Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused President Donald Trump of deploying federal troops to her city last June specifically to intimidate Latino immigrants, calling the move an “invasion” carried out “for no reason at all.”
Bass made the remarks Tuesday during an appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” according to a clip flagged by Breitbart News. The mayor’s comments came in response to the president’s recent suggestion that another country would be within its rights to strike targets in the United States, remarks Bass described as horrifying.
‘A small price to pay’
“First of all, I was horrified that the president would basically say that another country is perfectly fine to take out or to attack our city and our sister city two hours away,” Bass said. “The role of the president is to protect and defend the American people.”
She referenced the president’s posture toward Iran, arguing he had signaled a willingness to accept civilian harm on American soil. “He went to war with Iran, and he basically said, it’s okay, that it’s a small price to pay to attack 3.8 million people in the nation’s second largest city,” Bass said. “I was horrified by those comments.”
From there, Bass pivoted to the federal deployment that unfolded in Los Angeles earlier this year, which she framed as the opening chapter of a broader strategy. “We are the city that he invaded last June with federal troops for no reason at all to intimidate a whole sector of our population, Latino immigrants,” she said.
Bass: L.A. was ‘an experiment’
The mayor went further, describing the arrival of Marines and roughly 4,000 National Guard troops as a deliberate effort to condition the American public to accept military operations on domestic streets.
“I think that when our city was invaded by the Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops for no reason at all, that that’s all part of the plan to get the U.S. public to acclimate to military intervention in our cities,” Bass said.
She said she had warned from the outset that Los Angeles would serve as a testing ground. “I said from day one, I thought L.A. was an experiment and this was going to spread around the country,” Bass said. “We saw that that was the case.”
The mayor suggested the political cost of future deployments may be lower because of what she characterized as the repetitive nature of federal intervention. “Now, maybe the next time it happens, Americans won’t be so outraged because they’ve seen so many cities have federal intervention from the military,” she said. “It’s a misuse of the military and irresponsible words.”
Escalating battle over domestic deployments
Bass’s language was among her sharpest to date on the federal role in Los Angeles, a city that has been at the center of a national fight over when and how the president can send military personnel into American communities. Her use of the word “invaded” echoes the framing used by other Democratic officials and immigrant advocacy groups who have argued the deployments were aimed at producing visible, frightening scenes of armed personnel in minority neighborhoods.
Supporters of the deployments have rejected that characterization, arguing federal assets were sent to restore order amid unrest and to back up immigration enforcement operations. But the mayor’s interview makes clear the dispute is not simply about operational details — it is about intent, and about whether the precedent set in Los Angeles and other cities will make similar action easier to carry out in the future.
Bass tied the deployment directly to immigration politics, saying the point was to intimidate “a whole sector of our population, Latino immigrants.” That claim places her at odds with the administration’s public rationale and aligns her with critics who describe the deployments as a domestic political instrument rather than a public safety measure.
Her remarks also widened the scope of her criticism. By invoking the president’s comments about a foreign strike on an American city and linking them to the deployment in Los Angeles, Bass presented the two as part of the same pattern — a willingness to treat American cities as acceptable arenas for military force.
The interview adds Bass to the roster of big-city mayors who have become prominent voices against federal troop deployments, a group whose objections have grown louder as similar operations have been discussed or carried out elsewhere. Whether that opposition shifts public opinion is an open question; the mayor’s own theory is that repetition dulls outrage.
“It’s a misuse of the military and irresponsible words,” she said, closing her answer to Cooper.
The clip circulated quickly after airing, with the exchange drawing attention for Bass’s direct language about the president and her claim that Los Angeles was targeted for reasons beyond any stated law enforcement purpose. The mayor did not offer additional evidence during the segment beyond her own account of events, and the administration has previously disputed the idea that the deployments were politically motivated.
Tuesday’s appearance is unlikely to be the last word. Bass has made the federal presence in Los Angeles a recurring theme in her public remarks, and her warning that the model will “spread around the country” positions the city as a case study in a broader national argument over the use of military force at home.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2026/10/06/karen-bass-trump-invaded-l-a-to-intimidate-latino-immigrants/