Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s reason for wanting deportation operations to get out of the city has left a bad taste in people’s mouths.
Trying to flaunt pro-immigrant credentials in a profile for Vanity Fair, the former reality star touted his appreciation for LA’s Latino community with a boast about how much Mexican food he’s eaten.
“I’ve said a million times, I don’t want ICE here but I want to get the murderers and rapists out,” he said. “I’ve eaten more Mexican food than any white person in Los Angeles. I love Mexican people.”
According to the magazine, Pratt also expressed opposition to immigration raids targeting construction supply emporiums like Home Depot or restaurants.
The candidate, who rose to prominence as a villain on MTV’s “The Hills,” got involved in local politics after losing his home in the Pacific Palisades fires last year.
Pratt has accused incumbent Mayor Karen Bass of capitalizing on “ICE chaos” to pump up her own poll numbers, claiming “the way you keep ICE out of L.A. is by enforcing the law, not defying it” in a social media post not long after launching his campaign in January.
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Pratt, a registered Republican, has tried to keep his GOP allegiance at an arm’s length throughout his campaign, recently telling NBC, “I do not represent a party … There’s no political party backing me.”
Nevertheless, he earned a soft endorsement from President Donald Trump, who said he’d “like to see him do well” because he’s heard Pratt is a “big MAGA person.”
In a campaign that promises to ring in a new “golden age” of Los Angeles, Pratt has taken an aggressive stance against homelessness, an issue he maintains is due to drug addiction and a lack of mental health resources, not the dearth of affordable housing in the city.
Talking to ABC 7 Los Angeles in an interview that aired last week, he claimed Angelenos living on the streets are “not homeless, they’re drug addicts” who were “bused in” by rehabilitation centers and nonprofits he described as “scams.”
“They are choosing to be on the street because they want to do drugs, they don’t want rules, they want to have animals to abuse,” he told reporter Josh Haskell. “This idea that they’re forced on the street right now is a lie that our city is perpetuating.”
Pratt’s platform includes plans for a mega-treatment facility that he has vowed to have built with federal funds on “beautiful” federally owned land. He has also suggested shipping Los Angeles’ homeless north to Seattle, where he’s quipped that Mayor Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist, will “welcome them.”