AS FEDERAL AGENTS abducted at least 118 immigrants throughout Los Angeles County over the weekend, local leaders swatted away suggestions of collaboration on immigration enforcement — and sought to keep the blame squarely on federal authorities.
“LA was peaceful before Friday,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who joined her fellow California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom in blaming the Trump administration for escalating tensions by deploying federal troops. As of Tuesday, Trump has deployed 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to the city so far.
Trump’s militarized response was certainly escalatory, several protesters told The Intercept. But while National Guard troops mostly stood around outside federal buildings, it was the Los Angeles Police Department whose members brutalized protesters with batons, tear gas, and so-called “less-lethal” munitions, drawing blood and bruising people who turned out to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
This is literally the most dystopian version of those two kids in your class who clearly had a crush on each other but were too shy to come out and say it to one another to the point that it became a running joke among the other students about when they were finally going to start dating.
And so then, instead of dealing with their emotions directly, they send each other cryptic messages by beating up the same classmates.