affirmed by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals<\/a> panel on Aug. 1. The courts ruled that immigration officials cannot racially profile people or use roving patrols to target immigrants.<\/p>\nIn a press conference outside of the museum following the operation, Mayor Karen Bass said, \u201cthere\u2019s no way this was a coincidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was widely publicized that the governor and many of our other elected officials were having a press conference to talk about redistricting, and they decided they were going to come and thumb their nose in front of the governor\u2019s face. Why would you do that? That is unbelievably disrespectful, it\u2019s a provocative act,\u201d Bass said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re talking about disorder in Los Angeles,\u201d the mayor said, \u201cand they are the source of the disorder in Los Angeles right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an emailed response, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Bass \u201cmust be misinformed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law \u2014 not about Gavin Newsom,\u201d she said. McLaughlin added that U.S. Customs and Border Protection \u201cpatrols all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make LA safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newsom and Democratic allies, including organized labor, were at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum to announce the launch of a campaign for a ballot measure which, if approved by voters, would redraw the state\u2019s congressional maps to favor Democrats before the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n
William T. Fujioka, chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum, was attending the Newsom press conference when federal agents jumped out of SUVs just feet away from him in front of the museum.<\/p>\n
Video captured of the scene showed federal agents on either side of a man, in a red shirt and jeans, whose hands were cuffed behind his back. As a passerby shouted that they were \u201ccowards,\u201d Bovino said, \u201cwell done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlos Franco said he works with Angel, the man who was arrested by federal agents, and said Angel was in Little Tokyo delivering strawberries. His delivery van was still parked outside the museum more than an hour after he was arrested, Franco said. Franco came straight to the scene after he received calls that his coworker had been arrested.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just doing his normal delivery to the courthouse,\u201d Franco said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty sad, because I\u2019ve got to go to work tomorrow, and Angel isn\u2019t going to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saying he was shaken by his friend\u2019s apprehension, Franco advised everyone to \u201cbe careful in general, whether you\u2019re undocumented or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bovino told reporters in Little Tokyo that agents were out conducting \u201croving patrol duties.\u201d He acknowledged that agents had detained one person and said, \u201cwe will patrol anywhere in Los Angeles.\u201d Asked if their presence just happened to coincide with Newsom\u2019s press conference, Bovino said, \u201cbreaking the law is not coincidental.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they break the law, you can expect you\u2019re probably going to get arrested,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
DHS did not immediately respond to questions about the arrest.<\/p>\n
Fujioka said the agents\u2019 appearance in Little Tokyo \u201cis a parallel of what happened in 1942,\u201d and noting that the museum was built on the location where L.A. residents of Japanese descent \u201cwere told to come here and put on buses and sent to camps.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 73, Fujioka is a third-generation Japanese American. He said about 20 people were arrested during Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids two weeks ago at restaurants and businesses in and near Little Tokyo Village Plaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happening right now is reprehensible,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the fallacies is that this is only targeting Latinos. If you look at the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Chinese, even Japanese communities, they\u2019re being picked up right in court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking with community leaders on L.A.\u2019s Westside early Thursday morning, Bass condemned the continued raids and said she believed they violated the temporary restraining order upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though we\u2019ve had two successful court decisions, the administration continues with their unconstitutional behavior. Coming and going to Home Depot stores, continuing to chase people through parking lots, detaining them for no particular reason under the auspices that they could be criminals, [it] comes down to one thing \u2014 and that is racial profiling,\u201d Bass said.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration last week<\/a> petitioned the Supreme Court to allow mass deportation efforts across Southern California, seeking to lift a ban on \u201croving patrols\u201d implemented after a lower court found such tactics likely violate the 4th Amendment.<\/p>\n\u201cWe know the next step is to go to the Supreme Court, and we are hoping that we will have a good decision there,\u201d Bass said. \u201cBut the question looms before us, even if we do have a positive court decision: \u2018Will the administration follow the rule of law?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Times staff writer Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Gov. Gavin Newsom prepared to announce that he would take on President Trump\u2019s redistricting plans on behalf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,58116,58115,2356,58113,58112,58119,58118,58117,58114,4281,6135,38730,3,58111,4933,45790,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-83449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-angel","tag-bass","tag-california","tag-carlos-franco","tag-federal-immigration-agent","tag-immigration-operation","tag-japanese-american-national-museum","tag-l-a-area","tag-little-tokyo","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-man","tag-museum","tag-news","tag-newsom-event","tag-press-conference","tag-several-people","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}