The FBI's Los Angeles office helmed a multi-agency raid near MacArthur Park on Thursday, nabbing 12 members and associates of the notorious 18th Street gang.
FBI agents partnered with LAPD, HSI, IRS, DEA, and U.S. Marshals to serve multiple search and arrest warrants. Illegal narcotics, cash, and other evidence were seized.
And Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is furious. Not at the gang. The people who caught them.
This isn't the first time federal law enforcement has descended on MacArthur Park, and it isn't the first time Bass has responded by attacking the agents rather than the criminals. According to The NY Post, in July 2025, when immigration agents moved into the same park to root out MS-13 gang members and open-air drug markets, Bass ranted on X, posting a time-lapse video of agents marching across an empty soccer field. She called the operation "outrageous" and "un-American."
She insisted at the time that MacArthur Park was a beloved children's sanctuary. Her words from that earlier episode still hang in the air:
"Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through."
The implication was clear: federal agents were the threat, not the gang members running narcotics through a public park. Bass wanted Angelenos to see jackboots stomping on a soccer field. She did not want them to see what the FBI found when it actually searched the place.
Former State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, now a candidate for California Lieutenant Governor, swiftly called out Bass on X:
"Didn't @MayorOfLA claim they were just picnicking? Anyone with eyes could see the total destruction, corruption, trafficking that was going on there. Thanks to @billessayli maybe we might be able to picnic there one day."
That cuts to the core of the issue. Bass spent months selling MacArthur Park as a family destination. Federal agents spent Thursday pulling gang members, drugs, and cash out of it. One of those things is a lie.
Kent Moyer, CEO of private security company The World Protection Group, didn't mince words either:
"You publicly promoted MacArthur Park as a safe, family-friendly place for the community — yet gangs were controlling the area. Angelenos deserve leadership that confronts reality and protects our neighborhoods, not photo ops and empty assurances."
Moyer also posed a question Bass has yet to answer: "Why didn't you take care of this problem, @MayorOfLA? Another failure."
The 18th Street gang, also known as Barrio 18, is not some minor street crew. The organization claims an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 members across the US, Mexico, and Central America. In September 2025, the US State Department designated Barrio 18 a foreign terrorist organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.
Read that again. A designated foreign terrorist organization was operating near a public park in America's second-largest city. And the mayor's response to federal intervention was to call it "un-American."
This is the contradiction at the heart of progressive governance in cities like Los Angeles. The rhetoric is always about protecting communities. The policies always seem to protect the people terrorizing them. Bass didn't demand action against the 18th Street gang. She didn't hold a press conference demanding accountability for the drug markets poisoning her constituents. She posted a video of federal agents walking across a field and framed them as the villains.
The broader pattern here extends well beyond one park. Leaders like Bass govern for the image, not for the residents who have to live with the consequences. When federal agencies coordinate a multi-agency operation involving six different law enforcement bodies and seize narcotics and cash from gang associates, that is not an overreach. That is the basic function of government.
But Bass chose to cast it as oppression. She chose to gaslight a city into believing that a park controlled by a designated terrorist organization was a safe place for children. She chose the photo op over the truth, every single time.
Consider the incentive structure this creates. Gang members watch the mayor of Los Angeles publicly condemn the agents who come after them. They watch her describe enforcement operations as "outrageous." They hear the most powerful official in the city call their arrest "un-American." That is not neutrality. That is a signal.
Thursday's raid produced concrete results:
That is what law enforcement looks like when it is actually allowed to function. The FBI, LAPD, HSI, IRS, DEA, and U.S. Marshals did in one day what the city's political leadership refused to do for months.
Angelenos deserve to know why their mayor spent more energy attacking the raid than the gang. They deserve to know why she painted a park overrun by a foreign terrorist organization as a children's playground. They deserve to know whose side she is on.
Twelve arrests won't fix MacArthur Park. But at least someone is trying. It just isn't the mayor.
