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90 National Guard troops, more than a dozen military vehicles descend on MacArthur Park

July 7, 2025

By TARA COPP and DAMIAN DOVARGANES

Dozens of federal officers in tactical gear roamed a mostly empty park in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a large immigrant population on Monday for about an hour before clearing out. It wasn’t immediately known if any arrests were made.

Defense officials had said about 90 members of the California National Guard and over a dozen military vehicles would help protect immigration officers as they carried out a raid in MacArthur Park.

Mayor Karen Bass was among the small crowd who watched as officers moved through a section of the park in the late morning and then got back in the vehicles and cleared out. Some activists who had earlier warned people to leave the area filmed the officers. Messages were sent to the mayor’s office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeking additional details.

Bass, who has repeatedly called for an end to federal immigration raids in the city, told reporters she had spoken on the phone to someone from CBP.

Asked for her reaction to the federal activity, Bass said, “They need to leave and they need to leave right now. They need to leave because this is unacceptable.”

Bass was then driven away from the area. A short time later, the federal agents all appeared to leave the area. Many of the protesters lingered near the park.

According to Fox News, the CBP official Bass spoke with on the phone was Chief Gregory Bovino of the agency’s El Centro Sector. Bovino told Fox News, “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

Federal agents stage at MacArthur Park Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Jeannette Zanipatin with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights saw the brief but prominent presence of troops and federal officers at the park. “I definitely think it’s a source of intimidation,” she said. “We know that the Trump administration is trying to make an example of Los Angeles.”

The operation in the large park about 2 miles west of downtown LA included 17 Humvees, four tactical vehicles, two ambulances and the armed soldiers, defense officials said. It came after President Donald Trump deployed thousands of Guard members and active duty Marines to the city last month following protests over previous immigration raids.

Trump has stepped up efforts to realize his campaign pledge of deporting millions of immigrants in the United States illegally and shown a willingness to use the nation’s military might in ways other U.S. presidents have typically avoided.

The officials told reporters that it was not a military operation but acknowledged that the size and scope of the Guard’s participation could make it look like one to the public. That is why the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details about the raid that were not announced publicly.

A person takes cell phone images of federal agents Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

“It’s just going to be more overt and larger than we usually participate in,” one of the officials said.

The primary role of the service members would be to protect the immigration enforcement officers in case a hostile crowd gathered, that official said. They are not participating in any law enforcement activities such as arrests, but service members can temporarily detain citizens if necessary before handing them over to law enforcement, the official said.

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.”

A person holds a sign in front of federal agents at MacArthur Park Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Sprawling MacArthur Park has a murky lake ringed by palm trees, an amphitheater that hosts summer concerts and sports fields where immigrant families line up to play soccer in the evenings and on weekends. Authorities routinely clear encampments, and medical outreach teams tend to unhoused residents.

More than 4,000 California National Guard and hundreds of U.S. Marines have been deployed in Los Angeles since June — against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Last week, the military announced about 200 of those troops would be returned to their units to fight wildfires.

Copp reported from Washington. City News Service and Associated Press journalists Christopher Weber and Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed to this report.