Trump Deploys National Guard As Los Angeles Protests Against Immigration Agents Continue | EUROtoday

LOS ANGELES, June 7 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration stated it could deploy 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday as federal brokers in Los Angeles confronted off in opposition to a couple of hundred demonstrators throughout a second day of protests following immigration raids.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon was ready to mobilize active-duty troops “if violence continues” in Los Angeles, saying the Marines at close by Camp Pendleton had been “on high alert.”

Federal safety brokers on Saturday confronted protesters within the Paramount space in southeast Los Angeles, the place some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags. A second protest in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night time attracted some 60 individuals, who chanted slogans together with “ICE out of L.A.!”

Trump signed a presidential memorandum to deploy the National Guard troops to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” the White House stated in an announcement. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, informed Fox News that the National Guard could be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom referred to as the choice “purposefully inflammatory.” He posted on X that Trump was deploying the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,” including: “Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully.”

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that if Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass can’t do their jobs “then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

The protests pit Democratic-run Los Angeles, the place census information suggests a good portion of the inhabitants is Hispanic and foreign-born, in opposition to Trump’s Republican White House, which has made cracking down on immigration a trademark of his second time period.

‘VIOLENT INSURRECTION’

“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X late on Saturday.

Senior White House aide Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, described the protests as a “violent insurrection.”

The administration has not invoked the Insurrection Act, two U.S. officers informed Reuters on situation of anonymity. One stated that National Guard troops can deploy rapidly, inside 24 hours in some circumstances, and that the army was working to supply the two,000 troops.

The 1807 legislation empowers a president to deploy the U.S. army to implement the legislation and suppress occasions like civil dysfunction. The final time it was invoked was in the course of the 1992 Los Angeles riots on the request of the California governor.

Video footage of the Paramount protest confirmed dozens of green-uniformed safety personnel with fuel masks on the Paramount protest, lined up on a highway strewn with overturned buying carts as small canisters exploded into fuel clouds. Authorities started detaining some protesters, based on Reuters witnesses. There was no official info of any arrests.

“Now they know that they cannot go to anywhere in this country where our people are, and try to kidnap our workers, our people – they cannot do that without an organized and fierce resistance,” stated protester Ron Gochez, 44.

A primary spherical of protests kicked off on Friday night time after Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers carried out enforcement operations within the metropolis and arrested not less than 44 individuals on alleged immigration violations.

The Department of Homeland Security stated in an announcement that there have been about “1,000 rioters” on the protests on Friday.

Reuters couldn’t confirm DHS’s account. Angelica Salas, government director of immigrants’ rights group Chirla, stated attorneys had not had entry to these detained on Friday, which she referred to as “very worrying.”

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN

Trump has pledged to deport report numbers of individuals within the nation illegally and lock down the U.S.-Mexico border, with the White House setting a aim for ICE to arrest not less than 3,000 migrants per day.

But the sweeping immigration crackdown has additionally caught up individuals legally residing within the nation, together with some with everlasting residence, and has led to authorized challenges.

ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles Police Department didn’t reply to requests for touch upon the protests or whether or not there had been any immigration raids on Saturday.

Television information footage on Friday confirmed unmarked automobiles resembling army transport and vans loaded with uniformed federal brokers streaming by means of Los Angeles streets as a part of the immigration enforcement operation.

Raids occurred round Home Depot shops, the place road distributors and day laborers had been picked up, in addition to at a garment manufacturing facility and a warehouse, Salas of Chirla stated.

Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, condemned the immigration raids.

“I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” Bass stated in an announcement. “These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. We will not stand for this.”

(Reporting by Sandra Stojanovic and Omar Younis; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Alexandra Ulmer, Michael Martina and Idrees Ali; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Diane Craft, Deepa Babington, Michelle Nichols and William Mallard)