34m ago
07.36 BST
Trump
deploys more National Guard troops and Marines to LA protests
Good
morning, Donald Trump has deployed more National Guard troops and marines to
Los Angeles as protests in the city go into their fourth day. Here is what has
happened overnight:
California
said the deployment of the National Guard by Republican President Trump’s
administration was illegal and violated the state’s sovereignty and federal
law, according to a court filing of its lawsuit against the US government.
The US
military is to temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to LA until more National
Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in Trump’s response to
street protests over his aggressive immigration policies. Marines were expected
to reach Los Angeles on Monday night (LA time) or Tuesday morning.
Even as
protests against raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
stretched into a fourth day Monday in LA, city workers began a cleanup of
graffiti and other weekend damage across the city.
The Trump
administration vowed to intensify migrant raids, with US Homeland Security
Secretary Kristi Noem pledging to carry out even more operations to round up
suspected immigration violators, extending a crackdown that provoked the
protests.
Trump sends thousands more troops to LA as mayor
says city is being used as an ‘experiment’
California leaders condemn ‘authoritarian’
president as demonstrations over immigration raids continue in Los Angeles and
beyond
Sam Levin in Los Angeles and Edward Helmore
Tue 10 Jun 2025 04.58 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-protests
The Trump administration was deploying roughly
4,000 national guard members in Los Angeles on Monday in response to protests
over immigration raids, in an extraordinary mobilization of troops against US
residents that California leaders have called “authoritarian”.
Tensions between the federal government and the
nation’s second-largest city dramatically escalated over the weekend as
residents took to the streets to demonstrate against a series of brutal
crackdowns on immigrant communities. Raids in the region have affected garment
district workers, day laborers and restaurants, and the president of a major
California union was arrested by federal agents while serving as a community
observer during US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests.
Despite facing teargas and other munitions over
the weekend, protesters continued to rally on Monday, and families of detained
immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released.
The Trump administration initially said 2,000
national guard members were being sent to LA, but California governor Gavin
Newsom said late on Monday he was informed federal officials were sending an
additional 2,000 troops, though he said only 300 had been deployed so far, with
the remainder “sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders”. Federal
authorities also said the military would be sending roughly 700 marines,
marking an exceptionally rare deployment targeting people domestically.
Largely peaceful protests against Ice spread
around the country on Monday, including in New York, Chicago, Dallas and San
Francisco, where hundreds of people gathered in the evening for a march through
the city’s historically-Latino Mission district. In Austin, demonstrators
marched outside an Ice processing center, chanting slogans such as “No more
Ice” and holding up signs including “No human being is illegal”. In downtown
Los Angeles, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a demonstration calling
for an end to Ice raids. Intermittent protests continued into the evening, as
police used rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of several hundred people
gathered near the federal building.
Advocates also rallied in support of David
Huerta, the president of SEIU California and SEIU-USWW, who was arrested on
Friday and initially hospitalized. Huerta was charged with conspiracy to impede
an officer, which could result in a six-year prison sentence, and released
Monday, telling reporters: “This fight is ours, it’s our community’s, but it
belongs to everyone. We all have to fight for them.”
Tensions simmered as California filed a lawsuit
against the Trump administration challenging the federal deployment of the
state national guard over Newsom’s objections. Meanwhile, Trump’s border czar,
Tom Homan, earlier threatened to arrest Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen
Bass, a move the governor said was “an unmistakable step toward
authoritarianism”.
Newsom dared the administration to follow through
with the threats, prompting Trump to respond: “I would do it if I were Tom. I
think it’s great.”
Trump, who congratulated the national guard
troops for a “great job” before they had arrived in the city, said LA would
have been “completely obliterated” without them.
Homan claimed on Fox News that Ice “took a lot of
bad people off the street”. He said, without providing specifics, that he had
arrested gang members and people with serious criminal convictions, but also
admitted that Ice was detaining immigrants without criminal records.
Homan also told NBC News that more raids were
coming, and Ice arrests continued across southern California on Monday.
California’s lawsuit, filed late on Monday
against Trump and Pete Hegseth, his defense secretary, said the president had
“used a protest that local authorities had under control to make another
unprecedented power-grab … at the cost of the sovereignty of the state of
California and in disregard of the authority and role of the governor as
commander-in-chief of the state’s national guard”.
The suit, which seeks to block the defense
department from deploying the state national guard, said there has been no
“rebellion” or “insurrection” in LA. California also said that during raids,
Ice agents “took actions that inflamed tensions and provoked protest” and
“sparked panic”. California noted that Ice sealed off entire streets around
targeted buildings, used unmarked armored vehicles with paramilitary gear, and
did not coordinate with LA law enforcement officials.
Rob Bonta, the California attorney general who
filed the suit, said the president was “trying to manufacture chaos and crisis
on the ground for his own political ends”.
Also on Monday, families targeted by the recent
raids spoke out. Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, an immigrant rights group,
held a press conference outside Ambiance Apparel, a garment district warehouse
raided on Friday.
One woman said she witnessed the raid where her
father was “kidnapped by Ice”, adding: “What happened was not right. It was not
legal. In this country, we all have the right to due process … I saw with my
own eyes the pain of the families, crying, screaming, not knowing what to do.”
Yurien Contreras said her family has had no
communication with her father, Mario Romero, since he was taken: “I witnessed
how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his
ankles.” Lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), found that
immigrants apprehended in LA were initially detained in a basement of a federal
building, alleging they were denied food, water or beds for more than 12 hours.
Mayor Bass has said that LA is a “proud city of
immigrants” and has strongly condemned the raids, telling reporters on Monday
evening that most people detained have been denied access to lawyers, with many
“disappeared” to unknown locations. “I can’t emphasize enough the level of fear
and terror that is in Angelenos,” she said, adding that she would not stand for
the White House using LA as a “test case” for this kind of federal crackdown.
Bass also condemned vandalism and said protesters
would be arrested for “violent” acts. LAPD said on Monday that 29 people had
been arrested on Saturday for “failure to disperse”, and that there were 21
additional arrests on Sunday on a range of charges, including looting,
attempted murder with a molotov cocktail and assault on an officer.
Civil rights activists criticized the militarized
response of local law enforcement, including LAPD, which has a history of
injuring protesters, sometimes leading to costly settlements. Several
journalists were injured at the protests, with an Australian reporter on Sunday
shot by a rubber bullet at close range while filming a segment.
“When residents come together to make use of
their first amendment rights, often LAPD responds with a show of force,” said
Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and
Constitutional Law, a legal support group, who was present at the protests.
“When you show up in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, you inject into an
already dynamic situation a volatile element that escalates things.”
The LAPD said officers had fired more than 600
rubber bullets over the weekend. Thousands had protested on Sunday, rallying
around city hall and a federal detention center, and at one point, taking over
a freeway.
Jim McDonnell, the chief of the LAPD, said when
officers fire on protesters, they are using “target-specific munitions,” but
added: “That’s not to say that it always hits the intended target.” He said he
was “very concerned” about the footage of a journalist hit by a munition.
Regarding the deployment of marines to the city,
he said his department had not been formally notified, and said their arrival
would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge”. Bass said
the national guard troops were simply guarding two buildings: “They need
Marines on top of it? I don’t understand.”
Hegseth, meanwhile, said the marines were needed
to “restore order” and “defend federal law enforcement officers”.
Trump’s federalization of the guard troops is the
first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots,
when widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white
police officers for brutally beating the Black motorist Rodney King. It also
was the first deployment without the express request of the governor since
1965.
Los Angeles county is home to 3.5 million
immigrants, making up a third of the population. The demonstrations come as the
White House has aggressively ramped up immigration enforcement with mass
detentions in overcrowded facilities, a new travel ban, a major crackdown on
international students and rushed deportations without due process.
Perez, of the legal support group, noted how
immigrants were deeply woven into the fabric of life in LA, making uprisings
against raids inevitable: “When a city like this is the target of an
immigration raid by an administration like this, you’re going to deal with a
popular and massive outpouring of resistance.”
Helen Livingston contributed reporting
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