Los Angeles: Another 2,000 National Guard troops along with 700 Marines are headed to Los Angeles on orders Monday from President Donald Trump, escalating a military presence local officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom don’t want and the police chief says creates logistical challenges for safely handling protests.
An initial 2,000 Guard troops ordered by Trump started arriving Sunday, which saw the most violence during three days of protests driven by anger over Trump’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws that critics say are breaking apart migrant families.
Monday’s demonstrations were far less raucous, with thousands peacefully attending a rally at City Hall and hundreds protesting outside a federal complex that includes a detention centre where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids across the city.
Trump has described Los Angeles in dire terms that Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom say are nowhere close to the truth. They say he is putting public safety at risk by adding military personnel even though police say they don’t need the help.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement he was confident in the police department’s ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines’ arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge” for them.
Newsom called the deployments reckless and “disrespectful to our troops” in a post on the social platform X.
“This isn’t about public safety,” Newsom said. “It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego.”
The protests began Friday in downtown Los Angeles after federal immigration authorities arrested more than 40 people across the city. The smell of smoke hung in the air downtown Monday, one day after crowds blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars on fire as police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.
Additional protests against immigration raids continued into the evening on Monday in several other cities including San Francisco and Santa Ana in California and Dallas and Austin in Texas.
In Austin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a post on X that more than a dozen protesters were arrested, while in Santa Ana, a spokesperson for the city’s police department said the National Guard had arrived in the city to secure federal buildings.
California pushes back against presence of federal troops
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit over the use of National Guard troops following the first deployment, telling reporters in his announcement Monday that Trump had “trampled” the state’s sovereignty.
“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” Bonta said. He sought a court order declaring Trump’s use of the Guard unlawful and asking for a restraining order to halt the deployment.
Trump said Monday that the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he had not deployed the Guard.
US officials said the Marine troops were deployed to protect federal property and personnel, including federal immigration agents. Trump’s Monday order put more National Guard members on active duty, but one US official warned that the order was just signed and it could take a day or two to get troops moving. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements.
Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.
Bass criticised the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines as a “deliberate attempt” by the Trump administration to “create disorder and chaos in our city.”
She made a plea to the federal government: “Stop the raids.”
Early protests remained peaceful
On Monday, thousands flooded the streets around City Hall for a union rally ahead of a hearing for arrested labour leader David Huerta, who was freed a few hours later on a USD 50,000 bond.
Huerta’s arrest on Friday while protesting immigration raids has become a rallying cry for people angry over the administration’s crackdown. He is the president of the Service Employees International Union California, which represents thousands of the state’s janitors, security officers and other workers.
Early protests had a calm and even joyful atmosphere at times, with people dancing to live music and buoyed by Huerta’s release.
Protesters linked hands in front of a line of police officers outside the downtown federal detention centre where Huerta was being held. Religious leaders joined the protesters, working with organizers at times to de-escalate moments of tension.
There was a heavy law enforcement presence in the few square blocks including the federal detention facility, while most in the immense city of some 4 million people went about their normal business on peaceful streets.
Chanting against a line of National Guard troops with Homeland Security officers behind them surrounding the federal buildings ramped up in the afternoon as people yelled, “Free them all!” and “National Guard go away.”
As the crowd thinned, police began pushing protesters away from the area, firing crowd-control munitions as people chanted, “Peaceful protest.”
Officers became more aggressive in their tactics in the evening, occasionally surging forward to arrest protesters that got too close. At least a dozen people remaining in the busy Little Tokyo neighbourhood were surrounded by police and detained.
Other protests took shape Monday across LA County. Outside a Los Angeles clothing warehouse, relatives of detained workers demanded at a news conference in the morning that their loved ones be released.
The family of Jacob Vasquez, 35, who was detained Friday at the warehouse, where he worked, said they had yet to receive any information about him.
“Jacob is a family man and the sole breadwinner of his household,” Vasquez’s brother, Gabriel, told the crowd. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing being targeted by authorities.
Several dozen people were arrested in protests throughout the weekend. Authorities say one was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers.
Guard deployment is a nearly unprecedented escalation
The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts.
The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In a directive Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal service members when there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.
AP
