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      Tuesday briefing: What Trump’s response to the LA protests could mean for US democracy

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      Late last week, Los Angeles was left stunned as droves of federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers bore down on homes, businesses and neighbourhoods across the city in a series of immigration raids.The anti-ICE protests that followed were swift and furious, fuelled in part by the reported ill-treatment of some of the 118 people thought to have been detained, allegedly without judicial warrants. By Friday evening, thousands had taken to the streets in mostly peaceful protests before violence flared in points around the city, with protesters attacking police cars and blocking highways.Then came the response from the White House. President Donald Trump promised to crush the opposition on the LA streets, immediately and with military force, by using his powers to send 4,000 National Guard troops to the city.Yesterday, despite the protests dwindling and remaining largely peaceful, Trump continued to escalate the situation, branding the protesters “paid insurrectionists” with the administration ordering 700 marines into Los Angeles to support law enforcement in an exceptionally rare domestic deployment.California governor Gavin Newsom has called Trump’s response an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”, accusing him of intentionally causing chaos, terrorising communities and endangering democracy. Karen Bass, Los Angeles mayor, also warned that LA was being used by the Trump administration as a “test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government”.For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Philippe Sands, the renowned human rights lawyer, on what Trump’s response to the anti-immigration protests could mean for US democracy. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories

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      In depth: ‘A slow creep towards normalisation’View image in fullscreenThe speed at which Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell the protests is a sign of just how willing the administration is to flex its power to the absolute constitutional limits.According to Philippe Sands, none of us should be surprised by the tactics deployed. Throughout his career, Sands has documented and examined the methods used by authoritarian regimes and military dictatorships.Sands says that the scenes unfolding in Los Angeles should be seen as part of a wider drive to create a sense of emergency, but also to test the limits of the public’s imagination about what is acceptable and what must be resisted.“People start in one place but very quickly events like we’re seeing in Los Angeles can change the parameters of tolerance,” he says.What are the LA protests about?Protests broke out across Los Angeles on Friday after agents from ICE conducted a series of high-profile immigration raids, which were met with horror by many locals. LA’s city council released a statement that the city, which was “built by immigrants and thrives because of immigrants” would not “abide by fear tactics to support extreme political agendas that aim to stoke fear and spark discord in our community.”Across the weekend, thousands joined anti-ICE demonstrations, with violence flaring at points across the city as police cars were attacked and highways blocked. The authorities responded with teargas and rubber bullets.What was Trump’s response?On Saturday, Trump said he was deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to clamp down on the immigration protests, posting on Truth Social: “These radical left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will not be tolerated.” Yesterday plans were announced to send 700 marines to LA, with the administration saying they were there to support law enforcement efforts.In sending troops, Trump bypassed the authority of the state’s governor Gavin Newsom, who said that the deployment was “purposefully inflammatory”.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the images of truckloads of armed National Guard troops arriving in the city “akin to a declaration of war on all Californians”.How has Trump been able to deploy military personnel on to the streets of LA?It’s a central tenet of American democracy that the US military should not be used against its citizens. While the American constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, a set of constitutional and statutory legal constraints are intended to prevent the abuse of this exceptional power.However there are loopholes, which Trump has been open about his intention to exploit.First is the 18th-century Insurrection Act, which authorises the president to decide whether to use the military to engage in civilian law enforcement in certain situations. While he has labelled the protesters “insurrectionists”, Trump has stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act in response to the protests in LA.Second is the National Guard. While the US president cannot command military forces against US citizens, he is in charge of the use of the National Guard in Washington DC and can request that other states provide additional guard troops to supplement deployments in emergencies.This weekend is not the first time the National Guard has been sent to Los Angeles. In 2020, troops used smoke canisters and rubber bullets to disperse Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in Lafayette Square. In 1992, George HW Bush deployed thousands of troops to quell the riots after the police beating of Rodney King.Yet, significantly, this weekend is the first time since 1965 that a president has sent in the National Guard without being requested to do so by a state governor, something labelled an “outrageous overreach” by Newsom.Should this fuel fears Trump is driving the US towards authoritarianism?View image in fullscreenIn his first term as president, Trump was open about his desire to expand the powers of federal law enforcement and use the military to crush civil protest.Announcing the deployment of National Guard troops in 2020, Trump said: “If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” before reportedly advocating for BLM protesters to be shot.Sands is keen to stress we shouldn’t be jumping to hasty conclusions, “but it is obvious there are some warning signs that need to be taken seriously”.He draws parallel’s with Augusto Pinochet’s Plan Z, where the Chilean dictator concocted a narrative that leftist insurgents were planning a coup to justify violently suppressing dissent and attacking citizens. Now in the US, you have Trump talking about the “enemy within” to describe illegal immigrants and saying they are a threat to law and order. “It’s a very well-used playbook,” says Sands. “You use the power of your office to create a climate of fear, which then allows you to go further than you’d otherwise be able to do, to argue for exceptional circumstances.”At the same time, some say that in branding those protesting as a “mob” being paid to incite violence, the Trump administration is conflating resistance to his immigration policy with unlawful and dangerous behaviour that the administration claims state authorities can’t deal with. “You might say that what is going on in Los Angeles is a way of testing the limits of what the American people are willing to tolerate, whether in these circumstances they can stomach the sight of troops on the streets of a major American city,” says Sands.You only have to look at history to see how quickly such actions can become normalised, he adds. “It’s all part of this testing of the public’s capacity to absorb this alongside all the other stuff – banning books, taking people off the streets, deporting without due process. It is a slow creep that takes people past limits that were previously unimaginable.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIs this a turning point for US democracy?Sands says that although warning signs are there, the major difference between a case like Pinochet in Chile – the subject of his new book, 38 Londres Street – or other authoritarian regimes, is that so far the Trump administration has not limited – or not been able to limit – the role of the judiciary or the courts in holding the executive to account.“Judges and lawyers are being attacked, very publicly, but judges have not been removed from office and Congress has not curtailed the powers of the courts,” he says. “In the past it has been very clear that the role of the judges and the courts is the line that divides democracy and dictatorship. Authoritarian regimes such as the Pinochet dictatorship neutralised the courts almost immediately. In the US this hasn’t happened.”Sands says that Trump’s decision to bypass the state and directly deploy troops to LA will probably lead to a slew of legal challenges. Already the state of California has said it will sue the government accusing the US president of “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s national guard to quell the protests. “The courts and the judiciary’s powers have actually stood firm so far,” he says. “And on occasion we’ve seen the Trump administration blink and roll back when challenged.”However, he concedes that the jury is out on whether this will remain the case. “Judges in the United States are already under immense pressure,” Sands says. “President Trump’s administration seem to be pushing as far as they can, trying to create cracks and seeing how much they can bend that system.”As anti-ICE protests spread to other cities across the country, political, public and legal resistance that Trump will face in the coming days in LA could be crucial in determining just how resilient the checks and balances built into the US constitution are in face of the real onslaught that Trump 2.0 has unleashed.“There is a great deal at stake here,” says Sands. “Warts and all, since 1945 the United States has always seen itself as a beacon for the idea of the rule of law and constitutionalism. If it now descends into classic authoritarianism, the world will be very different.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

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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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      ‘Kidnapped’: families and lawyers desperate to contact LA workers arrested in Ice raids

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      Gabriel says he has not been able to speak to his brother Jacob, since Jacob was arrested in a raid by armed immigration officials and federal agents at the Ambiance Apparel warehouse in the Los Angeles fashion district on Friday.Yurien Contreras doesn’t know how her father, Mario Romero, is doing either.“I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his ankles,” Contreras said at a press conference in LA on Monday morning. “My family and I haven’t had communication with my dad. We don’t know anything.”Jacob and Romero were among dozens of people arrested in immigration enforcement actions in Los Angeles this weekend, raids that sparked a roaring backlash and eventually led to the deployment of the national guard in the city. They were “kidnapped” by agents, Contreras said. “I demand due process for my father and the dozens of other workers.”The raids in the fashion district were followed by enforcement actions in the nearby city of Paramount, where federal agents cuffed and detained laborers at a Home Depot. Agents were also spotted outside a donut shop in nearby Compton, and around schools.Some of the families of those detained gathered outside Ambiance on Monday, demanding the release of their loved ones. Some, like Jacob, were the sole breadwinners in their families. Others, like José Ortiz, had worked in LA’s garment district for years – Ortiz had been with Ambiance for 18 years. “He was always here. He was a loyal worker,” his daughter Saraí Ortiz said. “He is someone who gave his life to this community and to his work.”Carlos Gonzalez said his older brother José Paulino was taken away not only from his siblings and mother, but also from “one of the friendliest and most loving dogs I have ever met”.At least 14 of those detained were members of the Episcopalian Diocese of Los Angeles. “Fourteen members of one of our Episcopal churches couldn’t be in church this morning on the Day of Pentecost. Their government ripped them from the arms of their families at home and the body of Christ at church,” said Los Angeles bishop John Harvey Taylor.Loved ones and lawyers are still scrambling to find where all of them were taken.“As police shot flash bangs overhead, I begged officers to let me meet with those who were detained,” said Elaina Jung Hee Vermeulen, a legal fellow at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. “Instead of upholding the constitutional rights of those detained, they prepared to repress those rising up against these atrocities.”The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that 118 immigrants were arrested this week, and released the names of some of those in its custody, alleging criminal violations. But the administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, also admitted that the agency was arresting people without criminal records.The raids at workplaces – pushed by Homan and by White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller – come amid a broader push to speed up arrests and deportations. Homan said the LA area is likely to see more enforcement this week, even as thousands of national guard deployed to the city prepared to quell protests against the raids.Lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), found that immigrants apprehended in LA were initially detained in the basement of a federal immigration building. “As attorneys, we are disgusted by DHS’s blatant betrayal of basic human dignity as we witness hundreds of people held in deplorable conditions without food, water, or beds for 12-plus hours,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of ImmDef. “This is an urgent moment for our country to wake up to the terror Ice is inflicting on communities and take action.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a rally in downtown Los Angeles demanding the “humane treatment and access to lawyers for all detainees”.At least one of the people arrested over the weekend was almost immediately put on a bus and deported to Mexico, said Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, a deportation defense attorney supporting the impacted families. “And when they were removed, they weren’t given any paperwork, which is highly unusual and irregular,” he said.Others were taken to the immigration detention centers Adelanto, California – more than a two-hour drive from downtown LA – or El Paso, Texas. “All of this smacks of lawlessness – there have been violations of many, many rights.”The workplace raids were especially brazen, lawyers said, after a federal judge in April issued a preliminary injunction forbidding warrantless immigration stops. The injunction applied to a wide swath of California, and came after CBP conducted similar raids in California’s agricultural Kern county in January.“You can’t just racially and ethnically profile people and arrest them and ask questions later,” said Reyes Savalza, noting that many of those arrested had no criminal history and could apply for various forms of immigration relief if they were allowed to contact attorneys.“If the federal government can come and kidnap people without disclosing any information as to the reason for those arrests, every person in this country should be appalled and terrified,” he added. More

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      LA cleans up and protests some more after weekend of defiance against Trump

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      Outside the federal courthouse complex in downtown Los Angeles on Monday morning, two cleaners carrying bins on wheels looked uncertainly at the daunting task in front of them – long walls in several directions covered in spray-painted graffiti after a weekend of vigorous street protest.They donned black plastic gloves and reached for spray bottles and rolls of paper towels, but these seemed hardly adequate even for the black marble plinth bearing the name “Edward R Roybal Center and Federal Building” where they began. Indeed, the rest of the official writing on the plinth was illegible, defaced by three separate graffiti reading “Fuck Ice” and another saying “Dead Cops”.The City of Angels was in recovery and clean-up mode after a fraught, boisterous day of protest on Sunday against Donald Trump’s immigration roundups and his decision to activate the California national guard against the will of the state’s leaders.A mostly peaceful series of demonstrations were marred, as night fell, by more serious acts of vandalism and violence. Some people, who the LAPD chief later said were not affiliated with the protesters, tossed rocks and paving stones off freeway overpasses on to police cruisers and officers below and a line of Waymo driverless vehicles that had already been spray-painted were set on fire.On Monday morning, street cleaning vehicles were out in force on Alameda Street, on the east side of the federal courthouse complex, where the national guard was stationed on Sunday and where thousands of protesters converged, starting in the early afternoon. The sidewalk and the long block of Alameda flanked by the federal buildings were cordoned off to the public.The 101 freeway, which had been occupied by protesters the night before, was open to traffic again, but most of the downtown exits were sealed off by California highway patrol vehicles. A cleaning crew with a pressure washer was hard at work on the outside of the federal building on Los Angeles Street, which houses a passport office, a social security office and other key federal bureaucratic services.View image in fullscreenThe national guard, which played almost no role in policing the protests on Sunday, was once again nowhere to be seen. Federal authorities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were likewise noticeably absent.With much of the Los Angeles police department recovering from a long day and night, the streets were largely given over to representatives from neighboring police forces drafted in to help – from Pasadena, South Pasadena, Burbank, Vernon and other cities. South Pasadena had the job of guarding concrete blocks set up overnight on either side of LA city hall on Spring Street. Its officers also stood guard on the building’s western steps.Much of the city establishment – council members, local elected officials and union leaders – flocked, meanwhile, to a protest of their own in Grand Park, on a hill overlooking city hall, to demand the release of David Huerta, a leader of the Service Employees International Union who was arrested on Friday while monitoring an immigration raid and was expected in court for his first appearance on Monday afternoon.“David Herta is my brother,” the president of his union, April Verrett, told the crowd to rapturous applause and chanting. “What he would say is, use this moment!”The thousands in attendance blew horns and yelled in approval.Union volunteers acted as marshals for the event and kept a close eye on the perimeter to watch for troublemakers – there appeared to be none. A sole Los Angeles police helicopter hovered overhead, but otherwise law enforcement was entirely absent. More

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      Talkshow host Dr Phil joined Ice agents for Los Angeles immigration raids

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      The television personality Dr Phil was embedded with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers as they carried out controversial raids in Los Angeles that led to days of protests in California, his TV network said.Phil, whose full name is Phil McGraw, was with Ice before and after its agents conducted a series of raids on multiple locations across LA on Friday. Immigration advocates said at least 45 people were arrested, and the action was condemned by California’s governor and LA’s mayor.It was the second time McGraw, a former practising psychologist who hosted a TV talkshow for two decades, has been embedded with Ice this year. In January, he joined the US border czar, Tom Homan, in a choreographed immigration raid in Chicago, in a stunt that was criticized at the time.CNN was the first to report on McGraw’s presence at the Los Angeles raids. McGraw was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations”, his conservative TV channel, MeritTV, told CNN. McGraw had “exclusive” access to Homan before and after the raids, CNN reported.During the Chicago raids, McGraw was on the ground with Ice officers and even spoke to some of the people the agency had detained. His experience in LA was less immersive, MeritTV said.“In order to not escalate any situation, Dr Phil McGraw did not join and was not embedded” during Friday’s raids, a MeritTV spokesperson told CNN.On Sunday, he appeared with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, at a synagogue, as Adams signed an executive order which ordered city agencies to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism.McGraw, who is not Jewish but has said it was his “duty” to support Israel, has increasingly immersed himself in political issues in recent months, particularly regarding immigration.In April, he McGraw backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election, and in May he described Trump as “a man of deep faith, a man of deep conviction”. More

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      Los Angeles protests: a visual guide to what happened on the streets

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      After a series of immigration raids across the city of Los Angeles on Friday inspired mostly peaceful protests involving a few hundred people, the situation escalated on Saturday when the US president, Donald Trump, took the unprecedented step of mobilizing the national guard – the country’s military reserve units – claiming the demonstrations amounted to “rebellion” against the authority of the US government. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, called the decision “purposefully inflammatory”. Here’s a look at what actually happened on the streets.Most of the events took place in downtown Los Angeles, in a fairly localized area. The vast majority of the gigantic metropolis was not affected.Friday 6 June, morning. Federal immigration officers raid multiple locations across Los Angeles, including a Home Depot in Westlake; centers where day laborers gather looking for work; and the Ambiance clothing store in the fashion district. The Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla) says there are raids at seven sites.Friday 6 June, afternoon. David Huerta, the president of California’s biggest union, is arrested while apparently doing little more than standing and observing one of the immigration raids. Footage shows the 58-year-old head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) being knocked down by a masked agent. He was taken to a hospital, then transferred to the Metropolitan detention center in downtown LA. “What happened to me is not about me; this is about something much bigger,” he says in a statement from the hospital. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening.” In a statement the US attorney Bill Essayli claims Huerta “deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle” and says he was arrested on suspicion of interfering with federal officers.Friday 6 June, afternoon. Demonstrators gather outside the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where Huerta and others are being held. There is a tense but largely non-violent standoff with police.7pm: The LAPD declares unlawful assembly in the area and deploys teargas to break up the crowd.8.20pm: The police force declares a city-wide tactical alert.Saturday 7 June, morning. As border patrol agents are seen gathering opposite another Home Depot location, this time in the largely Latino, working-class neighborhood of Paramount, news spreads on social media of another raid. A couple of hundred protesters gather outside the Paramount Business Center. Sheriff’s deputies block off a perimeter near the 710 Freeway and Hunsaker Ave.12pm. Border patrol vehicles leave the center, with officers firing teargas and flash grenades at protesters. Some follow the convoy of federal vehicles up Alondra Blvd, throwing rocks and other objects; a few others set up a roadblock near the Home Depot.Saturday 7 June, 4pm. The area near the Home Depot confrontation is declared an unlawful assembly and protesters are warned to leave. Approximately 100 people gather further west in the neighborhood of Compton, at the intersection of Atlantic Ave and Alondra Blvd, where three fires are set, including a vehicle in the middle of intersection. Rocks are thrown at LA county sheriff’s deputies, and officers retreat to the bottom of bridge to the east.7pm. The Trump administration announces it will deploy the national guard, claiming the limited protests were a “rebellion” against the US government. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, immediately denounces the move, the first time a US president has mobilized US military forces in a domestic political situation without the request of the state’s governor since 1965.The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, also announces that 500 marines at Camp Pendleton in California have been placed on high alert.Saturday 7 June, evening. Federal agents emerge in a phalanx from inside the Metropolitan detention center to confront approximately 100 protesters, firing teargas and “less lethal” weapons at them.9.30pm. Officers and vehicles force the crowd on Alondra Blvd back west, and by midnight most protesters have dispersed.Sunday 8 June, morning. After curfews are declared across LA county overnight from 6pm-6am, by Sunday morning about 300 national guard troops are deployed to the city. Two dozen appear to news crews outside the federal complex, as though intent only on posing for photographs.10.30am. Protesters begin congregating near the Metropolitan detention center, where national guard troops have arrived to support immigration officials – though they do not appear to be engaging in active policing.1pm. Thousands of protesters gather in downtown LA.Sunday 8 June, afternoon. The LAPD again declares the protest an unlawful assembly, ordering everyone to leave, but still the protests continue. Police patrol on horseback and report several arrests. Journalists and protesters are reportedly struck by projectiles, while LA police say two officers are injured after being struck by motorcyclists attempting to “breach a skirmish line”. Ice officers and other federal agents use teargas and pepper balls in an attempt to disperse the crowds. Throughout the afternoon, there are isolated episodes of vandalism – graffiti sprayed on buildings and vehicles, and a protester who damages the side mirror of a parked car. A line of spray-painted Waymo driverless cars, one with a smashed windshield, are later set on fire.Downtown Los AngelesSunday 8 June, afternoon. Hundreds of protesters block the 101 Freeway. They take over two lanes.Evening. Tensions have risen, with demonstrators throwing garbage and rocks at police. Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, double down on their plea to protesters to stay peaceful. “Protest is appropriate to do, but it is just not appropriate for there to be violence,” Bass says, while the LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell, calls the violence “disgusting” and says officers have been pelted with rocks, and shot at with commercial grade fireworks. Crucially, he notes that those engaging in violence were not among the people demonstrating against the immigration raids, but are “people who do this all the time”. More