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      Trump’s mobilization of troops in LA to cost Americans at least $134m, Hegseth says

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      Donald Trump’s decision to mobilize the US marines and national guard troops to Los Angeles is expected to cost taxpayers at least $134m and continue for a minimum of 60 days, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told lawmakers during a House hearing on Tuesday.A total of 2,700 military personnel – 700 marines and 2,000 national guard troops – were dispatched to the city on Monday, intensifying a federal presence that both Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, have publicly opposed.“The current cost estimate for the deployment is $134m, which is largely just the cost of travel, housing and food,” said Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, special assistant to the secretary of defense, during a House subcommittee meeting.“We stated very publicly that it’s 60 days because we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere,” Hegseth added.During a hearing of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Pentagon that was meant to discuss Trump’s proposed budget, Hegseth defended Trump’s decision to deploy marines and national guard troops, telling lawmakers that the mobilization was necessary to assist with deportations and control rioters he claimed were in the country illegally.Democrats used the opportunity to press Hegseth, a former Fox News host who was one of the most controversial of Trump’s cabinet nominees, on the legality and cost of mobilizing military forces against civilians who last week began protesting arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (Ice).“What’s the justification for using the military for civilian law enforcement purposes in LA, and why are you sending war fighters to cities to interact with civilians?” asked the California Democratic congressman Pete Aguilar.“Every American citizen deserves to be live in a community that’s safe, and Ice agents need to be able to do their job. They’re being attacked for doing their job, which is deporting illegal criminals,” Hegseth replied.The Los Angeles police department chief of police, Jim McDonnell, said on Monday that the arrival of military forces complicated efforts to de-escalate tensions on the ground. “The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles – absent clear coordination – presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city,” McDonnell said in a statement.The protests erupted late last week following immigration raids that led to the arrests of more than 40 individuals. Demonstrations intensified over the weekend, with crowds blocking highways and setting fire to vehicles. Police have responded with teargas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.Trump’s decision to send troops without state consent has resulted in Democrats accusing the administration of federal overreach. California officials have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the federal mobilization violates state sovereignty.Trump again defended the mobilization on Tuesday, stating the troops will remain in place “until there’s no danger”. He reiterated his stance that sending troops was necessary to prevent a “horrible situation”.Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office that he had last spoken to Newsom “a day ago” about the protests in LA, but Newsom denied these claims, saying: “there was no call. Not even a voicemail,” in a social media post.“Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to,” Newsom wrote on X.During Tuesday’s hearing, Aguilar noted that the federal law Trump cited to bypass the governor allows such a decision to be made only in response to “invasion by a foreign nation, rebellion or dangerous rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States or [if] the president is unable … with regular forces to execute the laws of the United States”. He asked: “Which authority is triggered here to justify the use?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I don’t know. You just read it yourself so people can listen themselves, but it sounds like all three to me,” Hegseth shot back, before alleging that demonstrators engaging in violence were in the country illegally.“If you’ve got millions of illegals you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers and law enforcement officers, that’s a problem.”The Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Betty McCollum asked Hegseth why it was necessary to deploy marines to LA when no such step was taken when Minneapolis experienced days of rioting following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.The secretary responded by attacking how the state’s governor, Tim Walz, handled the unrest, then said marines were being sent to LA because of comments made by its police chief. “The police chief said she was overwhelmed, so we helped,” Hegseth said.It was not immediately clear to whom Hegseth was referring.Democrats have criticized Hegseth repeatedly in recent months, particularly after he fired air force Gen Charles Q Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and later after he was revealed as one of the top Trump administration officials who discussed plans to bomb Yemen in a leaked group chat containing a reporter.But many Democrats, as well as all Republicans, avoided those topics in the hearing, instead asking Hegseth for details about his budgetary needs and his views on the military capabilities of foreign rivals such as Russia and China. The secretary is scheduled to be back at the Capitol on Wednesday for a hearing before a Senate appropriations subcommittee. More

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      Misinformation about LA Ice protests swirls online: ‘Catnip for rightwing agitators’

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      Since protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles began, false and misleading claims about the ongoing demonstrations have spread on text-based social networks. Outright lies posted directly to social media mixed with misinformation spread through established channels by the White House as Donald Trump dramatically escalated federal intervention. The stream of undifferentiated real and fake information has painted a picture of the city that forks from reality.Parts of Los Angeles have seen major protests over the past four days against intensified immigration raids by the US president’s administration. On Saturday, dramatic photos from downtown Los Angeles showed cars set aflame amid confrontations with law enforcement. Many posts promoted the perception that mayhem and violence had overtaken the entirety of Los Angeles, even though confrontations with law enforcement and vandalism remained confined to a small part of the sprawling city. Trump has deployed 2,000 members of the national guard to the city without requesting consent from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, which provoked the state to sue for an alleged violation of sovereignty. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has also ordered the US military to deploy approximately 700 marines to the city.Amid the street-level and legal conflicts, misinformation is proliferating. Though lies have long played a part in civil and military conflicts, social media often acts as an accelerant, with facts failing to spread as quickly as their counterparts, a dynamic that has played out with the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, a devastating hurricane in North Carolina and the coronavirus pandemic.Among the most egregious examples were conservative and pro-Russian accounts circulating a video of Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, from before the protests with the claim that she incited and supported the protests, which have featured Mexican flags, according to the misinformation watchdog Newsguard. The misleading posts – made on Twitter/X by the conservative commentator Benny Johnson on pro-Trump sites such as WLTReport.com or Russian state-owned sites such as Rg.ru – have received millions of views, according to the organization. Sheinbaum in fact told reporters on 9 June: “We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest … We call on the Mexican community to act pacifically.”A post about bricks stirs a mixture of real and fake newsConspiratorial conservatives are grasping at familiar bogeymen. A post to X on Saturday claiming that “Soros-funded organizations” had dropped off pallets of bricks near Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities received more than 9,500 retweets and was viewed more than 800,000 times. The Democratic mega-donor George Soros appears as a consistent specter in rightwing conspiracy theories, and the post likewise attributed the supply drop to LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, and California governor, Gavin Newsom.“It’s Civil War!!” the post read.The photo of stacked bricks originates from a Malaysian construction supply company, and the hoax about bricks being supplied to protesters has spread repeatedly since the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the US. X users appended a “community note” fact-checking the tweet. X’s native AI chatbot, Grok, also provided fact-checks when prompted to evaluate the veracity of the post.In response to the hoax photo, some X users replied with links to real footage from the protests that showed protesters hammering at concrete bollards, mixing false and true and reducing clarity around what was happening in reality. The independent journalist who posted the footage claimed the protesters were using the material as projectiles against police, though the footage did not show such actions.The Social Media Lab, a research unit out of Toronto Metropolitan University, posted on Bluesky: “These days, it feels like every time there’s a protest, the old clickbaity ‘pallets of bricks’ hoax shows up right on cue. You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It’s catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters.”Trump and the White House muddy the watersTrump himself has fed the narrative that the protests are inauthentic and larger than they really are, fueled by outside agitators without legitimate interest in local matters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists,” Trump posted to Truth Social, which was screenshotted and reposted to X by Elon Musk. Others in the administration have made similar points on social media.A reporter for the Los Angeles Times pointed out that the White House put out a statement about a particular Mexican national being arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer “during the riots”. In fact, Customs and Border Protection agents stopped him before the protests began.Sowing misleading information, reaping distrustTrump has increased the number of Ice raids across the country, which has stoked fears of deportations across Los Angeles, heavily populated with immigrants to the US. Per the Social Media Lab, anti-Ice posts also spread misinformation. One post on Bluesky, marked “Breaking”, claimed that federal agents had just arrived at an LA elementary school and tried to question first-graders. In fact, the event occurred two months ago. Researchers called the post “rage-farming to push merch”.The conspiratorial website InfoWars put out a broadcast on X titled: Watch Live: LA ICE Riots Spread To Major Cities Nationwide As Democrat Summer Of Rage Arrives, which attracted more than 40,000 simultaneous listeners when viewed by the Guardian on Tuesday morning. Though protests against deportations have occurred in other cities, the same level of chaos as seen in Los Angeles has not. A broadcast on X by the news outlet Reuters, Los Angeles after fourth night of immigration protests, had drawn just 13,000 viewers at the same time.The proliferation of misinformation degrades X’s utility as a news source, though Musk continually tweets that it is the top news app in this country or that, most recently Qatar, a minor distinction. Old photos and videos mix with new and sow doubt in legitimate reporting. Since purchasing Twitter and renaming it X in late 2022, Musk has dismantled many of the company’s own initiatives for combatting the proliferation of lies, though he has promoted the user-generated fact-checking feature, “community notes”. During the 2024 US presidential election in particular, the X CEO himself became a hub for the spread of false information, say researchers. In his dozens of posts per day, he posted and reposted incorrect or misleading claims that reached about 2bn views, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. More

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      ‘The language of authoritarianism’: how Trump and allies cast LA as a lawless city needing military intervention

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      Donald Trump and his allies turned to a familiar script over the weekend, casting the sprawling city of Los Angeles in shades of fire and brimstone, a hub of dangerous lawlessness that required urgent military intervention in order to be contained.“Looking really bad in L.A.,” Trump posted on Truth Social in the very early hours of Monday morning. “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”But contrary to the Trump administration’s characterization of an entire city in tumult, the demonstrations were actually confined to very small areas and life generally went on as usual across much of the city.Protests began on Friday outside the federal building in downtown LA following reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents were conducting raids nearby. The protests later spread to the cities of Paramount and Compton in response to reported and rumored raids there too, and demonstrators faced off with local and state authorities armed with “less-lethal munitions” and tear gas.By Sunday, despite objections from local officials, Trump made the unusual move of asserting control over California’s national guard and deployed 300 soldiers to support Ice (nearly 2,000 troops were mobilized in total).As a pretext to this action, the Trump administration had characterized the protests as a broader threat to the nation. On X, White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called LA “occupied territory”. “We’ve been saying for years this is a fight to save civilization. Anyone with eyes can see that now.”Trump posted on Truth Social: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations – But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.”FBI director, Kash Patel, wrote on X that LA was “under siege by marauding criminals”.Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and scholar on fascist and authoritarian movements, says the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration is “an authoritarian trick”.“You create a sense of existential fear that social anarchy is spreading, that criminal gangs are taking over. This is the language of authoritarianism all over the world,” said Ben-Ghiat.“What is the only recourse to violent mobs and agitators? Using all the force of the state. Thus we have the vision of the national guard, armed to the teeth. It’s like a war zone. That’s on purpose, it’s habituating Americans to see those armed forces as being in combat on the streets of American cities.”Ben-Ghiat pointed specifically to a post on X by defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.“The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil,” Hegseth wrote. “A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.”Ben-Ghiat said Hegseth employed “the classic authoritarian thing, of setting up an excuse, which is that the internal enemy, illegal criminal aliens, is working together with an external enemy, the cartels and foreign terrorists, and using that to go after a third party, of protesters, regular people, who came out to show solidarity”.In his post, Hegseth added that active duty marines at Camp Pendleton were on “high alert” and would also be mobilized “if violence continues. On Monday, the Pentagon said it had mobilized approximately 700 marines. CNN reported that the government was still ironing out “rules of engagement” for encountering protesters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe protests turned violent when federal immigration authorities used flash bang grenades and tear gas against demonstrators, per reporting in the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times. Over the weekend, fiery and chaotic scenes played out in downtown LA, Compton and Paramount. Dozens of people were arrested for an array of crimes, including an alleged tossing of a molotov cocktail towards Iceofficers. Protesters shut down a freeway, several self-driving vehicles were torched and dumpsters were set alight, and there were scattered reports of looting.Still, as mayor Karen Bass noted on CNN on Monday, on “a few streets downtown, it looks horrible”, but there was “not citywide civil unrest”.Local officials said that the addition of troops, who were seen standing shoulder to shoulder on Sunday holding wooden bats, long guns and shields, to the already fraught situation only made things worse. Bass described the decision to involve the national guard as a “chaotic escalation”; Governor Gavin Newsom called it “inflammatory”.Newsom said on Monday that he will sue the Trump administration; attorney general Rob Bonta later previewed that lawsuit by telling the public that the Trump administration “trampled” on the states sovereignty by bypassing the governor.“This was not inevitable,” Bonta said of the demonstrations that built over the weekend following immigration raids across LA, adding: “There was no risk of rebellion, no threat of foreign invasion, no inability for the federal government to enforce federal laws.”The inclusion of the national guard functioned as a show of force against a powerful blue state that Trump – and his allies – have cast as an existential threat to the rest of America, in part on account of its “sanctuary status”, meaning local officials don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.“Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States,” Stephen Miller wrote on X.As Trump and his allies fomented chaos on the streets, Maga-world personalities and some Republican officials added to the mayhem by sharing misinformation online. Senator Ted Cruz and Infowars’s Alex Jones reshared a video, originally posted by conservative commentator James Woods, of a burning LAPD car during a protest in 2020, claiming it was from the current LA unrest.Prominent accounts also shared a video from last year of a flash mob attack on a convenience store clerk, claiming that violent protesters were currently assaulting a small business owner. An account called US Homeland Security News, which has almost 400,000 followers, posted an image of a stack of bricks with the caption: “Alert: Soros funded organizations have ordered hundreds of pallets of bricks to be placed near ICE facilities to be used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It’s Civil War!!” The image, which was also used to spread false information about Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, was taken at a building supply company in Malaysia.Trump has also repeatedly suggested that some of the individuals involved in the protest were “paid”, invoking a popular rightwing conspiracy about dark money bankrolling liberal causes.This, too, is another tactic out of the authoritarian playbook, according to Ben-Ghiat.“If there are any protests against the autocrat, you have to discredit them by saying they are crisis actors, they are foreign infiltrators,” Ben-Ghiat said. “You have to discredit them in the public eye.”Officials in LA are bracing for further protests. The Los Angeles police department received backup from at least a dozen police forces in southern California, according to the Los Angeles Times. California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said on Monday that he thinks it’s “highly likely” that all 2,000 of the national guard soldiers who were mobilized will be deployed to LA.The weekend’s unrest also casts a potential shadow over Trump’s military parade slated for this Thursday in Washington DC. Opponents of that event are organizing protests across the US under the banner of “No Kings”. More

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      Los Angeles protests: California governor says marines ‘not political pawns’ as Donald Trump deploys more National Guard troops – live

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      The governor of California has said US marines are “not political pawns”, as Trump vows to send the elite soldiers in to LA.Gavin Newsom posted on X: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns.“The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend.“It’s a blatant abuse of power”, Newsom added. “We will sue to stop this.” The state of California has lodged suit against the Trump administration.An association of Korean Americans in Los Angeles has criticised Donald Trump Jr., the son of the U.S. president, for “reckless” comments on social media and urged him not to exploit a riot that devastated their community 33 years ago.The Korean American Federation of Los Angeles also said an operation by the U.S. administration to round up suspected undocumented immigrants lacked “due legal procedures”.Donald Trump Jr. posted a photograph of a man with a rifle on a rooftop on X with a message: “Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!” referring to actions by the Korean American community during the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles.The federation in separate statements expressed concern over the developments in Los Angeles over the last week and said their businesses were seriously affected by the crackdown and arrests.“While the unrest has not yet subsided, Donald Trump Jr. … showed the recklessness of posting a post on X on Sunday, June 8, mocking the current unrest by mentioning the ‘Rooftop Korean’ from the LA riots 33 years ago,” it said in a statement on Monday Los Angeles time.“As the eldest son of the current president and an influencer with approximately 15 million followers, his actions could pose a huge risk in these icy times, and we strongly urge the past trauma of the Korean people be never, ever exploited for any purpose.”Hundreds of deputies have been mobilised in Los Angeles County as law enforcement try to respond to widespread protests, the state governor Gavin Newsom’s office has said.The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, in coordination with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), has formally requested mutual aid assistance from law enforcement agencies within and outside of Los Angeles County to support LAPD.It has approved the mobilisation of 20 deputies from San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department; 83 deputies from Orange County Sheriff’s Department; 32 deputies from Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department; 44 deputies from Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and 80 officers from municipal police agencies within Los Angeles CountyTo bring further support to the region, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has already provided more than 200 deputies to support the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).The protests so far have resulted in a few dozen arrests and some property damage.“What is happening effects every American, everyone who wants to live free, regardless of how long their family has lived here,” said Marzita Cerrato, 42, a first-generation immigrant whose parents are from Mexico and Honduras.Protests also sprung up in at least nine other US cities overnight, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news outlets.In Austin, Texas, police fired nonlethal munitions and detained several people as they clashed with a crowd of several hundred protesters.US officials said the marines were being deployed to protect federal property and personnel, including immigration agents. A convoy of 10 to 15 buses with blacked-out windows and escorted by sheriff’s vehicles, left the base at Twentynine Palms in the desert east of Los Angeles late Monday and headed toward the city, stopping around 1am (9am BST) at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, about 20 miles (35 km) south of downtown Los Angeles.Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.Homeland Security said its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division had arrested 2,000 immigration offenders per day in recent days, far above the 311 daily average in fiscal year 2024 under former President Joe Biden.“We conducted more operations today than we did the day before and tomorrow we are going to double those efforts again,” Noem told Fox News’ “Hannity.” “The more that they protest and commit acts of violence against law enforcement officers, the harder ICE is going to come after them.”Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass opposed the clampdown, telling MSNBC: “This is a city of immigrants.”Other protests took shape overnight across LA County. Outside a clothing warehouse, relatives of detained workers demanded at a news conference that their loved ones be released.The family of Jacob Vasquez, 35, who was detained Friday at the warehouse, where he worked, said they had yet to receive any information about him.“Jacob is a family man and the sole breadwinner of his household,” Vasquez’s brother, Gabriel, told the crowd. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing being targeted by authorities.Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement he was confident in the police department’s ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines’ arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge” for them.Monday’s demonstrations were far less raucous, with thousands peacefully attending a rally at City Hall and hundreds protesting outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held after workplace raids across the city.Australia’s prime minister on Tuesday denounced the “horrific” shooting of a rubber bullet at an Australian television reporter covering unrest in Los Angeles.Australian 9News reporter Lauren Tomasi was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet on Sunday while reporting on live television. Her employer said she was sore but unharmed.“She is going ok. She is pretty resilient, I have got to say, but that footage was horrific,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters after speaking to Tomasi.Albanese said the reporter could reasonably have expected not to be “targeted” with a rubber bullet while doing her job in Los Angeles. The footage showed she was “clearly identified” as a member of the media, with “no ambiguity”, he said.“We don’t find it acceptable that it occurred, and we think the role of the media is particularly important.”Albanese said his government had raised the incident with the US administration but he would not comment on any future discussion with US President Donald Trump.The governor of California has said US marines are “not political pawns”, as Trump vows to send the elite soldiers in to LA.Gavin Newsom posted on X: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns.“The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend.“It’s a blatant abuse of power”, Newsom added. “We will sue to stop this.” The state of California has lodged suit against the Trump administration.Grammy Award-winning rapper Doechii used her acceptance speech at the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards to sharply criticise Trump’s handling of the protests.Collecting the award for best female hip-hop artist, she accused the president of “creating fear and chaos” in his response to demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, which sparked days of protest across the city.“I do want to address what’s happening right now, outside the building,” she said.“These are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities. In the name of law and order, Trump is using military forces to stop a protest, and I want you all to consider what kind of government it appears to be, when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us.”Remarkable images have emerged from last night’s protests in Los Angeles as Trump’s administration vowed to intensify immigration raids.The Los Angeles District Attorney has said the county does not need the national guard and the marines, saying there are “more than enough” local police to deal with rioting.Nathan J. Hochman said: “We in Los Angeles county have tens of thousands of police officers, whether they are with the LA police department, the LA sherriff’s department, or there are 45 other law enforcement agencies in LA county.“We have more than enough law enforcement officers to deal with the civil unrest thats occurred so far”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.“It doesn’t mean that the federal government can’t protect federal facilities with either the national guard or, if they choose, additional soldiers – that’s their choice.“But as far as the civil unrest in LA, that is something that, though obviously very significant, it is something we are taking extremely seriously and we are able to deal with.“We do not need the additional forces that the national guard and the marines present”, he added. “Unless the civil unrest gets farther out of control – and that could happen – we are not at the point where local law enforcement is beyond its means to deal with the situation.”Good morning, Donald Trump has deployed more National Guard troops and marines to Los Angeles as protests in the city go into their fourth day. Here is what has happened overnight:

      California said the deployment of the National Guard by Republican President Trump’s administration was illegal and violated the state’s sovereignty and federal law, according to a court filing of its lawsuit against the US government.

      The US military is to temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to LA until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in Trump’s response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies. Marines were expected to reach Los Angeles on Monday night (LA time) or Tuesday morning.

      Even as protests against raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stretched into a fourth day Monday in LA, city workers began a cleanup of graffiti and other weekend damage across the city.

      The Trump administration vowed to intensify migrant raids, with US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledging to carry out even more operations to round up suspected immigration violators, extending a crackdown that provoked the protests. More

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      Trump sends thousands more troops to LA as mayor says city is being used as an ‘experiment’

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      The Trump administration was deploying roughly 4,000 national guard members in Los Angeles on Monday in response to protests over immigration raids, in an extraordinary mobilization of troops against US residents that California leaders have called “authoritarian”.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.Despite facing teargas and other munitions over the weekend, protesters continued to rally on Monday, and families of detained immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released.The Trump administration initially said 2,000 national guard members were being sent to LA, but California governor Gavin Newsom said late on Monday he was informed federal officials were sending an additional 2,000 troops, though he said only 300 had been deployed so far, with the remainder “sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders”. Federal authorities also said the military would be sending roughly 700 marines, marking an exceptionally rare deployment targeting people domestically.Largely peaceful protests against Ice spread around the country on Monday, including in New York, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco, where hundreds of people gathered in the evening for a march through the city’s historically-Latino Mission district. In Austin, demonstrators marched outside an Ice processing center, chanting slogans such as “No more Ice” and holding up signs including “No human being is illegal”. In downtown Los Angeles, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a demonstration calling for an end to Ice raids. Intermittent protests continued into the evening, as police used rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of several hundred people gathered near the federal building.Advocates also rallied in support of David Huerta, the president of SEIU California and SEIU-USWW, who was arrested on Friday and initially hospitalized. Huerta was charged with conspiracy to impede an officer, which could result in a six-year prison sentence, and released Monday, telling reporters: “This fight is ours, it’s our community’s, but it belongs to everyone. We all have to fight for them.”Tensions simmered as California filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the federal deployment of the state national guard over Newsom’s objections. Meanwhile, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, earlier 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.”View image in fullscreenTrump, who congratulated the national guard troops for a “great job” before they had arrived in the city, said LA would have been “completely obliterated” without them.Homan claimed on Fox News 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, and Ice arrests continued across southern California on Monday.California’s lawsuit, filed late on Monday against Trump and Pete Hegseth, his defense secretary, said the president had “used a protest that local authorities had under control to make another unprecedented power-grab … at the cost of the sovereignty of the state of California and in disregard of the authority and role of the governor as commander-in-chief of the state’s national guard”.The suit, which seeks to block the defense department from deploying the state national guard, said there has been no “rebellion” or “insurrection” in LA. California also said that during raids, Ice agents “took actions that inflamed tensions and provoked protest” and “sparked panic”. California noted that Ice sealed off entire streets around targeted buildings, used unmarked armored vehicles with paramilitary gear, and did not coordinate with LA law enforcement officials.Rob Bonta, the California attorney general who filed the suit, said the president was “trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends”.Also on Monday, families targeted by the recent raids spoke out. Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, an immigrant rights group, held a press conference outside Ambiance Apparel, 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.”Yurien Contreras said her family has had no communication with her father, Mario Romero, since he was taken: “I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his ankles.” Lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), found that immigrants apprehended in LA were initially detained in a basement of a federal building, alleging they were denied food, water or beds for more than 12 hours.View image in fullscreenMayor Bass has said that LA is a “proud city of immigrants” and has strongly condemned the raids, telling reporters on Monday evening that most people detained have been denied access to lawyers, with many “disappeared” to unknown locations. “I can’t emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelenos,” she said, adding that she would not stand for the White House using LA as a “test case” for this kind of federal crackdown.Bass also condemned vandalism and said protesters would be arrested for “violent” acts. LAPD said on Monday that 29 people had been arrested on Saturday for “failure to disperse”, and that there were 21 additional arrests on Sunday on a range of charges, including looting, attempted murder with a molotov cocktail and assault on an officer.Civil rights activists 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.”The LAPD said officers had fired more than 600 rubber bullets over the weekend. Thousands had protested on Sunday, rallying around city hall and a federal detention center, and at one point, taking over a freeway.Jim McDonnell, the chief of the LAPD, said when officers fire on protesters, they are using “target-specific munitions,” but added: “That’s not to say that it always hits the intended target.” He said he was “very concerned” about the footage of a journalist hit by a munition.Regarding the deployment of marines to the city, he said his department had not been formally notified, and said their arrival would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge”. Bass said the national guard troops were simply guarding two buildings: “They need Marines on top of it? I don’t understand.”Hegseth, meanwhile, said the marines were needed to “restore order” and “defend federal law enforcement officers”.Trump’s 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 is home to 3.5 million immigrants, making up a third of the population. 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, of the legal support group, 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.”Helen Livingston contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s Crackdown on LA Protests Contrasts With His Jan. 6 Response

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      The president often expresses an open desire for aggressive law enforcement and harsh tactics when protests originate from the political left.When violent protests originate from the right — such as those in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, or at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — President Trump has chosen to downplay the violence or suggest the protesters have a noble cause and have been treated unfairly.But when protests originate from what he views as the political left, Mr. Trump often expresses an open desire for law enforcement and the military to harshly crack down on them.Over the weekend, Mr. Trump ordered that 2,000 National Guard troops be deployed on the streets of downtown Los Angeles to quell protests against his administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. That was followed by orders on Monday to send 700 Marines to join them, and then later in the day, with an order for 2,000 additional National Guard troops.Even though the demonstrations have been largely contained to specific areas and mostly peaceful, Mr. Trump claimed on social media that the protesters were “insurrectionist mobs” and that Los Angeles had been “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals.”In endorsing harsh law enforcement tactics against immigration protests, Mr. Trump is picking a political fight on ground that Republicans believe is advantageous terrain. Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, said on his podcast on Monday that the president’s response was “quite smart.”“He just won a massive national election on this very topic,” Mr. Bannon said, magnifying Mr. Trump’s showing in a race he won by less than 2.3 million popular votes. Mr. Bannon accused Democratic-led jurisdictions of inviting in undocumented immigrants and refusing to arrest violent protesters. “This is why President Trump has to bring in the National Guard and federalize them,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More