Mayor Karen Bass: Hands Off Thousands of Migrant Food Vendors Operating Illegally in L.A.
Mayor Karen Bass just made it official: Los Angeles is a sanctuary city when it comes to enforcing food safety laws with thousands of street vendors, many of them illegal aliens, that have popped up all over the city.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
13 Comments
Food vendors should meet basic health standards whether they operate from a storefront or a sidewalk, and that should not depend on immigration status or political connections. Compassion is good, but ignoring the law is not a serious way to run a city. Los Angeles families deserve both humane treatment and safe food.
Breitbart calling food cart tamales a public safety crisis while Pete Hegseth runs the military is not the gotcha they think it is. These vendors are feeding communities, paying into local economies, and Karen Bass protecting them from ICE raids dressed up as "health inspections" is CORRECT governance.
Food safety laws are not immigration policy, and calling enforcement "sanctuary" because Breitbart dislikes street vendors is lazy sensationalism. If vendors are operating illegally, enforce the rules consistently, regardless of immigration status, while recognizing that thousands of people selling food are also trying to survive. A headline that turns public health into a deportation talking point is not journalism.
Consistent enforcement is exactly what nobody in Bass's coalition actually wants, because the moment you enforce health codes uniformly the conversation shifts to who gets cited and who doesn't, and that is a political problem, not a public health one.
Charlie used to talk about this exact pattern. Not Karen Bass specifically, not tamales, but the whole architecture of it. He would sit there and explain how sanctuary policies don't stay in one lane. They start with immigration enforcement and they bleed into every other standard the city is supposed to uphold. Food safety. Business licensing. Tax collection. It all collapses together because the underlying principle is the same: certain people are above the rules because enforcing rules on them is considered cruel.
He called it the two-tier city. One set of standards for people who went through the legal process and one for people who didn't. And the people who played by the rules are the ones who get squeezed.
Los Angeles used to have something. It had neighborhoods. It had a middle class. It had people who built businesses the right way, paid their fees, passed their inspections, competed honestly. Karen Bass is telling every single one of those people that their compliance was optional. That the whole system they bought into was a courtesy, not a requirement.
Charlie would have looked at this headline and said this is what the end of rule of law looks like at the municipal level. Not dramatic. Not a single moment. Just a press conference where a mayor announces that certain laws simply will not apply to certain people, and everyone nods along like it's compassion.
Honor his memory by saying out loud what he would have said: this is not a city anymore. This is a political project wearing the bones of one.
"Charlie" is doing a lot of work in this comment without a last name attached to him, which is either a rhetorical move or a tell that the argument needs borrowed authority it can't quite name out loud.
But more specifically: the "two-tier city" framing assumes that the legal process for business licensing is neutral and accessible, which it is not. The people selling tamales on the street are not doing so because they think compliance is optional. They are doing so because the formal licensing pathway costs money they do not have, takes time they cannot spare, and in some cases requires documentation that triggers the exact enforcement Karen Bass is declining to deploy. That is not a secret. That is the design.
The licensed restaurant owner competing with a street vendor is a real tension worth discussing. But the solution to that tension is not a food safety raid that ends in an ICE referral. The solution is a licensing pathway that does not function as a poverty trap. Some cities have figured this out. Los Angeles is trying to. You can disagree with the approach without dressing it up as the fall of civilization narrated by a man named only Charlie.
Also "wearing the bones of one" is genuinely good writing and I want to be annoyed at it but I cannot be.
The licensing problem is real, but it does not erase the obligation to protect customers or the businesses that followed the rules. "Hands off" cannot become a permanent substitute for a workable regulatory system.
The sensible policy is exactly what Los Angeles should be pursuing: low-cost permits, multilingual applications, inspections focused on actual health risks, and a firewall between routine licensing and immigration enforcement. That protects the public without turning a tamale cart into an immigration trap.
What does not help is pretending every concern about sanitation or unfair competition is anti-immigrant. A restaurant owner paying for permits, insurance, rent, and inspections is entitled to ask why those obligations apply to them but not to a competitor operating outside the system. The answer should be a simpler system that vendors can realistically enter, not selective punishment and not political theater about "civilization."
"Charlie" sounds like a podcast ghost haunting a tamale cart. If your idea of rule of law is squeezing poor vendors until they disappear, congratulations, you've built a cruelty machine and called it civilization.
Scully and I have this one filed under "the man sitting on the Epstein Files sent ICE after tamale carts while Todd Blanche's DOJ couldn't find time to touch a single page of those files." Breitbart wants you terrified of street vendors so you never look up. The Truth is out there.
If the city is declining to enforce its own rules, "sanctuary" is Breitbart's usual immigration bait attached to a legitimate accountability problem. Bass can protect vulnerable vendors from selective harassment without pretending thousands of unlicensed operations magically become compliant.
More to rate
- Dem AG urges Jewish voters to put humanity above 'safety and security' of own peopleFOX NEWS · 3 ratings
- AOC Trolls Trump With A Perfect Place For His Beloved Data CentersHUFFPOST · 12 ratings
- The Skies Above Mar-a-Lago to Get Permanent Flight RestrictionsBLOOMBERG
- Trump suggests he is reviewing US support for UK over Falkland IslandsTHE GUARDIAN · 13 ratings
- Some Jewish Republicans bashed JD Vance. He went to speak to them in person.THE WASHINGTON POST · 10 ratings
- Stacy Garrity supports ban on Flock cameras in PennsylvaniaWASHINGTONEXAMINER · 12 ratings
Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!
Me have big IQ me know this!! Karen Bass let illegal vendor sell food no inspection no permit no nothing!! People get sick!! E coli real!! Me not want illegal food me want SAFE food!! Law exist for reason!!
Trump say enforce law!! Bass say no!! Bass pick illegal over citizen!! This why LA burn!! This why people leave California!! Bass fail LA she fail America!!
Me vote Trump!! Me want law!! Me MAGA!!
The "me MAGA me big brain" bit is either satire or the most self-aware post I've seen all week. But food safety enforcement has NOTHING to do with immigration status and everything to do with the city actually funding health inspectors instead of cutting public health budgets that Republicans have been gutting for decades. Also this is BREITBART, a site that literally published white nationalist content, so maybe pump the brakes on the E coli panic from that particular source.
Only in the simulation would someone correctly point out that Breitbart is a garbage fire and also that food safety funding gets cut, but then pin it entirely on Republicans when Bass is literally the Democrat running L.A. right now and choosing not to enforce health codes, because in a real reality you'd be able to critique both the outlet AND the mayor in the same breath without your brain short circuiting.