I’m going to make a thread about how the feds have changed their tactics here in Los Angeles because the community has forced them to adapt. In the first few days of the invasion of LA, we saw fully kitted feds in armored vehicles showing up at targeted locations. LAPD, LASD, & other police agencies would show up in riot gear with guns that shoot not-metal bullets (so-called “less lethals”). It was very easy to identify them.
What happened was that the regular degular folks in the neighborhood would stop what they were doing & go film & heckle the feds. Instead of everyone running scared into their houses, people were live-streaming & pissed off neighbors were coming out to tell them to go away. Some people threw stuff. But still, the feds would hit a business with 40 agents & LAPD would provide support by securing the perimeter & arresting anyone who got too close. The community started to be on the lookout for the “staging areas,” i.e., where the feds would park their cars & gather before a raid. At the time, the guidance for unmarked vehicles was: new, American-made vehicles in neutral colors, dark tint, no mods, no open truck beds, CA plates (not CA Exempt- those are state). This information was shared widely. Everyone started recording & getting license plates for the unmarked vehicles. But some things started changing. As more feds came from out of state, there were more rental cars, which have permanent fleet tags. They no longer rolled up with 20 vehicles & were using marked vehicles less. They weren’t hitting targeted businesses with LAPD protection. They stopped wearing camo. That brings us to now, two weeks into the invasion. Feds wear masks & regular clothes, even baseball caps. We’re seeing non-American vehicles, older vehicles with dings, vehicles with no plates at all, & a bright blue vehicle in particular is terrorizing people. They wear no identifying markings. There are less stagings in big empty lots. Instead, they pick busy places & have fewer vehicles. They don’t seem to target businesses as much because people know their rights to not let them in. They do know though that people return to work eventually so they may hit the same place multiple times. At this point, the feds are quite literally snatching people off of the street where convenient: usually, where people are outside together, like street vendors. It’s a quick hit—a couple of cars, several agents, & over in 20 minutes or less. Rapid response is now hyper-local. This dramatic shift over the course of two weeks is because LA has robust mutual aid networks & strong neighborhood communities that are informed & unafraid to stand up to federal agents. We have forced them to hide & be sneaky because they know hundreds will show up to stop them if they don’t. You may not be seeing protests or hearing about big raids anymore. That’s because the feds are now doing smaller operations & getting fewer people. Every action we’ve done in LA, from blocking freeways to tailing vehicles, is making them spend time & energy on US & not on kidnapping our neighbors. So please, when you see video of masked people in regular clothes jumping out of regular cars to snatch people off the sidewalk, don’t assume they’re bounty hunters. They are far more likely to be federal agents of the United States of America. This got some traction, so let me plug some more info. LA is hosting the 2028 Olympics, among other upcoming global events. The Olympics have National Special Security Event (NSSE) designation, which was approved in January 2024—the earliest the designation has ever been given (4 years in advance). NSSE designation means the initiation of a security apparatus that includes ICE, CBP, FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, DOD, FEMA, EPA, CDC, FDA, US Marshals, US Secret Service, US Coast Guard, US NORTHCOM, state & local police, sheriff’s department, fire department, National Guard, & Reserves. In other words, DHS is—& has been—in the driver’s seat for coordinating LA’s security with local authorities. Mayor Karen Bass can deny it until she’s blue in the face, but the feds & local police have express instruction to work together until 2028. And she’s the one who asked for it 4 years early. Why was LA chosen as ground zero of the federal invasion? Who knows, but it’s hard to ignore that the federal security agencies already had carte blanche to operate here thanks to the NSSE designation. If you’re in LA, that means you should mentally prepare for not just 30 or 60 days, but 4 years. Week three thread here:
bsky.app
Week 3 of the federal invasion of LA: The feds are upping their evasion tactics. This morning, agents jumped out of unmarked vehicles that had been parked at Home Depot for hours, snatched people, then took off. Their time for execution is down to 3 minutes. We now have to be on the ground already.
I’ll leave week four of the federal invasion of LA to Chad:
bsky.app
ICE and DHS cannot move around Los Angeles undetected. Their every move is transparent from the hotels where they sleep to their morning briefings to their 3-vehicle convoys entering neighborhoods. An entire megacity of 13 million people has awoken against them. They're slow and clumsy.