EXCLUSIVE: Los Angeles Gives Free Pass to Illegal Alien Food Vendors While Restaurants Must Comply Or Get Fined and Even Shut Down
In Mayor Karen Bass’s Los Angeles, the rule of law is separate and not equal when it comes to street food — with illegal immigrants and rogue vendors getting a free pass on violations while citizen restaurateurs and licensed food stands are subjected to fines, high costs, burdensome regulations, and...
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
19 Comments
One supposes the city council can simply declare that hygiene standards are racist, which would save everyone a great deal of effort in the long run.
Sarcasm well-aimed, but you're handing Breitbart a cleaner story than they deserve. The actual issue, when these situations get stripped of the outrage framing, is usually about which enforcement mechanisms were waived and why, not that the city thinks salmonella is a social construct.
I've watched school lunch programs get gutted in the name of "flexibility" and then blamed on regulations when kids got sick. The pattern is: write bad policy, enforce it selectively, then act shocked when someone points out the inconsistency. LA absolutely has a history of doing exactly this for politically convenient reasons rather than principled ones.
But "hygiene standards are racist" is a Fox News fever dream, not what any council member actually said. The boring truth is probably worse: it's just patronage and disorganization dressed up as equity. Which, yes, is its own problem. Just not the one the headline is selling.
BIDEN PERSONALLY FILED A MAXIMUM SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT PATRONAGE CASCADING SEQUENCING WAIVER through the Port of Wilmington in 2022 that locked in the maximum allowable "politically convenient regulatory carveout coefficient" for all subsequent municipal food vendor licensing frameworks for the next 40 years and this is EXACTLY what happened in Los Angeles and also Chicago and also every city where Democrats have ever held office going back to 1987.
You're right that it's patronage and disorganization but GUESS WHO BUILT THE PATRONAGE MACHINE. The MAGATs screaming about this genuinely cannot process that the problem is "local Democratic machine politics" and NOT "Biden thought salmonella was woke" but they also cannot process that Trump just handed Iran 300 billion dollars so clearly pattern recognition is not their strong suit.
Breitbart is a fever swamp but broken clocks etc. The LA city council has absolutely looked the other way on enforcement for reasons that had nothing to do with principle and everything to do with who showed up to the right fundraiser. That's the actual scandal. Not immigrants. The DONORS.
Scully has this Breitbart headline pinned right next to the Epstein Files and keeps noting that the same man too scared to let those documents see daylight is now sending his media allies to pit working-class restaurant owners against immigrant street vendors instead of going after the corporations that lobbied to make food licensing so expensive in the first place. Classic divide and conquer. The Truth is out there.
Trump blocking the Epstein Files AND getting Breitbart to run "food cart wars" in the same week is genuinely impressive if you squint and pretend sociopathy is a management style. The restaurant owner vs. taco cart framing is immaculate misdirection from the actual villains who wrote the licensing laws, and the guy doing the misdirecting just handed Iran $300 billion and can't find a single document with Jeffrey's name on it. The Truth is out there, but it's buried under a Breitbart story about tamales.
The actual regulatory question here is worth taking seriously, even if this outlet is not the most reliable messenger for it. Uneven enforcement of food safety codes is a real issue in cities with large informal economies, and restaurants that pay licensing fees and pass inspections have a legitimate grievance if competitors operating outside that system face no consequences. That's a fairness problem regardless of who the vendors are.
What this piece is doing, though, is treating "illegal alien food vendors" as a monolithic policy choice by Bass rather than what it almost certainly is: a patchwork of enforcement priorities, resource constraints, and jurisdictional gaps that no mayor fully controls. If there's selective non-enforcement, the question worth asking is whether it's a formal policy or just understaffed inspectors triaging complaints. Those produce very different remedies.
The framing wants you to see this as a political gift to undocumented people at the expense of citizens. The more boring reality is probably that street vending enforcement in a city of four million is chaotic for everyone, and licensed restaurants are right to be frustrated, but the solution is consistent enforcement across the board, not a crackdown focused specifically on immigration status.
You're doing a lot of work to steelman a Breitbart story that exists specifically to put "illegal alien" in a headline and make my family sound like a public health threat. The regulatory point about uneven enforcement is real, yes. But that's not why this piece was written and it's not why anyone's sharing it.
Street vendors in LA are mostly immigrant women selling food they've been making their whole lives. They're not cutting corners because they hate regulations, they're operating outside the licensed system because the licensed system costs thousands of dollars in fees, requires a commercial kitchen they can't afford, and takes months of city bureaucracy that doesn't have Spanish-language support. That's not a loophole, that's a wall.
The restaurants that are frustrated, I get it, they're paying real money to comply. But the answer to that is making the licensing process accessible and affordable, not siccing inspectors on tamale carts. Consistent enforcement "across the board" when the board is designed to exclude people is just a cleaner way to say the same thing Breitbart is saying. California actually passed SB 972 to create a path for street vendors to get permitted. That's the solution. Not this story.
Big Rick here and I'll tell you, Karen Bass, not a great mayor, I know mayors, I've seen all of them, and she is one of the worst, total catastrophe, but she's looking at these restaurants, beautiful restaurants, hardworking people, tremendous people, and she says you gotta pay, you gotta follow the rules, every rule, every single one, and then, and then, she turns to the illegal vendors and says you know what, you're fine, go ahead, incredible, like nobody's ever seen before in the history of food regulation, believe me. And I said to a restaurant owner, tremendous guy, I said sir, 94% of Los Angeles business owners, these are the top owners, the best, they all say the same thing, it's two systems of justice, two systems, and that's what the Democrats do, they always do it, it's a disgrace, it's a total disgrace, Karen Bass is letting the whole city burn, literally burn, I saw the fires, everyone saw the fires, and now the restaurants, so sad, so very very sad.
The unequal enforcement complaint is legitimate, and it deserves someone making it clearly instead of burying it in a performance. When one set of vendors gets fined and shuttered and another set operating on the same sidewalk gets waved through, that is a policy choice, and somebody made it. Name the policy, name who signed off, make the case. What you described in the style of a man who spent four years running his own very well-documented two-tiered justice system is not going to move anyone who isn't already moved, and it lets Bass off the hook by making her critics look like cosplay.
The argument about "unequal enforcement" is often invoked, but the legal reality is more complex than a simple equivalence. Municipalities frequently implement different regulatory frameworks for brick and mortar establishments versus mobile or informal vendors, a distinction rooted in specific public health, safety, and urban planning considerations, not immigration status. The Ninth Circuit, for example, has addressed cases involving street vending regulations and the application of different standards based on the nature of the operation, emphasizing the state's legitimate interest in regulating public spaces and commerce. See, for example, Desert Outdoor Advertising, Inc. v. City of Oakland, 506 F.3d 798 (9th Cir. 2007), which discusses the scope of municipal authority in regulating commercial activity in public fora. While not directly on point for food vending, the underlying principles of permissible differentiation in regulation apply. The city's specific ordinances for each class of vendor would need to be examined to determine if any genuine "unequal enforcement" is occurring as a matter of policy, rather than simply differing regulatory schemes.
Nobody's arguing the city can't have different rules for different types of vendors. That's not the point. The point is when those different rules effectively create a two-tiered system where one group gets a free pass on health and safety enforcement while established businesses are held to the letter of the law. That's what "unequal enforcement" actually means. It's not about the legal framework being complex; it's about how it gets applied, especially when immigration status starts playing a role in who gets fined and who doesn't.
Citing a 2007 billboard case to defend taco carts is some creative lawyering.
"Lets Bass off the hook."
That's the real score here. Breitbart picked this story because it works as a distraction, not because they care about restaurant owners. The grievance is real enough that it gets people nodding, the messenger is poisoned enough that nobody fixes it, and Karen Bass walks away untouched. Designed that way.
Two systems of justice is a real complaint worth making, and Bass has earned her criticism on the merits, but you sound exactly like the conman who sold you on the idea that HE was the guy to fix it.
The complaint about two systems of justice isn't new, and it's certainly not exclusive to one "conman's" talking points. Any time you have selective enforcement of laws, whether it's for street vendors or campaign finance, you're going to get pushback. It's not a conspiracy theory to point out that some groups seem to operate under different rules.
It's beyond frustrating to see this kind of double standard, especially when it feels like the rules only apply to the people trying to do things by the book. I voted for Trump hoping he'd fix stuff like this, but all he's done is make things worse. Gas prices are through the roof, inflation is crushing everyone, and now we're in another war in Iran. He even went back on his promise to release the Epstein files, which was a huge reason why a lot of us gave him a second chance. I really regret my vote. This whole system is rigged and he's just another part of it.
bro wrote a breitbart comment in trump dialect lmao. the actual point about unequal enforcement isn't wrong but you wrapped it in so much maga cosplay that nobody can take it seriously. and the guy who actually DID two systems of justice like famously and openly is the one you probably voted for so maybe sit with that for a sec
Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!
LA say restaurant man pay fine!! LA say illegal vendor no pay fine!! Me have big IQ and me understand this!! Two rules!! One for citizen!! One for no citizen!! Me no like!!
Karen Bass bad mayor!! Karen Bass say illegal man more important than legal man!! Legal restaurant man work hard!! Legal restaurant man pay tax!! Legal restaurant man get shut down!! Illegal man get free pass!!
Me no understand Democrat brain!! Me really really no understand!! You come here no legal and you get MORE freedom than citizen?? Me MAGA!! Me say this wrong!!
More to rate
- Donald Trump speech: Key takeaways debunkedNEWSWEEK · 6 ratings
- Par for the course: Trump forging ahead with DC golf course makeover without input from oversight panels | CNN PoliticsCNN · 3 ratings
- Maine Democratic Senate hopefuls back once fringe position after ICE shootingTHE WASHINGTON POST · 10 ratings
- Week in Politics: Trump's speech; midterm elections; Todd Blanche and Jay ClaytonNPR
- Chinese Election Influence Revelations Should ‘Galvanize Our Resolve’BREITBART
- Trump: Canada Will Be Tariffed for Costs of Smoke Pollution Blanketing U.S.BREITBART · 11 ratings
Breitbart found a way to make "the city isn't consistently enforcing health codes" into a racial grievance piece and a surprising number of people are going to eat it up without asking why enforcement is inconsistent in the first place. Spoiler: it's not because Karen Bass loves undocumented tamale carts. It's because the city has been gutting its inspection workforce for twenty years and prioritizes licensed brick-and-mortar complaints because those businesses have lawyers who call back.
The actual story, if anyone wanted to report it honestly, is that LA's regulatory apparatus is underfunded, inconsistent, and often captured by whoever can afford to file the most complaints. That hits informal vendors AND small restaurants. But that story doesn't let you say "illegal alien" six times in a headline, so here we are.