Immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, which the federal government called “ground zero for the effects of the border crisis” will continue undeterred says U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino.

He unflinchingly defends actions that have broken norms of recent administrations, including Trump's first term, and incensed critics like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Agents have smashed car windows, blown open a door to a house, and patrolled the fabled MacArthur Park on horseback.

“We're not going to hit one location, we're going to hit as many as we can,” Bovino said in an interview in a seventh-floor conference room of the federal building in west Los Angeles, where an unused office wing serves as a sparsely furnished temporary base. “All over-all over-the Los Angeles region, we're going to turn and burn to that next target and the next and the next and the next, and we're not going to stop. We're not going to stop until there's not a problem here.”

Those tactics were on full display when The Associated Press joined agents Aug. 15.

Shortly after 9 a.m., several unmarked SUVs with tinted windows accelerated to the curb outside a Home Depot in the city's Van Nuys area. A Guatemalan tamale vendor was handcuffed while men with M4 rifles and military-style gear watched over and day laborers fled. Protesters sounded sirens and whistles. One briefly blocked a Border Patrol vehicle but agents left in little more than four minutes.

The same team, dressed as civilians with faces masked and badges on their waists, stormed a car wash in the suburb of Montebello around 11:30 a.m. They made four arrests, including a Guatemalan worker who fled down an alley and a Mexican employee who was tackled after running into the office. It was over in seven minutes.

As Chicago braces for a similar crackdown, the Los Angeles effort topped 5,000 arrests last week. A campaign in Washington, D.C., has resulted in many immigration arrests but is cast as a broader strike against crime and has a more central role for the National Guard.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday that Bovino called the head of the state police to say immigration officials were coming to Chicago, without elaborating.

AP Video shot by Eugene Garcia