[LOS ANGELES] Several US cities braced for protests on Wednesday (Jun 11) against President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration raids, as parts of the country’s second largest city Los Angeles spent the night under curfew in an effort to quell five days of unrest.
Officials were also preparing for nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations on Saturday, when tanks and armoured vehicles will rumble down the streets of Washington, DC, in a military parade marking the US Army’s 250th anniversary and coinciding with the president’s 79th birthday.
The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, said he will deploy the National Guard on Wednesday ahead of planned protests. Already this week, demonstrations have broken out in Austin, Texas, New York, Atlanta and Chicago, among other cities.
South Texas organizations are expected to hold anti-ICE rallies on Wednesday and Saturday, CNN reported local media as saying.
Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops and Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles has sparked a national debate on the use of military on US soil and pitted the Republican president against California’s Democrat governor Gavin Newsom.
Trump has claimed that the deployment prevented the violence from raging out of control, an assertion Newsom and other local officials said was the opposite of the truth.
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“This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk. That’s when the downward spiral began,” Newsom said in a video address on Tuesday.
“He again chose escalation. He chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety… democracy is under assault.”
Hundreds of US Marines arrived in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday under orders from Trump, after he also ordered the deployment of 4,000 National Guard to the city. Marines and National Guard are assigned to protect government personnel and buildings and do not have arrest authority.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the deployments were not necessary as police could manage the protest, the majority of which have been peaceful, and limited to about five streets.
However, due to looting and violence at night, she imposed a curfew over one square mile of the city’s downtown, starting Tuesday night. The curfew will last several days.
Police said multiple groups stayed on the streets in some areas despite the curfew and “mass arrests” were initiated. Police earlier said that 197 people had already been arrested on Tuesday – more than double the total number of arrests to date.
Democratic leaders have raised concerns over a national crisis in what has become the most intense flashpoint yet in the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally, and then crack down on opponents who take to the streets in protest.
Trump, voted back into office last year largely for his promise to deport undocumented immigrants, used a speech honouring soldiers on Tuesday to defend his decision.
He told troops at the army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina: “Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness.”
“What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags,” Trump said, adding his administration would “liberate Los Angeles”.
Demonstrators have waved the flags of Mexico and other countries in solidarity for the migrants rounded up in a series of intensifying raids.
Homeland Security said on Monday its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division had arrested 2,000 immigration offenders per day recently, far above the 311 daily average in fiscal year 2024 under former President Joe Biden.
Protests have also taken place in other cities including New York, Atlanta and Chicago, where demonstrators shouted at and scuffled with officers. Some protesters climbed onto the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza, while others chanted that ICE should be abolished.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Reuters the state was concerned about allowing federal troops to protect personnel, saying there was a risk that could violate an 1878 law that generally forbids the US military, including the National Guard, from taking part in civilian law enforcement.
“Protecting personnel likely means accompanying ICE agents into communities and neighborhoods, and protecting functions could mean protecting the ICE function of enforcing the immigration law,” Bonta said.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday posted photos on X of National Guard troops accompanying ICE officers on an immigration raid. Trump administration officials have vowed to redouble the immigration raids in response to the street protests.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George HW Bush to help respond to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King. REUTERS
