Mayor Karen Bass on Marines in Los Angeles

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When Karen Bass was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, she won in part Because of a promise to address the city's pervasive and very deep housing crisis.

But now there's a different crisis at her doorstep. Los Angeles is very much an immigrant city. According to the census, more than a third of the city is foreign born. The Trump administration has been targeting LA as part of what the president called the largest mass deportation operation in history.

Ice raids have swept up immigrants who were in the U.S. legally and in some cases are American citizens. In June, as protests against ICE developed, Trump sent a military force of thousands of troops, National Guard and even Marines, into Los Angeles, very much against the will of Mayor Bass and the Governor Gavin Newsome. Some have gone home, but some troops are deployed in the city even now. In Los Angeles, a battle has taken shape between a federal government that asserts an absolute mandate and a local government that says, we represent our people and will take care of our issues.

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