It looked like a raid. It played like a production. Federal agents and National Guard troops flooded MacArthur Park in what appeared to be a major enforcement action—until it wasn’t. Then, in front of rolling cameras, Mayor Karen Bass showed up and called it off.
July 7, 2025
By Nick Valencia
LOS ANGELES — By late morning, the scene unfolding at MacArthur Park had all the markers of a major federal raid. But no one was detained. No arrests were made. There wasn’t even a confirmed target.
Then Mayor Karen Bass arrived. Cameras caught the moment she was handed a phone by a federal official. She spoke briefly into the phone, and shortly after, the operation was halted. Agents cleared out. The raid ended as suddenly as it had begun.
The optics raised more questions than they answered.
Roughly 90 members of the California National Guard and federal agents had mobilized at the park, deploying Humvees, tactical teams, and officers on horseback. The sheer scale of the operation suggested something significant. But by all available evidence, the park had been mostly empty.
Mayor Bass told reporters, “What I saw looked like a city under siege.” She called the event a “political stunt” and said children in a nearby summer camp were frightened. “It’s unacceptable,” she said. Later, at a press briefing, she characterized the operation as “a political agenda of provoking fear and terror.”
Still, others questioned the timing of her appearance.
“It seemed really convenient,” said Mexican filmmaker Jorge Xolalpa Vazquez. “Where has she been for the last 32 days?”
In an interview with Nick Valencia News, Xolalpa questioned why the mayor had not intervened sooner if she had the power to do so.
“She shows up today, but where was she when they were raiding warehouses or hotels? If she has the power to stop these raids, why now?”
His comments reflect growing skepticism in Los Angeles, where many residents feel the line between policy and performance has become increasingly blurred.
As a filmmaker, Xolalpa said the moment struck him as deliberate and perhaps coordinated from the highest levels.
“Trump’s not a president. He’s a producer. One of the best Hollywood’s ever had. We don’t have a president in the White House. We have a producer,” he said.
Throughout the operation, journalists weren’t just reporting—they were being recorded. A federal agent in a cowboy hat, possibly the same one who passed the phone to Bass, was seen filming members of the press as they documented the scene. A Fox News correspondent appeared to be allowed closer than other journalists, some of whom were pushed back by agents.
At one point, a federal agent invited a reporter closer, only to then tell him, “You’re too close. Don’t get behind us.”
We reached out to the mayor’s office with several questions: If Mayor Bass had the authority to stop federal raids, why hadn’t she acted sooner? Was this truly a spontaneous intervention, or one shaped for the cameras? Why wait 32 days?
Her office referred us to the press conference but did not answer those specific questions.
For over a month, Los Angeles has experienced an ongoing federal presence—raids at car washes, hotels, warehouses. Street vendors have largely disappeared. Some neighborhoods feel subdued.
Monday’s sweep at MacArthur Park didn’t bring arrests or resolution. It brought a familiar kind of confusion—part policy, part pageantry.
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