Los Angeles calls itself a sanctuary city, but in practice it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to suppress those who resist federal immigration raids. The LAPD and Sheriff’s Department have responded to protests not by protecting communities under attack, but by entrapping demonstrators, hauling them into custody on trumped up charges, and silencing the very voices that make sanctuary real. The cost is borne twice: once by the people jailed, injured, and traumatized, and again by a public forced to bankroll record liability payouts that are bleeding the city dry.

The tactics used to crack down on peaceful protests against ICE follow a pattern. LAPD does not just order people to disperse, it kettles them, surrounding and trapping demonstrators until dispersal is physically impossible, then arrests them for failing to obey. Los Angeles Magazine has documented how curfews and dispersal orders become pretexts once protestors are blocked from leaving. Even journalists are swept up in these dragnets. Press Freedom Tracker reported that LA Times reporters and freelance photojournalists were detained in kettles during anti deportation protests this June, despite clearly identifying themselves as press. It is the same blueprint over and over: entrap, arrest, charge.

This is not new. In 2021, when hundreds protested the removal of a large encampment at Echo Park Lake, LAPD used the same strategy, kettling demonstrators and arresting nearly 200 people, including Knock LA reporters Jon Peltz and Kathleen Gallagher. Both later sued the City of Los Angeles and LAPD for violating their constitutional rights, alleging that officers knowingly corralled them into a trap before making arrests. In August 2025 the city agreed to pay the pair a $500,000 settlement to avoid a federal jury trial. Their attorney stressed that nothing had changed, pointing to the same culture of silencing press and protest visible again in this summer’s ICE raid demonstrations.

These lawsuits don’t just expose constitutional violations, they also blow holes in Los Angeles’ budget. From 2020 to 2023 LAPD related lawsuits cost taxpayers $125,255,347, about a quarter of the city’s total liability payouts. In fiscal year 2024 overall payouts ballooned to $255 million, with the Police Department a top driver — an LAist analysis shows about $100 million from LAPD. By March 2025 LAPD alone had already racked up $107 million in payouts for the year, including more than $52 million for excessive force and civil rights violations. By June, the city hit a record $286.3 million in liability costs. Since 2019, lawsuits tied to LAPD have cost $358.8 million. And it is not just the LAPD. Just this week, a Los Angeles jury awarded $3.5 million to Cellin Gluck, who was struck in the face by a rubber bullet fired by an LASD deputy during a 2020 George Floyd protest in the Fairfax District, along with $300,000 to his daughter who witnessed the shooting. The case is another reminder that excessive force by both city and county law enforcement continues to produce devastating injuries, years of litigation, and multimillion dollar judgments.

The way the city pays makes this even more damaging. Liability settlements are drawn from the General Fund, the pool that covers libraries, parks, housing, and sidewalk repairs, not from LAPD’s own budget. When the department engages in unlawful kettling, mass arrests, or excessive force, the consequences land on the very public services already strained by cuts. The department’s incentives never change, because someone else always pays the bill.

The pattern is unmistakable. Kettling, inflated charges, and unlawful detentions serve not just to silence protest in the moment, but to chill dissent in the future. Even when charges are dropped, lives are upended. And when lawsuits succeed years later, the payout comes from city coffers, draining funds that could have supported housing, services, or immigrant protections.