Immigrants' Rights Town Hall

Mayor Karen Bass Statement during the town hall meeting

Mayor Karen Bass and other City and community leaders held a virtual town hall to discuss immigrants’ rights.

Transcript:

“…doing what I refer to as hunting of Latinos off of our streets. What I feel proud about is that our city stood united. We’ve resisted this and fought back and successfully, as you all know, won two court cases, but then having it nullified on a federal level. We knew at the time that what was happening in Los Angeles was going to be an experiment and that it would soon be delivered to other cities around the country. You should know that I have been in contact with mayors all over the country, including my friend and colleague from Chicago, who I’ll be meeting with in the next couple of days. But staying in contact, knowing that it was starting here and then going to go to other cities.

The cities that the president named in the very beginning have one thing in common: they have a number of things in common, but every mayor has been African-American. There was an exception over in Portland. In my opinion, this is done to try to create a division, but I think that all of us are going to be united. I will tell you, though, in some of the other cities, they have very, very different circumstances because they are in Republican states. We have the privilege of being in the state of California, where we have our governor and just about everybody else fighting to resist the invasion. We are fortunate also in the city of Los Angeles to have a Department of Immigrant Affairs that has been involved in this issue from the beginning, but I would say the beginning goes back a couple of years, when we had Governor Abbott, who was shipping people here and dumping them in the city of Los Angeles to create confusion.

We stood together with our immigrant rights partners, some of whom are in the organizations I have known and worked with for several decades, and we are very, very privileged in the city of Los Angeles to have such a solid immigrant rights infrastructure that is several decades old and has a lot of experience with the ups and downs of various administrations. But I think that we showed Washington as well as we showed the nation that we were going to stand strong and we were not going to put up with what was happening here. The other thing that we have been fortunate about in the laws around Sanctuary City for many, many, many years, but I will say that we never anticipated a lawless federal government.

We never anticipated the very notion of what Sanctuary City is being challenged so fundamentally that has happened. The administration is challenging the rule of law all over the place, on a federal level, on an international level, as well as his willingness to take over states. What we have done in our city is we have issued executive directives. I did that in July, which basically implements the city’s ordinance barring use of municipal resources, personnel, property, or data for federal immigration enforcement. Every department has submitted a draft preparedness plan, designated an immigrant affairs liaison, and established training and protocols so that no one on city property is caught off guard. We are very fortunate to have Abigail Marquez, who I know is going to speak a little later in our community investment department and our family resource centers, where we were able to have philanthropic foundations come together and offer financial resources to families where they had experienced harassment or they had relatives that were detained, and working together through our departments to make sure they’re safe.

Having said that, we know that these raids are still going on on a daily basis. They’re still raiding Home Depots. They’re still going to car washes. They’re still snatching people off the street, but not the intensity of what we had before. In my Executive Directive 12, just an update, as I mentioned, every department has submitted preparedness plans, but we also have an ED12 working group, which includes the LAPD, immigrant rights advocates, and our labor partners that we’re meeting regularly to turn community guidance into policy guidance. As you know, LAPD is not participating in the civil immigration enforcement, and LAPD’s Special Order No. 1 implements our sanctuary ordinance and clarifies how officers must act at immigration scenes.

One of the things that has happened, though, again, one never imagined the situation where the federal government has basically invaded our city and presented us with a situation where the federal officers are taking over, leading then. And I know that our Assistant Chief, the position that they find themselves in as local law enforcement, and being in a position where the federal law enforcement supersedes their ability on a local level. They have demonstrated that they can come in and seize power, and they have done that. So with that, I think I will pause and turn it over back to Jenny Dale Wood, Deputy Chief of Staff. “