Mayor Eric Garcetti recently envisioned a scenario where Immigrant and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agents are aggressively confronted by “swarming” teenagers
while making an arrest on a Los Angeles sidewalk. The faceoff would be captured
on video - sparking a “tinderbox” that results in days of looting, arson, and several
lives lost.
“We just commemorated 25 years since the urban unrest, and we know how
quickly things can explode,” Garcetti told host Maria Hinojosa during a recent
“If something goes wrong I fear a tinderbox out there, where people will suddenly
say ‘no,’ and try to defend, keep that person from being taken,” Garcetti said.
“That’s a very dangerous situation.”
The “urban unrest” to which Garcetti refers were the 1992 riots, suggesting
the chain of events he foreshadowed could escalate beyond his control – just
like in ‘92 - when Mayor Tom Bradley was forced to rely on assistance from
the California National Guard and President George H. W. Bush. More than
1,100 Marines and 600 Army soldiers were deployed to the streets of Los Angeles.
Partial transcript as follows:
HINOJOSA: “As the Mayor of L.A., it has crossed your mind, like, ‘Oh my
God. The next tinderbox might not be black-white relations, but might end
up being immigrant-police-ICE confrontations?’ And then that could lead
to an ugly, ugly chapter in L.A.’s life?”
GARCETTI: “Imagine a parent who’s dropping off their child. As we’ve
seen, ICE officers, ICE agents take that parent away, and it’s videotaped.
Imagine if that’s on the sidewalk and students start swarming, and they’re
teenagers. It’s dangerous for those agents. It’s dangerous for our city.
The hot button in 1992 was not immigration enforcement. It was police brutality.
Four white officers from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) had been
acquitted of beating Rodney King, a black motorist who tried to evade law
enforcement during a high-speed pursuit. As the
Los Angeles Times reported,
amateur video “showed officers delivering repeated baton blows and kicks as King
rolled on the ground. Its images have been seared into the minds of viewers the
world over who have watched the tape broadcast repeatedly.”
Garcetti’s criticism of ICE comes after the agency recently announced more than
41,000 arrests during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office – a
37.6% increase from that same period last year.
According to ICE, nearly
75 percent of those detained “are convicted criminals, with offenses ranging
from homicide and assault to sexual abuse and drug-related charges.” ICE
agents were also part of a recent
operation in Los Angeles targeting MS-13
gang members – some of whom have links to the Mexican Mafia. 50 predawn
raids on May 17 resulted in 44 arrests. More than half of those detained were
in the country illegally.
In February, Garcetti wrote a
letter to a District Director at ICE urging that “agents
operating in Los Angeles immediately stop representing they are ‘police’
officers.” The request cited a two-day-old article published by the Los Angeles
people. The story went on to mention documentation collected by a George
Soros-funded advocacy group which alleges to show ICE agents using “deceit
while targeting people for deportation.”
Five days after Garcetti’s letter, ICE agents with the word “POLICE” prominently
displayed across their backs detained an unlawfully present immigrant with
multiple criminal convictions as he as he dropped off his daughters at school
in Los Angeles.
Video of the incident went viral, prompting LAPD Commissioner
Steve Soboroff – a Garcetti appointee – to react by
tweeting, “SHAME ON
YOU POTUS.” Nearly two weeks earlier, Soboroff had
asked whoever mans
the official ICE Twitter account to define “criminal.”
However, the Garcetti administration’s defiance of ICE did not begin with the
inauguration of Donald J. Trump.
In the summer of 2014, Garcetti
announced that LAPD would no longer comply
with ICE requests to detain unlawfully present immigrants for possible deportation
without judicial review.
Organizing Network (NDLON) – a group considered to be part of the ‘open-borders
lobby’ that has received
funding from Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Beck
promoted several LAPD policy changes implemented to accommodate the
region’s unlawfully present population.
“When we stopped honoring ICE detention requests in every instance, it was
not about doing what was popular or easy,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck a
told a
church sanctuary filled with mostly organizers and day laborers. “It was about
doing what was right.”
The ICE Out of L.A. Coalition is an alliance of 23 social justice groups, including
NDLON, which “
aim to create an open source campaign where people push
for ICE out of L.A. and full civil and human rights through diverse and innovative
tactics.”
Staff attorneys from the NDLON – which
sued ICE last year – make themselves
readily available for media interviews to shape ICE detainment narratives for
various outlets from
New York to
L.A. Meanwhile, activists affiliated with NDLON
pressure California politicians to
advocate on its behalf. One such
NDLON-led drive references Garcetti,
stating “the L.A. Mayor” supports the
cause.
As Garcetti’s 15-minute segment with Hinojosa came to an end, he addressed
whether Los Angeles should be categorized as a “sanctuary city.” The mayor
deemed the phrase to be a broad term that evokes an inaccurate caricature
from “fifty percent of the country” as “places that invite dangerous criminals” who
are “given bonus points if they’re undocumented.”
“If a ‘sanctuary city’ means that your police force will not be deputized or take it
upon themselves to enforce immigration law, then absolutely we are and proudly
so,” Garcetti prevaricated.
“We’re not doing these things because we’re a bunch of lefties,” the mayor
continued. “We’re proud of our politics being progressive out here. We’re doing
it because it’s the right thing to do.”
nonprofit founded by Hinojosa “committed to producing ethical journalism from
a POC (people of color) perspective and representing the new American
mainstream.”
Coincidentally, the company is
financed by part of the same global
conglomerate of foundations that have bankrolled the NDLON, including
Unbound Philanthropy and the Ford Foundation. From 2010-2015, Hinojosa’s
Futuro Media Group received $9,764,142 in grants and contributions to produce
programming like last week’s interview with Mayor Garcetti.
You can listen to Garcetti's interview with NPR
here.
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