MacArthur Park in Los Angeles is in the news these days. Once upon a time, this park inspired Jimmy Webb to write that song about the girl in her yellow dress sitting on a bench. There were two hit versions: Richard Harris and Donna Summer. Who can forget that line about who left the cake out in the rain? It was supposed to be a metaphor for their relationship. Go figure -- but it did sell a lot of copies and it still sounds good so many years later.
So here we are because ICE decided to check out MacArthur Park and the story of 2025 is a bit different. Let's check this out:
"Until after World War II, Westlake was a wealthy, desirable neighborhood. It was featured prominently in the 1947 noir film “Too Late for Tears.”
In the intervening decades, the area has been overrun by crime, spawning the infamous MS-13 international gang and becoming the epicenter of the city’s drug crisis.
Reporters in a 2006 NPR investigation of illicit sales in MacArthur Park were approached by identification sellers six times in 20 minutes. The journalists noted the going rate for a “completely new identity” is “around a hundred bucks.”
“If it were statistically possible for a neighborhood to be more than 100 percent immigrant, this area would be,” recounted NPR reporter Luke Burbank. “By no coincidence, it's also a hot-bed for the illegal document trade.”
Identification for sale includes everything from drivers’ licenses to social security cards, resident alien cards and even student identification cards.
“On just about every corner are small clusters of men, their baseball caps pulled down low, their eyes darting back and forth furtively,” continued Burbank. “If their gaze meets yours for even a moment, they'll flash you a hand sign.”
Burbank’s report found that the Los Angeles Police Department had just two officers assigned to the fake documents unit for the area, and was only shutting down one fake document mill per month. LAPD officers told Burbank they’d need 25 officers to properly do the job.
A 2010 U.S. Department of Justice paper remarked that the park has been “widely known to be one of the largest open-air drug markets in Los Angeles,” but that measures put in place to restore order by then-Mayor James Hahn had made strides toward restoring park access to the non-criminal public.
By 2023, the area had yet again become a “hub for fentanyl sales and consumption,” with the Los Angeles Daily News’ investigation finding skyrocketing shoplifting was in part driven by addicts stealing to fuel their addiction.
In January 2025, the city of Los Angeles conducted another crackdown after the area had become a hub for resale of stolen goods, conducting sweeps with mounted officers. Bass claimed the operations had made a “major difference,” but CalMatters’ Jim Newton’s on-the-ground investigation found otherwise.
“Groups of young men gathered in circles, huddled around pipes and drug paraphernalia,” reported Newton. “Even with the gains against crime here, the playgrounds aren’t getting any use. When I visited on Monday, I counted only one woman in the park, and she was a city employee, picking up trash.”
“There were no children,” concluded Newton.
Los Angeles is a “sanctuary city” that bars city resources from being used for immigration enforcement and cooperation with federal authorities engaged in immigration enforcement. The city bans the direct and indirect sharing of data with federal immigration authorities.
No cooperation with federal authorities? Wonder why? MacArthur Park is a disgrace. It makes Portland look clean.
Mayor Karen Bass is fighting ICE because she knows what's behind the curtain. Her administration, and let's not forget Governor Gavin Newson, has allowed parks to turn into criminal areas. The two of them know what's going on and that's why they are fighting to keep the curtains closed.
Shame on Mayor Bass and all the politicians who defend this lawlessness.
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Image: The Erica Chang