US President Donald Trump yesterday ordered California National Guard troops to Los Angeles, a rare deployment against the state governor’s wishes after sometimes-violent protests against immigration enforcement raids.
Trump took federal control of California’s state military to push soldiers into the country’s second-biggest city, a decision deemed “purposefully inflammatory” by California Governor Gavin Newsom and of a kind not seen for decades, US media said.
The development came after two days of confrontations during which federal agents fired flash-bang grenades and tear gas toward crowds angry at the arrests of dozens of migrants in a city with a large Latino population.
Photo: REUTERS
“It’s up to us to stand up for our people,” said a Los Angeles resident whose parents are immigrants, declining to give her name.
“Whether we get hurt, whether they gas us, whatever they’re throwing at us. They’re never going to stop us. All we have left is our voice,” she said as emergency services lights flashed in the distance.
Fires and fireworks lit up the streets during clashes, while a protester holding a Mexican flag stood in front of a burnt-out car that had been sprayed with a slogan against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
“President Trump has signed a Presidential Memorandum deploying 2,000 National Guardsmen to address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, blaming what she called California’s “feckless” Democratic Party leaders. “The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs.”
Trump on social media congratulated the National Guard for “a job well done” shortly before midnight on Saturday.
However, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote on social media that the troops had not yet been deployed.
Trump took a swipe at Bass and Newsom, saying in his post they were “unable to handle the task,” drawing a comparison with deadly fires that hit the city in January.
The National Guard — a reserve military — is frequently used in natural disasters and occasionally in instances of civil unrest, but almost always with the consent of local politicians.
California’s governor objected to the president’s decision, saying it was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”
Federal authorities “want a spectacle. Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully,” Newsom wrote on social media.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened to involve nearby regular military forces.
“If violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized — they are on high alert,” he wrote on social media.
Law professor Jessica Levinson
said Hegseth’s intervention appeared symbolic because of the general legal restriction on the use of the US military as a domestic policing force in the absence of an insurrection.
Saturday’s standoff took place in the suburb of Paramount, where demonstrators converged on a reported federal facility that the local mayor said was being used as a staging post by ICE agents.
Masked and armed immigration agents carried out high-profile workplace raids in separate parts of Los Angeles on Friday, attracting angry crowds and setting off hours-long standoffs.
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