terrified. People don't leave home.' But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) paints an entirely different picture. It said 361 illegal aliens were arrested at the two marijuana farms alone, including criminals with convictions for rape, kidnapping, child molestation, serial burglary and hit-and-run. The raids also bring to the fore questions about the tenuous state of migrant labour, on which California and much of the US economy rely. These workplaces are typically out of sight and out of mind: farms, restaurant kitchens, textile houses in the fashion district. Where there are illegal migrants, there is often exploitation. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said agents found 14 minors at the marijuana farms, including 10 who were unaccompanied. 'They were likely being exploited: potential slave or forced labour, potential child and human trafficking,' she told Fox News. Alanis, the man who died following one of the cannabis farm raids, was incorrectly reported dead days ago by the United Farm Workers union. At the time, he was hospitalised with severe injuries. But an update to the family's GoFundMe page confirmed he later died. It said Alanis had suffered a broken neck, fractured skull and severed artery, and described the raid as 'reckless'. McLaughlin said Alanis was not being pursued by law enforcement officers but 'climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet'. Meanwhile, the California judge's order to limit the circumstances in which ICE agents can ask for papers has reignited the White House's war against the judiciary, which had softened following a major Supreme Court victory in late June. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which brought the challenge, said the temporary ruling showed it was unconstitutional to stop individuals based on their skin colour, apparent race or accent. Miller said of the decision: 'A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs, not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.'
Newsweek
2 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Los Angeles To Give Cash Assistance To Immigrants Impacted By Trump Raids
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced a new initiative to provide direct cash assistance to immigrants impacted by the Trump administration's ongoing immigration raids. The funds will be distributed as cash cards valued at "a couple hundred" dollars each and is expected to become available within the next week, Bass said Newsweek has contacted Bass' office for comment via email outside of office hours. Why It Matters President Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history to address illegal immigration and border security. However, the policy has sparked concerns about its potential effects on the economy. The GOP's flagship immigration policy under Trump is causing people to avoid going to work amid fears over workplace raids. California has become one of the key battleground states for immigration enforcement after President Trump directed ICE to increase operations in sanctuary states. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass stands in front of a Border Patrol federal agent at MacArthur Park Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass stands in front of a Border Patrol federal agent at MacArthur Park Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. Damian Dovarganes/AP What To Know The cash assistance is intended for families directly impacted by the immigration raids. Mayor Bass highlighted the example of a family that faced potential eviction after one of its primary earners was detained by immigration authorities. The program will be funded through private donations rather than city funds. Immigrant rights organizations, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, will handle the distribution of the cash cards. According to the mayor's office, the city will coordinate efforts between donors and distribution partners, though specific eligibility criteria have not yet been announced. Bass likened the initiative to the Angeleno Cards program launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided emergency financial assistance to vulnerable residents in Los Angeles. The cash cards announcement coincided with a new executive order signed Friday by Bass, directing all city departments to strengthen training and policies ensuring compliance with Los Angeles' sanctuary city law. This law prohibits using city employees or resources for civil immigration enforcement, except in cases of serious crime. City departments have two weeks to outline updated protocols, Bass said. The executive order also creates a working group to review the Los Angeles Police Department's approach to federal immigration enforcement and directs city staff to seek records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on recent raids. The measures are part of a series of responses from city leaders and the mayor to a federal crackdown that has entered its second month in Los Angeles. The American Immigration Council projects that the mass removal policy could carry a one-time cost of $315 billion. Furthermore, deporting 1 million individuals each year could lead to annual expenses reaching up to $88 billion. What People Are Saying Bass said at a press conference on Friday: "You have people who don't want to leave their homes, who are not going to work, and they are in need of cash."
