Federal agents tried to trick immigrants by arriving in the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles in a Penske rental truck.
In video on Fox11, Department of Homeland Security personnel — dressed in green fatigues — can be seen waiting for the roll-up door of the truck’s storage compartment to open and then hopped out Wednesday morning, Aug. 6, to make arrests.
The operation took place, even though there is a federal court order limiting immigration-enforcement arrests in Southern California, around 7 a.m. near a Home Depot about three blocks west of MacArthur Park.
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According to the video of Fox11, which had a crew embedded with U.S. Border Patrol, the personnel ran toward a group of people near a sidewalk food stand. The crowd scattered.
The Border Patrol dubbed it the “Trojan Horse” operation, with officials saying it resulted in the arrest of 16 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The agency didn’t answer questions in regard to whether the operation violated the court’s temporary restraining order.
Department of Homeland Security officials told Fox News that the notorious MS-13 gang has a “chokehold” on the area, necessitating such operations. Federal officials made similar comments last month when 100 or so personnel swept through MacArthur Park. During that operation, Mayor Karen Bass showed up and ask them to leave.
Penske Truck Rental strictly prohibits the transportation of people in the cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstance, the company said in a statement.
“The company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today’s operation and did not authorize this,” it said. “Penske will reach out to DHS and reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future.”
Homeland Security responded to Penske by pointing out a 2023 Fox News story about 58 migrants crammed inside a Penske truck in Texas in a human-smuggling case.
“Care to remind the American people what Penske said when this happened?” the statement said. “Silence speaks volumes. The brave agents of @ICEgov and @CBP will continue carrying out their mission to protect Americans.”
In addition to Wednesday’s operations, there had been reports on social media of immigration raids over the weekend.
The nonprofit American Civil Liberties Union is looking into those reports in addition to Wednesday’s operation.
“Per the court orders from July, the federal government — including DHS — is barred from continuing its unlawful actions in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties,” said Mohammad Tajsar, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, in a statement.
The court’s temporary restraining order, he said, bars immigration agents and officers from stopping people without reasonable suspicion, prohibiting them from just relying on apparent ethnicity, or the speaking of Spanish, or because of the workplace.
“While we continue to investigate these incidents, the evidence available so far raises serious concerns that the federal government may be in violation of the federal judge’s July temporary restraining order,” Tajsar said. “As shown at every step in the case thus far, the government seems unwilling to fulfill the aims of its racist mass-deportation agenda without breaking the law. …
“We will continue monitoring and alert the court of any further unlawful actions,” he added.
On X, Bill Essayli, the United States attorney for the Central District of California, acknowledged the operation, writing, “For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again. The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable, and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government.”
The federal government appealed the court ruling, but last week the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reverse it. The federal government is likely to appeal again, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court.
City News Service contributed to this report.