Pam Bondi Warns Of More Arrests In California Amid Protests Against Immigration Raids | EUROtoday

Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned individuals who loot or assault legislation enforcement can be topic to arrest after the Trump administration referred to as in troops to Los Angeles in opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) needs.

“President Trump is going to make America safe again. We’re going to protect Americans, and that includes Californians. If Gavin Newsom isn’t going to protect them, we are,” Bondi informed Lawrence Jones III on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday.

“If you loot a business in California during this, we’re charging you with robbery under the Hobbs Act,” Bondi warned. “No longer are the days of non-prosecution for looting. It’s a criminal act. You’ve seen on the news, all these stores being burglarized, vandalized.”

“All of our police officers, all of our federal, state, local law enforcement officers, being abused out there trying to keep California safe. Jointly, we’ve all made over 190 arrests, more coming. If you hit a police officer, if you assault a police officer, state or federal, we are coming after you,” Bondi continued.

Bondi joins the litany of Republicans, together with President Donald Trump, portray an image of a lawless Los Angeles the place “riots” are underway and “insurrectionists” are taking on, inviting speedy comparisons to the riot on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that aimed to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election.

The demonstrations in Los Angeles, that are largely peaceable, popped up on account of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids throughout California.

Trump signed an order authorizing at the very least 2,000 National Guard troops to be despatched to Los Angeles, regardless of Newsom’s opposition, on Saturday. Then the Pentagon deployed an extra 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines.

Since the beginning of the protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has arrested 385 folks, USA Today reported on Wednesday. Moreover, ICE brokers have detained 330 immigrants in Los Angeles to date, White House officers mentioned.

Mayor Karen Bass introduced a curfew in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday that’s set to proceed for an unspecified period of time.

Newsom struck again on the Trump administration on Monday by submitting a lawsuit over Trump’s commandeering of the state’s National Guard troops. The following day, he filed a movement searching for an emergency order to cease the Trump administration’s “unlawful militarization of Los Angeles.”

Bass and Newsom have mentioned that the federal authorities’s actions are escalating tensions and testing how far this administration can take authoritarianism.

“This was provoked by the White House. The reason why? We don’t know,” Bass mentioned at a press convention on Wednesday. “I posit that maybe we are part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in reaching in and taking over power from a governor, power from a local jurisdiction.”

She additionally claimed the Trump administration’s actions present it’s intentionally “trying to cause fear and panic.”

In an pressing tackle on Tuesday night, Newsom mentioned the difficulty is greater than Los Angeles.

“When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state. This is about all of us. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here,” he mentioned.

Newsom referred to as Trump “a president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution.”

“Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves,” Newsom continued. “But they do not stop there. Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.”