LAST UPDATE | 9 Jun

LOS ANGELES IS on edge after violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces over immigration raids.

Police stood watch after ordering people not to gather in the city’s downtown, where cars were torched over the weekend and security forces fired tear gas at protesters.

The Trump administration, already under fire from political opponents for sending the national guard in to the streets of the eastern US city, has this evening deployed 500 soliders from the US marines to “protect federal agents and buildings” a source told AFP.

California Governor Gavin Newsom slammed decision as “deranged” and claimed that the action by US President Donald Trump was “dictatorial”. 

“US Marines have served honourably across multiple wars in defence of democracy,” Newsom posted online.

“They shouldn’t be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfil the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American.”

The protests in Los Angeles, home to a large Latino population, were triggered by raids and dozens of arrests of what authorities say are illegal migrants and gang members.

Critics say Trump – who has made clamping down on illegal migration a key pillar of his second term – deliberately stoked tensions by sending in California’s National Guard, a stand-by military usually controlled by the state governor.

“This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted,” Governor Newsom said on social media. “He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalise the National Guard.”

“We’re suing him.”

The White House also ratcheted up the stand-off between the hard-charging Republican president and California’s Democrat-led authorities.

“Gavin Newsom did nothing as violent riots erupted in Los Angeles for days,” Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted today. “President Trump has stepped in to maintain law and order.”

“You have the National Guard with loaded magazines and large guns standing around trying to intimidate Americans,” protester Thomas Henning told AFP news on the scene yesterday.

Trump said the 300 troops from the National Guard would ensure “very strong law and order”. On his Truth Social platform, Trump called the protesters “insurrectionists,” and demanded authorities “arrest people in facemasks, now!”

At least three self-driving Waymo cars were torched during the protest. An Australian reporter was hit in the leg with a rubber bullet fired by a police officer while on live television. Her employer 9News said she was unharmed.

‘Intimidation tactic’

Demonstrators told AFP the purpose of the troops did not appear to be to keep order.

“I think it’s an intimidation tactic,” Thomas Henning said.

“These protests have been peaceful. There’s no one trying to do any sort of damage right now, and yet you have the National Guard with loaded magazines and large guns standing around trying to intimidate Americans from exercising our First Amendment rights.”

Marshall Goldberg, 78, said that deploying the troops made him feel “so offended”.

“We hate what they’ve done with the undocumented workers, but this is moving it to another level of taking away the right to protest and the right to just peaceably assemble,” he said.

Protesters confront police on the 101 Freeway in LA Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

A social media post from the Department of Defence that showed dozens of National Guard members with long guns and an armoured vehicle. The deployment was limited to a small area in central Los Angeles.

The protests have been relatively small and limited to that area. The rest of the city of four million people is largely unaffected.

Their arrival follows clashes near a Home Depot in the heavily Latino city of Paramount, south of Los Angeles. As protesters sought to block Border Patrol vehicles, some hurling rocks and chunks of cement, federal agents unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.

Tensions were high after a series of raids by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement.

Yesterday, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said the National Guard would “keep peace and allow people to be able to protest but also to keep law and order”.

In a signal of the administration’s aggressive approach, defence secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty marines “if violence continues”.

A police officer fires a soft round near the metropolitan detention center of downtown Los Angeles Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The move came over the objections of governor Newsom, marking the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was activated without a request from its governor, according to the Brennan Centre for Justice.

In a directive on 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”.

Newsom, a Democrat, said Trump’s decision to call in the National Guard was “purposefully inflammatory”.

He described Hegseth’s threat to deploy marines on American soil as “deranged behaviour”.

A protester throws a scooter at a police vehical near the metropolitan detention center of downtown Los Angeles Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

In a statement yesterday, assistant homeland security secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused California’s politicians and protesters of “defending heinous illegal alien criminals at the expense of Americans’ safety”.

“Instead of rioting, they should be thanking Ice (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer,” McLaughlin added.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said the order by Trump reflected “a president moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism” and “usurping the powers of the United States Congress”.

With reporting from AFP

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