Immigration agents and their raids are now a common occurrence, but they’re increasingly using more “creative” tactics to catch immigrants. For example, a group of ICE agents arrived in a Penske truck at Home Depot in the McArthur Park area of Los Angeles to perform a raid. Immediately, immigrants in the surrounding area ran away from the officers. And as many could imagine — as happens in these types of cases — the comments on social media about this event are highly divided.
On X, formerly Twitter, dozens of videos about this same raid stand out. Like the one from @MattFinnFNC, the account of Matt Finn, FOX News Channel’s correspondent in Los Angeles. The videos show a group of ICE officers waiting inside a Penske truck until they opened it to begin a raid on immigrants near Home Depot in the McArthur Park area of Los Angeles. Oddly, a Fox camera crew was also inside the truck with the agents and was filming them too.
In his post, Matt Finn added, “Breaking: DHS arrives in Penske trucks at a Home Depot in the McArthur Park area of LA for early morning immigration enforcement. The area was filled with migrants who scattered. DHS says MS 13 has a chokehold on this area, which is one reason they’re carrying out the highly optic immigration raids. 16 taken into custody.” There were several users on X congratulating the officers for their work and others who would have liked to see all the action from the front row.
However, some users did not believe it, such as MinneapoliSam: “Did you ask for proof of the chokehold? How many of the 16 arrested had prior records and for what? You got to ride along during the raid I hope you did some journalism along the way.” To which Finn shared an NPR article that exposes that spot in the city has been a stronghold for that gangs for decades. However, in other videos, it appears that the immigrants who ran away from ICE were just vendors from the same area who left their stalls to escape.
Another critical point is that many may think that Penske Trucks was complicit in the raids, but the team shared a post on their official social media accounts denying this. The company clarified that they didn’t know that the agents would use their trucks for this purpose and that they do not allow the transport of people in them. This further divided opinions about this raid.
