Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks to KTLA on ICE raids, protests and federal response: ‘This is just political’

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke to KTLA on Sunday morning to discuss the protests over ICE raids taking place throughout the city and greater L.A. area as well as the response from federal officials, including President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy thousands of National Guard troops.

“I’m very disappointed that [Trump] chose to [deploy the National Guard] because it was just not necessary,” Bass said in a phone interview.

The mayor continued on to say that she was told there were about 120 protesters in downtown L.A. Saturday night, some of whom “committed acts of vandalism,” but nothing that the Los Angeles Police Department couldn’t handle, she said.

“To me, this is just completely unnecessary, and I think it’s the [Trump] administration just posturing,” Bass continued. “I’ve spoken to the governor several times…I have not yet talked to the president, but I have talked to officials high up in his administration, and I expressed to them that things were not out of control in the City of Los Angeles.”

“Paramount had some issues, but I doubt very seriously that there is a need for the National Guard there either,” she added. “To me, this is just political.”

Speaking on what she told federal officials, Bass said she was in contact with Border Czar Tom Homan and explicitly told him that “if you want there to be chaos in Los Angeles, then have troops on the ground.”

Additionally, Mayor Bass said that the immigrants who have been detained are not in downtown Los Angeles anymore and have likely been moved to an ICE facility in Adelanto. She was not briefed on the conditions they are being kept in.

“What I have been pushing the administration to do is to allow legal counsel to go in and talk to the people who were detained,” Bass explained. “That is the way it has happened in the past and there’s no reason to break that practice.”

On that topic, Bass noted that federal officials were “open to it” when she talked to them and that she was “looking forward to following up” on Sunday.

“I’m hoping they’ve made a decision,” she said.

Federal officials have criticized local law enforcement for alleged slow response times to the protests, something that Mayor Bass thinks is unfair to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and the responding officers.

“I think people should understand that if the Chief does not know when ICE is going to come to town, where they are going to be and why, then you can’t come into town and expect the LAPD to amass hundreds of officers in a few minutes,” she said. “My understanding is it took about an hour for the [full deployment].”

Bass also had a message for protesters.

“It is absolutely [the protesters’] right to exercise the First Amendment, but it is completely unacceptable for there to be any level of violence or vandalism of any type,” she said. “These are the very people who don’t want ICE to be involved…this [resulted] in the National Guard [being deployed].”

President Donald Trump has publicly called out both Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom for being “unable to handle the task” of quelling the demonstrations, some of which have turned destructive. Newsom called Trump’s choice to deploy thousands of Guardsmen “purposefully inflammatory,” and less than ten minutes later, Trump put out a post reiterating that the “Federal Government will step in and solve the problem” if local and state leaders can’t do their jobs, which, according to Trump, “everyone knows they can’t.”

The unrest began on Friday when federal agents began conducting raids in downtown Los Angeles and the Westlake neighborhood and continued into Saturday when another raid was conducted in Paramount. Protests had spread from Paramount and neighboring Compton to DTLA by Saturday evening.

Multiple demonstrations are planned for Sunday as the situation unfolds and political discourse continues.