Remember the Time LA Mayor Karen Bass Barged Into MacArthur Park and Ordered the MS-13 to Leave?

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass gave herself away after she confronted Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducting a huge operation at the famous — and infamous — MacArthur Park on Monday and ordered them to leave immediately.

Federal agents, supported nearby with horses and military vehicles stationed nearby, fanned out across the mostly empty park at about 10:45 a.m. to conduct a wide-scale bust, but, instead of seeing the usual street vendors, drug dealers, and MS-13 gangsters who consider the park their place of business, the park was the quietest it's been in years. Bass claimed there were "only children playing in the park," and she may be right. There was a reported summer camp taking place on a soccer field in the park — a park that parents wouldn't dare allow their kids to play in at any other time.

The feds' operation included 17 Humvees, four tactical vehicles, two ambulances, and 90 armed National Guard soldiers providing backup in case shooting started. ICE and border agents have been shot at twice recently in Texas. A helicopter provided overwatch at the notoriously dangerous park.

This is footage from today in MacArthur Park.

This is footage from today in MacArthur Park.

Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through.

The SECOND I heard about this, I went to the park to speak to the person in charge to tell them it needed to end NOW.

Absolutely outrageous. pic.twitter.com/sxGzjGlYlr
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) July 7, 2025

Bass, the Castro-supporting communista, said the raid was "outrageous and un-American." This isn't something you see every day in an American park, it's true.

What happened in MacArthur Park is outrageous and un-American.

These raids must end. pic.twitter.com/VkoLOwDgGA
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) July 7, 2025

This is what "MethArthur Park" usually looks like.

Karen Bass wants you to believe kid’s were playing in MethArthur Parkpic.twitter.com/SgSq1MgdIZ https://t.co/yNhmTL3O2a
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) July 7, 2025

MacArthur Park was lauded in a 1970s-era song. The park's reputation has sunk in line with the song's critical acclaim.

Here's what a 2008 NPR story reported:

In the past few decades, it's also been a gang stronghold — with at least four street gangs claiming turf and drug trade in and around the park.
The bitter rivalries used to turn the park into a scene of violent, sometimes deadly crimes.
But lately, a joint Los Angeles Police Department-FBI crackdown has put a major dent in gang dominance over the area.

There was a riot in the park in 2007 over immigration known as the May Day Melee.

Bass has tried to clean up the park after local businesses, including the iconic Langers Deli, complained about conditions there, but, it still is the home turf of multiple gangs where MS-13 and the favorite gang of the vice mayor of Cudahy, the 18th Street gangsters, run the open air drug markets and street vendors who fence stolen merchandise.

One of the largest property owners, who has grown into an expert on conditions on the ground around MacArthur Park, says the street vendors who "block entrances" of brick and mortar businesses, are actually run or extorted by a Mexican cartel who also use the vendors as a blind behind which they sell drugs.

"Behind the scenes of the carts you'll find individual men always on the move and they're the sidewalk landlords andthey're extorting payments from the vendors and also selling drugs the main business the main source of economy economic," John Alle told Epoch Times in an interview four months ago.

"Revenue in the Westlake area are drugs and money that goes back to the home countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. These vendors there are people that are collect money," he said, claiming he knows this because of the cartels offering him money to allow them to set up in front of his properties. "I would never take money," he said. Other landlords and their families have been threatened by the cartels. Karen Bass has never stated that these threats are "un-American."

"We've got 67% of the population down there is illegal that's more than any area of L.A. county," he says. "And it's in the top 90 percentile of the whole country in that small area of MacArthur Park West Lake so it's something."

You can well understand why this area was of grave concern to the Trump administration.

Bass was basking in the afterglow of demanding ICE leave her park when local Fox News reporter Elex Michaelson asked her about the drug and MS-13 gang activity. MS-13 is now considered a terrorist organization.

Bass told him, "And you know what? We have a police department."

Michaelson asked her if she thought the cops were doing a good job there. The notoriously anti-cop mayor, working with a local council person who's anti-ICE, said, "These problems can't be solved overnight. The park is in much better situation than it was. We've had a dramatic drop in violent crime. And so, what problem were they here to solve? We didn't ask for them to come. Chief McDonnell didn't say, hey, we need some help. Nobody asked for their help. So, what was the point?"

Maybe Bass can go to the cartels and demand that they leave will work with MS-13. It seemed to work with the feds. We wonder why that hasn't happened.

And one more thing. How come the park wasn't full of those druggies and gangsters when ICE got there? Did someone tip them off using one of the anti-ICE apps, websites, or snitch lines?

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