U.S. Border Patrol enforcement agents resumed immigration sweeps in Los Angeles on Wednesday. With a new twist. They used a large rental truck to bring agents to the parking lot of a big-box home improvement store to go after illegal aliens at the site.
The Los Angeles Times reported the enforcement action began as a man drove a Penske rental truck close to a group of “day laborers” gathered outside a Home Depot, and asked if anyone was looking for work. As some moved closer to the truck, the Times reported more than half a dozen enforcement agents jumped out of the back. Sixteen arrests were made on the spot, while others fled the scene.
The on-the-spot warning from the U.S. Border Patrol’s sector chief, Gregory Bovino, was, “We’re not leaving.” Bovino has been in charge of Border Patrol enforcement efforts in the Los Angeles area since the government began enforcement sweeps there earlier this year. The Times said he referenced the raid as “Operation Trojan Horse.”
The original Trojan Horse, a large hollow wooden horse, was used by the Greeks to hide inside, and it was then rolled into the city of Troy, where soldiers jumped out to help capture the city. A more modern reference is to malicious computer code.
The Border Patrol action in LA came under immediate fire from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who said, “We are all trying to look into exactly what happened,” she said. “But from the video and from the stills, it looks like the exact same thing that we were seeing before.”
The “exact same thing” is government immigration enforcement raids that were curbed by a federal court order that said the government could not use a person’s race, profession, location or language as a probable cause to detain them for possible U.S. immigration law violations. The ruling only affects an area including and surrounding Los Angeles.
A series of immigration sweeps around the city and neighboring areas in June brought on riots that left $20 million in damages.
Bass said city legal staffers were reviewing how to respond to what appeared to be the government ignoring the court protections.
Using the Penske rental truck might also get the government into some trouble. The Times reported that Penske spokesman Randolph Ryerson pointed out that “the company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today’s operation and did not authorize this.”
The company posted shortly after the sweep that it would be in touch with the Department of Homeland Security about the “improper use of its vehicles in the future.”
That was reposted by the Department of Homeland Security, which pointed to a media report of several dozen illegal aliens found hiding inside a Penske truck, which led to no reaction from the company. DHS said “Silence speaks volumes. The brave agents of @ICEgov and @CBP will continue carrying out their mission to protect Americans.”
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