On August 14, 2025, federal immigration agents staged a show of force outside a Los Angeles press conference held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, near the Japanese American National Museum, where he was promoting a state response to Trump's election-rules push. Nearly a year later, in late July 2026, sworn deposition testimony and internal text messages from the agents involved surfaced in a federal court filing and painted the operation as political theater.
The records were filed as exhibits in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, Public Counsel, and other groups in the Central District of California, challenging what they call suspicionless immigration stops in Southern California. In a deposition, a Homeland Security Investigations agent said the operations had grown steadily less targeted, culminating in the press-conference operation, which he said had no targets at all: “They marched to a democratic governor's press conference. It seemed to be purely political,” adding that “it did not seem like there was a good operational basis to be doing that.”
Internal texts were blunter. One agent wrote that personnel were “pulled off the [Home Depot] and car wash to run this stunt.” Another wrote, “They essentially raided the Newsom press conference.” Agents described arresting “a couple people” and then standing around for media attention. NOTUS reported the show of force was led by Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, with HSI personnel among those objecting. Newsom's office said the August 14 operation was “no coincidence” and amounted to political targeting of the governor.