Interviewee / Eyewitness (3:15)

Can you get me please?

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (3:26)

You guys have a warrant?

Interviewee / Eyewitness (3:27)

Can you get me please? Can you get me, please?

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (4:00)

Now in this next video I'm going to show you a 15 year old high school student with disabilities was recently detained in Los Angeles after he was mistaken by ICE agents as a Salvadoran national with suspected ties to MS.13. Here, play this clip.

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (4:17)

We have brand new video shared by the San Fernando Valley sun of an incident earlier this week. The moment a 15 year old high school student with disabilities was briefly detained in Los Angeles after he was mistaken by ICE agents as a Salvadoran national with prior criminal convictions and suspected ties to the MS.13 gang. And here's what he and his mother told our local station in Los Angeles. He has these moments where he breaks.

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (4:44)

Down and he tells me he feels harassed. He tells me he doesn't feel safe.

Interviewee / Eyewitness (4:49)

Handcuffed me and they were just telling me who the person is and I was like, no, I don't know who that person is.

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (4:55)

Next up, Andrea Velez, a US Citizen detained by ICE in Los Angeles on her way to work. Play this clip.

News Reporter / Narrator (5:02)

Andrea Velez has yet to physically return to work near 9th and Main street in downtown Los Angeles where the 32 year old works as a production coordinator for a shoe company.

Andrea Velez (Interviewee) (5:12)

I take it day by day that.

News Reporter / Narrator (5:14)

Day, June 24, Velez says her mom and sister had just dropped her off at work.

Andrea Velez (Interviewee) (5:19)

It was like a scene, like they were just ready to like attack and chase.

News Reporter / Narrator (5:24)

Velez describes seeing unmarked cars and masked men in civilian clothing going after people.

Andrea Velez (Interviewee) (5:30)

All I felt was that he grabbed and just slammed me to the floor.

News Reporter / Narrator (5:34)

Velez says she tried to tell the plainclothes agent who arrested her that she's a US Citizen.

Andrea Velez (Interviewee) (5:39)

He said that I was interfering with what he was doing, so, so he was going to arrest me. And that's when I asked him to show me his badge number, his id, identification. I asked him for like if he Had a warrant, and he said I didn't need to know any of that.

News Reporter / Narrator (5:58)

Bless says while officers were processing her into a detention center in downtown, she again tried to tell them she was a US Citizen and did nothing wrong.

Andrea Velez (Interviewee) (6:07)

So they didn't believe me. And then I gave them my real id, and at one point, I gave them my driver's license and even my Kaiser health insurance card.

News Reporter / Narrator (6:18)

Lilez says they still didn't believe her. She spent two days in the detention center where she says she had nothing to drink for 24 hours.

Andrea Velez (Interviewee) (6:27)

And you have to buy utensils to eat. This lady, she was gonna get out that day, and she was very kind enough to give me her. Her cop and her like, her sport.

News Reporter / Narrator (6:37)

Velez was released from custody two days after her arrest. And a month ago, the Department of Justice dismissed her case without prejudice, which means her case is closed temporarily.

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (6:48)

And then back in June, the president of California's largest union, David Werta, was targeted and kidnapped by ICE during their illegal raids. Here, play this clip. One more I want to share with you as well. Latinos from East Los Angeles confronted by ICE agents after being profiled. And you're like, I'm American, you mother effer. I have my papers.

Interviewer / Podcast Host (7:43)

What the hell are you freaking doing?

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (7:45)

And we're seeing these scenes play out across Los Angeles on a daily basis. Play this clip.

Interviewee / Eyewitness (7:56)

Literally based off of skin color. My homie was born here just because of the way he looks. Home right here. Took my phone, dog. He arrested me knowing I'm a American, and I proved it to this guy. That's crazy, yo. Hey, bro, that's not fair at all, bro. That this. This is not fair at all, bro. This is not fair at all, bro. We're all American over here, man. Can't be doing this to us, bro. This, bro. You're a wrong, bro. I'm American. You don't ever grab me like that, bro. I'm American. I'm American citizen, you dog. You. I'm an American citizen. You don't ever grab me that way. Yo, check it out, guys. Maple Olympic. Man, be careful. I just got attacked for no reason. I gotta come and fuck with these guys.

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (8:51)

Watch.

Interviewee / Eyewitness (8:51)

I already know it. I already know it, man. It's not fair. Guys, we shouldn't be like this, man. We shouldn't be like this, bro. But come and get us right now. I already know it. Fuck these guys, man. That's not fair, bro.

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (9:04)

So let me bring in Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto. But before doing that, I do want to play this one clip as well. This is of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying that if it wasn't for Donald Trump doing all of this, Los Angeles would be destroyed, it would be burned, it wouldn't exist. Here, play this clip.

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (9:27)

They're in essence protecting or backing up those federal agents as they conducted operations. Is that what we should expect to see in Chicago? You know, that always is a prerogative of President Trump and his decision. I won't speak to the specifics of the operations that are planned in other cities, but I do know that LA wouldn't be standing today if President Trump hadn't taken action. Then that city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state.

Interviewer / Podcast Host (9:52)

And so now I want to bring in Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto. City Attorney Feldstein Soto, I have some questions for you. You've brought a action against the Trump regime. I want to talk about the lawsuit that you filed, but I just want to get your general observations being on the ground in the city, as the city attorney, you're the, you're the day to day kind of main lawyer there, you know, in the city, protecting the city, the sites that you must be see, I just want to get your perspective on what's going on in the streets right now. With Trump's ICE and Trump's federal forces.

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (10:34)

The activity around City hall has calmed down. So what I saw that really galled me and required me to act as city attorney for my city is my office is literally in the one square mile of downtown that was experiencing immigration protests. So I had a bird's eye view to what was going on here. And I will tell you that the level of aggression, the number of troops, think about it, our entire Los Angeles Police Department for the entire city is all of 8,600 officers right now. And this administration deployed 4,000 federalized national troops, plus 800 Marines to supposedly deal with a protest that occupied at most 1 to 2 square miles in downtown LA, right around my offices. At no point in time did I feel as though the protests were out of control or something our LAPD couldn't handle and in fact was handling very well. The federal government was response was disproportionate, unconstitutional, militaristic, and candidly, a little bit frightening, more than a little bit. It was very frightening to everyone because to deploy troops into our streets and into our communities, to suppress First Amendment speech, supposedly to enforce immigration laws or to quell the kind of protests that Los Angeles has seen over the years and always handled on our own, without a request from the local authorities or, or the state authorities, is what is utterly unconstitutional.

Interviewer / Podcast Host (12:15)

When you saw the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the weekend, she says that if it wasn't for Donald Trump right now and sending these troops into Los Angeles, that Los Angeles would no longer exist and that the people of Los Angeles need to say thank you because it would have been completely exterminated and eradicated and LA wouldn't be a thing. As the City Attorney of Los Angeles, what's your response to that?

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (12:45)

That's preposterous. That is utter, abject nonsense. Los Angeles has long been a place of robust civil discourse, has long been a place of protesting and taking to the streets. Certainly in my time in Los Angeles, we survived the 1992 riots, which exceeded by magnitudes and exponential ratios what happened in our streets this June. We've done fine through the years. The most recent round of protests before the immigration raids included the George Floyd protests in 2020, which were far more widespread around our city. And at the end of the day, our Los Angeles Police Department, our Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, our California State Highway Patrol has risen to the occasion of constitutional policing of being able to contain the violence or the looting or at least seek retribution and arrest folks who engage in criminal behavior without the kind of violence and suppression on citizens exercising their free speech that came in with the federal troops.

Interviewer / Podcast Host (14:05)

Now, Heidi, there's a temporary. I don't want people to forget this. It's an important point. A Federal Judge, Article 3 Federal Judge Judge, has issued a restraining order against the Trump regime from doing racial profiling for, you know, going to the Home Depots and rounding up people simply because of their skin color or going to, you know, down the street and seeing food vendors and then saying, oh, they have brown skin, they're food vendors. You add those up, they must be migrants. Arrest them right now, tase them or whatever. Like there's a restraining order saying they can't do that. Yet we keep seeing it happening over and over again. Can you talk to us about what's happening here and this violation of the restraining order?

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (14:56)

Here is the motion and joinder for a preliminary injunction that we filed on behalf of 22 local jurisdictions. So let me break down the Perdomo case for you a little bit. I'm deeply grateful to the lawyers and to the ACLU and public counsel who started this lawsuit representing individual plaintiffs who had been arrested, detained, jeopardized whose rights had been violated by the federal administration in the conduct of these raids and roundups. What we have done as a city is we have organized and led a coalition of cities and counties who have said, not in my jurisdiction because we are separately and individually being harmed and because we have our own police powers to protect, we have our residents to protect, and we have our own interest in the subject matter of this lawsuit. So initially in July, the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles, and I believe it was seven other cities, filed a complaint and intervention in the ACLU and the public council lawsuit. We thought that it was something where we could all stand together, where the government could stand up for its residents and where we could have one court where all of the violations of everybody's rights could be heard. We filed a second motion to amend our complaint and add additional cities. And at this point, there are 22 jurisdictions standing together, saying to the federal administration, and I want to be clear, we are not interfering with the legitimate and constitutional enforcement of federal law, including federal law, including federal immigration law. What we are saying is you can't run around with rifles and masks and militarized equipment in unmarked cars and in effect snatch people off our streets or, or round up residents in public or private areas and take them away in vans, lock them up, detain them, not give them access to counsel, and in effect, do performative theater to terrify the city and our residents. Businesses are empty and have shuttered. The city's law enforcement personnel has received countless 911 calls about what look like, for all intents and purposes, Ben, it looks like a kidnapping. That's what it looks like with individuals who will not identify themselves. Sometimes they have badges on their belt, sometimes they don't. But the manner in which this is done, and as we learned from Judge Breyer's opinion this morning, it was an organized series of troops that were designed to come here and scare people into self deporting, into doing the federal government's bidding in ways that we have never seen the federal government deploy troops domestically.

Interviewer / Podcast Host (18:13)

So what do you do, though now when you've prevailed, when the other groups, aclu, Public Council, representing the immigrant, have prevailed in the sense of a federal judge saying, one, you've got this, this ruling from Breyer, you know, saying violation of posse combatants. You can't use military on the streets this way. But, but, but in the central district, the injunction from the federal judge, you can't be to your point. Look, you want to, you want to enforce immigration law, great. You can do It. But you can't have these masked agents kidnap people, throw them in vans, take them to places that no one knows where they're going to be, profile them. I mean, they're picking up migrants and citizens. I mean, and then they. They pick people at first, ask questions later. But then. But then the Trump regime ignores the order, like they violate that order every single day. So how do you combat that aspect? When does it become an issue of contempt? And where do we go from here?

Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto (19:15)

Since we're in the throes of litigation, I will be a little bit cautious about what I say. But first of all, I commend Judge Frimpong for thoughtfulness, for her care, and for establishing a briefing schedule that will allow us to get to a preliminary injunction. I will not speak for the original plaintiffs. I can only speak for ourselves. The temporary restraining order came down just as the judge was leaving town. She was gone for a while, and so going back to her courtroom proved difficult. It went up to the ninth Circuit. It then went up on certiorari to the Supreme Court, and there it has sat in limbo for almost a month. So the Supreme Court has not acted. Of course, you know, temporary restraining orders are designed to be limited in time. So at least from the city's vantage point, what we determined to do was to consolidate our motion and intervention, make sure we were firmly plaintiffs and interveners in the lawsuit, submit our declarations in support of a preliminary injunction so as to put provide the judge with the factual record necessary for a preliminary injunction, and then proceed from there to hold the federal government accountable. The problem with a TRO is it is done ex parte. It was granted before our motion to intervene had been granted. And so, although the judge's order protects the seven counties in the Central District of California, we thought that it was better to wait for a more fully developed record where we clearly were in the case and we had submitted our own evidence as to what the harms were to each of our cities. It is interesting that in the 22 jurisdictions we have the county of LA, we have both charter cities and general law cities under the California Constitution, and under the California Constitution, as I suspect you know, the police power devolves to the local authorities as well. And we also have cities that at this point are across four separate counties. So I commend the cities of Anaheim and Santa Ana for joining us. From Orange county, the city of Carpinteria, the city of Oxnard, the city of Pasadena, my other sister cities here in Los Angeles County. We are here to say that we stand together against what is the federal government turning external troops trained for warfare into a political tool against our residents. That is utterly unacceptable. So what do we do? We develop the record. We get a preliminary injunction. And I'm a lawyer. My best hope is the courts. And I will hope that our branch of government, our judiciary, will fulfill its historical function and provide a check against this overreach and this militaristic deployment of external troops on domestic soil.

Interviewer / Podcast Host (22:27)

Heidi Feldstein, Soto City Attorney, City of Los Angeles Great to see you again everybody. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.

Podcast Host / Narrator (Midas Touch Network) (22:35)

Thanks for watching. Be sure to add the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast for new updates every single day.

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