8 hours ago
US officials were deploying roughly 2,000 national guard members in Los Angeles on Monday in response to large protests over immigration raids, while Donald Trump has taken the extraordinary step of threatening to arrest the Democratic governor of California.
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.
Protests showed no signs of stopping on Monday, as families of detained immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released. Federal officials said roughly 1,000 national guard members were already on the ground, and that the military would be sending roughly 700 marines, marking an exceptionally rare deployment of troops to police US residents.
Police used teargas and other munitions to disperse crowds over the weekend while Governor Gavin Newsom announced a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s deployment of the California national guard over the objection of state officials. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has also 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.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held another rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, demanding the “humane treatment and access to lawyers for all detainees” and an “end to ICE raids that devastate immigrant families and communities”.
“We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” the civil rights group said. The ACLU of Southern California said it plans to sue over the national guard deployment.
Advocates called for the immediate release of David Huerta, the president of SEIU California and SEIU-USWW, who was arrested on Friday and initially hospitalized, with video showing officers shoving him to the ground. Huerta was charged on Monday afternoon with a federal offense of conspiracy to impede an officer, which could result in a six-year prison sentence. He was released from federal custody on a $50,000 bond following a Monday court hearing.
The charges come after the US government has repeatedly arrested high-profile officials who the Trump administration claims are obstructing Ice, including a New Jersey mayor, a congresswoman and a Wisconsin judge.
Trump, who congratulated the national guard troops for a “great job” even before they had arrived in the city, posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday that deploying them was a “great decision”, saying the city would have been “completely obliterated” otherwise.
Homan claimed on Fox News on Monday 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. “I’m telling you what – we’re going to keep enforcing law every day in LA,” he said. “Every day in LA, we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not.”
California’s lawsuit will accuse the Trump administration of “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s national guard, said the state attorney general, Rob Bonta.
Map“There is no invasion. There is no rebellion,” Bonta said in a statement. “The president is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends. Federalizing the California national guard is an abuse of the president’s authority under the law – and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.”
Newsom earlier said the president was “putting fuel on this fire, ever since he announced he was taking over the national guard – an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act”.
Federal law, he said, “specifically notes they had to coordinate with the governor of the state”. The governor also said Trump’s actions were “putting lives at risk”.
Also on Monday, families targeted by the recent raids spoke out. Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, an immigrant rights group, hosted a press conference outside Ambiance, 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.”
Another woman, Yuriel Romero, said the raid was traumatizing: “I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and form his ankles.”
On Sunday thousands of Angelenos had swamped the streets around city hall, the federal courthouse and a detention center where previously arrested protesters are being held. They also brought a freeway to a standstill.
Vocal and boisterous, the crowd for large parts of the day was mostly peaceful. But tensions flared several times. On Sunday afternoon, police used teargas to disperse groups of protesters gathered near the detention center. And in the evening, officers fired round after round of flash-bangs in an attempt to push the protesters back up the freeway off-ramps.
Mayor Bass has said that LA is a “proud city of immigrants” and has strongly condemned the raids, but has also said protesters would be arrested for “violent” acts. LA police leaders have alleged that some officers had rocks and fireworks thrown at them, though officials have said the demonstrations were largely peaceful.
Civil rights activists have 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.”
Trump’s national guard deployment marked a stunning escalation in a broad crackdown on immigrants following raids across the country. The 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, home to 3.5 million immigrants, making up a third of the population, has a long history of civil rights protests. 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 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.”
