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      Mahmoud Khalil: US judge denies release of detained Palestinian activist

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      A federal judge declined to order the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a setback for the former Columbia University student days after a major ruling against the Trump administration’s efforts to keep him detained.Khalil, a green-card holder who has not been charged with a crime, is one of the most high-profile people targeted by the US government’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism. Despite key rulings in his favor, Khalil has been detained since March, missing the birth of his son.His advocates were hopeful earlier in the week that he was close to walking free. On Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz ruled the Trump administration could no longer detain Khalil on the basis of claims that he posed a threat to US foreign policy. The federal judge in New Jersey said efforts to deport him based on those grounds were likely unconstitutional.Farbiarz had given the US government until Friday morning to appeal against the order, which the Trump administration did not do. Khalil’s lawyers then argued he must be released immediately, but the government said it would keep him detained in a remote detention facility in Louisiana. The administration argued it was authorized to continue detaining him based on alternative grounds – its allegations that he lied on his green-card application.On Friday, Farbiarz said Khalil’s lawyers had failed to present enough evidence that detention based on the green-card claims was unlawful, suggesting attorneys for the 30-year-old activist could seek bail from a Louisiana immigration judge.Khalil’s have strongly rejected the government’s assertions about problems with his green-card application, arguing the claims were a pretext to keep him detained.“Mahmoud Khalil was detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights,” Amy Greer, one of his attorneys, said in a statement on Friday evening.“The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family. Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in [immigration] detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”Khalil has previously disputed the notion that he omitted information on his application.In a filing last week, he maintained he was never employed by or served as an “officer” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies.Khalil said he also stopped working for the British embassy in Beirut in December 2022, when he moved to the US, despite the administration’s claims that he had worked in the embassy’s Syria office longer.The Friday ruling prolonging his detention came the same day a group of celebrity fathers filmed a video reading Khalil’s letter to his newborn son. The Father’s Day campaign, published by the American Civil Liberties Union, called for Khalil’s freedom and included actors Mark Ruffalo, Mahershala Ali, Arian Moayed and Alex Winter.Earlier in the week, when there was a ruling in Khalil’s favor, Dr Noor Abdalla, his wife, released a statement, saying: “True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has. I will not rest until Mahmoud is free.”Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has previously claimed Khalil must be expelled because his continued presence would harm American foreign policy, an effort that civil rights advocates said was a blatant crackdown on lawful free speech. More

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      What the foreign flags at the LA protests really mean

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      At the White House on Wednesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters Donald Trump’s decision to dispatch the military to Los Angeles had been triggered by something he’d seen: “images of foreign flags being waved” during protests over federal immigration raids.Leavitt did not specify which images the president had been so disturbed by, but the fact that some protesters denouncing his immigration crackdown have waved Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadorian flags, or hybrid flags that combine those banners with the American flag, has been taken as an affront by supporters of his mass deportation campaign.The architect of that policy, Stephen Miller, has complained bitterly about flag-waving protesters on the streets of his Los Angeles hometown, and shared video of demonstrators on social media with the comment: “Look at all the foreign flags. Los Angeles is occupied territory.”Trump himself even claimed, during his deeply partisan speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, that his deployment of active-duty marines to the city was justified because of the protesters he called “rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion”.But observers with a more nuanced understanding of the Los Angeles communities being targeted in these raids, and of the nation’s history as a refuge for immigrants, suggest that the flags are not intended to signal allegiance to any foreign government but rather to signal solidarity with immigrants from those places and, for Americans with roots in those countries, to express pride in their heritage.Lalo Alcaraz, a Mexican American satirist and editorial cartoonist, who coined the term “self-deportation” in the 1990s as part of an elaborate prank in response to the anti-immigrant policies of then California governor Pete Wilson, said that the protesters carrying those flags in LA are not immigrants themselves, but “the younger generation that are American citizens and that have pride in their immigrant parents”. Their parents, he said, “are hard-working good people who come from other countries – Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador. This is why they proudly wave those flags.”“Of course they’re proud of their roots, and honestly, what has the American flag done for them but persecute their families?” Alcaraz added. “They are promised that there is a right way to immigrate, that there will be a pathway to citizenship, but this promise has been ignored because corporations make profits off the low wages and hard work of these immigrants, and want to keep them in limbo because it’s easier to control them.”That sentiment was echoed by a protester named Jesus, who told NPR during a protest this week that he waved the Mexican flag because “I’m proud of my Mexican heritage, you know? Even though it was several generations ago, my family members were immigrants.”As NPR’s Adrian Florido pointed out, the large number of flags from other parts of the Americas at these protests contrasted sharply with what was seen in the same place two decades ago.View image in fullscreenIn 2006, when huge marches brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of LA to protest against Republicans in Congress introducing a restrictive immigration bill that would close off paths to citizenship and build fences along the border, organizers urged the demonstrators to wave American flags.“Apparently taking stock of complaints about the number of Mexican flags in previous demonstrations, organizers made sure that the vast majority of marchers Monday carried American flags,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2006 on the massive May Day march that year. Images from that rally showed that Mexican flags were vastly outnumbered in a sea of American flags.Others have pointed out that, for Americans with European roots, waving the flags of their ancestors, from Ireland or Italy, for example, is considered uncontroversial.“The reason Mexicans and Mexican Americans wave the Mexican flag is the same reason the Irish wave the Irish flag,” David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote on Friday. “Not because they want to go back there, but because they are proud of their Heritage and want to stand up for people with their ancestry.”“When you persecute a minority, it makes them more aware of their identity and differences from the majority, slowing assimilation,” he added. “In other words, the Trump agenda is bad for the very thing Trumpists claim to want.”In that light, it is worth recalling that charges of dual loyalty were once hurled at Irish and Italian immigrants, too. Less than a century ago, in fact, American citizens from Irish and Italian families were viewed with hatred and suspicion by native-born, white Protestants.To take one example, when 1,000 robed members of the Ku Klux Klan rioted at the 1927 Memorial Day parade in Queens, and seven men were arrested, one of their chief targets was New York’s Irish American-led police force, which tried to prevent them from marching. One of those men was the current president’s father, Fred Trump. (A report from the time in a Brooklyn newspaper said that “a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so” against Trump was quickly dismissed.)The deep vein of hatred Italian immigrants faced was even a motivating factor in the the first Columbus Day proclamation, issued by Benjamin Harrison in 1892. The then US president hoped to gain support from new Italian American voters, but he was also trying to absolve the country of the stain from a deadly anti-Italian riot the year before in New Orleans, in which 11 Italian immigrants had been falsely accused of murder and were lynched by a mob.One of Trump’s first acts on returning to office this year was to issue a proclamation that Columbus Day would be celebrated during his administration without any acknowledgement of the Indigenous people who suffered so much in the centuries after his voyage to this hemisphere. More

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      Detainees at New Jersey immigration center revolt as chaos unravels

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      Unrest and protests have erupted in and around a controversial immigration detention center in New Jersey, with police and federal officials clashing with protesters after detainees reportedly pushed down a wall in revolt at the conditions they are being held in.About 50 detainees pushed down a wall in the dormitory room of the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on Thursday night, according to an immigration lawyer representing one of the men held there.“It’s about the food, and some of the detainees were getting aggressive and it turned violent,” the lawyer, Mustafa Cetin, told NJ Advance Media. “Based on what he told me it was an outer wall, not very strong, and they were able to push it down.”Following the uprising, a crowd of protesters gathered at the facility and videos posted on social media show them blocking vehicles being driven by law enforcement officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents who sought to quell the disturbance.Amid the chaos, there were reports that four inmates were unaccounted for on Friday morning. A group called NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice said that there were “reports of gas, pepper spray, and a possible fire” inside the center.On Friday afternoon, the US Department of Homeland Security said that authorities are looking for four detainees who escaped from the federal detention center and additional resources were bring brought in to look for them, the Associated Press reported.Delaney Hall is run by a private prison company called GEO Group, which holds a $60m contract with the Trump administration to hold as many as 1,000 people at a time within the facility and has a controversial history over conditions at centers.The center reopened following a refurbishment last month but has faced controversy, with local politicians claiming that it doesn’t hold the correct work permits and certificate of occupancy, posing safety risks. GEO Group has denied this.Shortly after its reopening, LaMonica McIver, a Democratic representative, was arrested after joining an oversight visit of the center. On Wednesday, McIver was indicted and charged with assaulting and interfering with immigration officers, charges which she has called “a brazen attempt at political intimidation”.Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was also arrested at the site in that incident, for trespassing, but those charges have been dropped.“We are concerned about reports of what has transpired at Delaney Hall this evening, ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees,” Baraka said in a statement about the latest unrest at the center.He added: “This entire situation lacks sufficient oversight of every basic detail, including local zoning laws and fundamental constitutional rights.”Ice has yet to comment on the situation at Delaney Hall. The clashes follow protests in several US cities over the detention of migrants and others by the Trump administration, most notably in Los Angeles, where Trump has deployed the military, a extremely rare and controversial move that is being challenged in court by the state of California. More

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      How would recent events in America appear if they happened elsewhere? | Moira Donegan

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      At times the gesture can seem like a cliche, but I like to imagine, for the sake of perspective, how political developments in the United States would be covered by the media if they were happening in any other country. I imagine that Thursday’s events in Los Angeles might be spoken of like this:A prominent opposition leader was attacked by regime security forces on Thursday in the presence of the national security tsar, as he voiced opposition to the federal military occupation of the US’s second-largest city following street demonstrations against the regime’s mass deportation efforts.Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was pushed against a wall, removed from the room, and then tackled to the ground and handcuffed, reportedly by Secret Service and FBI agents, at a press conference in LA by Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. He was trying to ask a question about the deployment of marines and national guard forces to LA in his capacity as Angelenos’ elected representative. Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, was later released; Noem, speaking to reporters after the incident, said both that she knew the senator and that agents tackled and detained him because neither she nor they knew who he was. In a video of the attack, Padilla can be heard identifying himself as a senator as Noem’s security forces begin to grab and shove him.Seconds later, after he has been pushed out of the room, Padilla can be heard yelling to the men attacking him: “Hands off!” The video cuts out after a man steps in front of the camera to block the shot, and tells the person filming, “there is no recording allowed here, per FBI rights,” something of an odd statement to make at a press conference. Several federal court decisions have upheld the right to record law enforcement.The violence toward a sitting senator is yet another escalation of the administration’s dramatic assertions of extra-constitutional authority, and another item in their ongoing assertion of the illegitimacy of dissent, even from elected leaders. In responding with violence toward the senator’s question, Noem, her security forces and by extension the Trump administration more broadly, are signaling that they will treat opposition, even from elected officials, as insubordination.They do not see senators as equals to be negotiated with or spoken to in good faith, because they do not believe that any of the people’s representatives – and certainly not a Democrat – has any authority that they need to respect. Padilla, like the people of Los Angeles and the people of the United States, was not treated by the Trump administration as a citizen, but as a subject.The attack on Padilla by security forces, and the viral video of him being tackled to the ground and handcuffed by armed men, has threatened to overshadow the content of Noem’s press conference, which underscored in rhetoric this same sense of absolute authority and contempt for dissent that the attack on the senator demonstrated with action.Noem was in Los Angeles to tout the administration’s military escalation against citizens there, who have taken to the streets as part of a growing protest movement against Trump’s mass deportation scheme, which has led to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) kidnapping of many Angelenos and left families, colleagues, neighbors and friends bereft of their beloved community members.The protests have been largely peaceful – Ice and police have initiated violence against some demonstrators – but the Trump administration has taken them as an opportunity to crush dissent with force. The deployment of the California national guard – in violation of a law that requires the administration to secure cooperation from the governor – and the transfer of 700 marines to the city has marked a new willingness of the Trump administration to use military force against citizens who oppose its policies.But to the Trump administration, the Americans who have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to Trump policies are no Americans at all. “We are not going away,” Noem said of the military occupation of Los Angeles. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists.” By this, she meant the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and California governor, Gavin Newsom, who are not socialists but Democrats.The term – “liberate” – evokes the US’s imperialist adventures abroad, in which such rhetoric was used to provide rhetorical cover for the toppling of foreign regimes, many of them democratically elected. The people’s elected representatives – be it Newsom or Bass or Padilla – are not figures they need to be “liberated” from. That is, not unless you consider the only legitimate “people” to be Trump supporters, and the only legitimate governance to be Republican governance.Trump, as he expands his authoritarian ambitions and uses more and more violence to pursue them, has made his own will into the sum total of “the will of the people”. All those other people – the ones marching in the streets, and trying to stop the kidnappings of their neighbors – don’t count.A few hours after Noem’s goons attacked Padilla, a federal district court judge ordered the Trump administration to relinquish control over the California national guard, agreeing with California that the guard had been illegally seized when Trump assumed control of the armed units without Newsom’s consent. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” said district judge Charles Breyer in a hearing on the case earlier that day. “It’s not that the leader can simply say something and then it becomes it.”The judge was pointing to the constitutional order, to the rule of law, to the guarantees, once taken for granted, that the president has limits on his power. He gave the Trump administration about 18 hours to hand control of the national guard back to the state of California. It was not immediately clear whether they would comply. Hours later, an appeals court placed a temporary block on Breyer’s order, returning control of the California national guard to Trump. So much for us having a “law and order” president.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Newsom calls Trump a ‘stone cold liar’ as LA protests against Ice raids continue

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      Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has called Donald Trump a “stone cold liar”, condemned the federal deployment of troops in Los Angeles as “theater” and “madness” and even questioned the president’s mental fitness, as protests over immigration raids in the city continue.Trump federalized 2,000 of California’s national guard on Saturday, with a US president acting over the objections of a state governor in this way for the first time in more than half a century. It followed the outbreak of protests over a series of sweeping immigration raids in the LA area, with Newsom criticizing Trump’s actions as illegal overreach, unconstitutional and “provocation”.Now US marines are being added to this force to back up arrests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency, in tactics Newsom said have been used to “disappear” people unlawfully in these raids rather than confront the protesters who have destroyed property around an Ice facility in downtown Los Angeles.Newsom, a Democrat, said that Trump never raised with him the federalizing of the national guard before it occurred, when the two spoke by phone last Friday, despite the president’s claims to the contrary. “He lied, stone cold liar,” the governor told the New York Times podcast the Daily on Thursday morning in an interview.Of the subsequent rare commanding of the national guard troops by the president, rather than the governor, Newsom told the Daily: “It came completely out of left field.”The federalized national guard have been taken from their duties on the border and working in California’s forests to clear undergrowth to prevent wildfires and have had to be protected by police as protesters were specifically angry at them being deployed by the president, Newsom said.“That is how ridiculous this whole thing is,” he said. “This is theater, it’s madness, it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral. It puts people’s lives at risk, these people are being used as pawns.”Newsom said that “looting is unacceptable” but that more than 1,600 police were dealing with the situation and his greater concern was the “thuggish behavior” of the Trump administration in ordering the military on to the streets of a US city. Several members of the federalized national guard have told friends and family they are deeply unhappy about the deployment.“This sends fear and chills up the spines of law-abiding citizens,” said Newsom, who has warned that other states and US democracy itself is under threat from the presidential overreach. “That is a red line crossed, it is a serious and profound moment in American history.”Newsom told local media that Trump’s age seemed to be affecting him.He claimed to the Times that the president can’t recall the phone conversation they had on Friday and that “he’s not all there”, echoing comments first made by the governor on Monday that Trump, who turns 79 on Saturday, is “incapable of even a train of thought” and that he has “lost it”.Trump has said that he wants to “liberate” Los Angeles from protesters and has escalated a feud with Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, by even suggesting the governor himself could be arrested. Los Angeles was calmer on Wednesday evening than at the weekend and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has emphasized in local appearances how small an area has been affected by any trouble, with a limited area under curfew and no looting experienced there overnight into Thursday.However, as protests continue, several hundred further arrests were made late on Wednesday.Newsom also said in the interview broadcast, published on Thursday, that his 15-year-old daughter came home from school crying at the prospect of him being arrested. “I said that doesn’t matter, what matters is the military on the streets,” he said. “I will handle that, I will be fine. I am worried about you, I’m worried about this country, I’m worried about everything we’ve taken for granted and fought so hard for disappearing overnight.”At a press conference on Thursday, Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, suggested without evidence that the protesters could be “funded” by “NGOs out there, unions, other individuals” and said Newsom had not returned her calls. Security guards forcibly removed Alex Padilla, a California senator, from the press conference as he attempted to ask Noem a question.In a statement after his removal, Padilla’s office said he was in Los Angeles “exercising his duty to perform congressional oversight of the federal government’s operations”.“He tried to ask the Secretary a question, and was forcibly removed by federal agents, forced to the ground and handcuffed. He is not currently detained, and we are working to get additional information,” the statement said.The protests have spread to other cities including New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Seattle and Spokane in Washington state, Austin and San Antonio in Texas. Meanwhile immigration “enforcement activity” has extended to California’s agricultural heartland, where many farm workers are undocumented people.Los Angeles area mayors on Wednesday called on the Trump administration with withdraw troops and stop the raids that have caused widespread fear in immigrant communities.“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Jessica Ancona, the mayor of El Monte, who said she was struck by rubber bullets during a recent raid in the city.On Wednesday, Trump was both booed and cheered while attending a performance of Les Misérables in Washington at the Kennedy Center in the capital, which he took over after returning to the White House. Trump said that the actions in Los Angeles were necessary. “If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said. More

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      Why did Angelenos swiftly resist Ice raids? Look to LA’s deep immigrant roots

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      Nerves are frayed in Los Angeles, as the second largest city in the US is flooded with more than 2,000 federal troops tasked with protecting immigration enforcement officials after thousands of people hit the streets to protest against deportation raids.That this weekend’s immigration enforcement actions sparked a fierce response in LA will not come as a surprise to many Californians. LA’s immigrant roots, and its deep ties to neighboring Mexico, are central to the region’s identity.Long before it was part of the US, LA was Indigenous Tongva and Chumash land. It later came under Spanish and then Mexican rule. The name “California” itself comes from a Spanish novel, Las sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), and appeared on maps as early as 1541. But it wasn’t until 2 August 1769, that the Spaniard Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest accompanying the first European land expedition through California, described in his journal a “beautiful river from the north-west”. He named the river, which would later become the LA River, Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Porciúncula (Our Lady of the Angels of the Porciuncula). Twelve years later, in 1781, the settlement would emerge with the shortened and anglicized name of Los Angeles.After Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, Los Angeles – indeed the whole region– remained Mexican territory until it was ceded to the US in 1848 after the Mexican-American war. California became the 31st state in 1850, entering the Union as a free state.Today, one in three people of LA county’s more than 10 million residents are immigrants, and 1.6 million children in the region have at least one immigrant parent. They come from countries around the world. It’s common for Angelenos to have been born in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, China and Hong Kong – but also Russia, France, the UK and elsewhere.Their experiences are diverse, shaped by race, class, legal status, education, languages spoken and more. And they fill vital roles in the region’s economy. Immigrant workers make up 40% of the LA metro area’s workforce.View image in fullscreen“In Los Angeles – more than anywhere – the relationship between immigrant and non-immigrant is interdependent,” says LA city councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, the son of Mexican immigrants and street vendors.Soto-Martínez represents council district 13, which includes some of LA’s most diverse neighborhoods: Echo Park, Silver Lake, Koreatown, Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown and Little Armenia.“Angelenos know that it doesn’t matter where you are – if you’re eating at a restaurant, chances are your food is cooked by an immigrant,” Soto-Martínez said. “If you’re having work done on your house, it’s often an immigrant. Many nannies are immigrants. And if you go to the hospital, chances are you’re being treated by an immigrant.”View image in fullscreenLA has long celebrated its immigrant culture, and in recent years city leaders have worked to protect its immigrant population from the Trump administration’s deportation agenda. In 2023, ahead of a possible second Donald Trump term, LA declared itself a sanctuary city, barring local personnel and resources from being used in federal immigration enforcement. California, too, has passed a string of laws to protect immigrant workers – regardless of legal status – from retaliation, wage theft and other forms of exploitation.“We are a city of immigrants, and we have always embraced that,” Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, said in a press conference on Monday.With immigrants such a strong part of its culture, Friday’s arrest of 118 immigrants, and claims from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that many of them were criminals, has galled the community. The DHS’s website featured photos of 11 people arrested in the raids, with a headline that read: “ICE Captures Worst of the Worst Illegal Alien Criminals in Los Angeles Including Murderers, Sex Offenders, and Other Violent Criminals.”Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the non-profit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla), says his organization has been in direct contact with many of the families of those arrested and has deployed legal counsel in multiple cases. So far, he says: “We’ve found no credible evidence to back homeland security’s claims. These were not targeted arrests. They weren’t based on judicial warrants. And the lie won’t survive for long.”The raids at workplaces – pushed by Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff – come amid a broader push by the administration to hasten arrests and increase deportations. Homan warned LA is likely to see more enforcement this month. And he’s also admitted that the agency has arrested people with no criminal records.Cabrera says given the situation, Angelenos are reacting with justified anger, hurt and civic determination. People in LA with power will stand up for their immigrant friends and family members, he argued.“Angelenos are good about ensuring their voices are heard,” he says. Still, he urges peaceful protest only. “If we give the government reasons to repress us, they will use their maximum power to do so.”Advocates and city leaders also warn that people everywhere should be chilled by what’s happening in the City of Angels.“I think we’re an experiment,” said Mayor Bass. “Because if you can do this to the nation’s second largest city, maybe the administration is hoping this will be a signal to everyone everywhere to fear them. Your federal government … can come in and take over.” More

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      US immigration officials raid California farms as Trump ramps up conflict

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      US immigration officials carried out further “enforcement activity” in California’s agricultural heartland and the Los Angeles area as the conflict between the state and Donald Trump’s administration intensified on Wednesday.Immigrant advocacy groups reported multiple actions across the state, where an estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented, and said agents pursued workers through blueberry fields and staged operations at agricultural facilities.The raids have been sharply criticized by advocacy groups and local officials, who said they were “outraged and heartbroken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activities targeting immigrant families”.“When our workforce’s lives are in fear, the fields will go unharvested, the impact is felt not only at the local level, but it will also be felt at the national level,” said Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, the mayor of Ventura, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles. “Everything will be affected and every American who is here and relies on the labor of these individuals will be affected.”Immigration activities have continued in the Los Angeles area as well, where officials say people have been detained outside Home Depots and in front of churches. Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, said the raids have created a deep sense of fear in the region and that the White House has provoked unrest. The nighttime curfew she put in place this week will stay in place as long as needed, including while there are ongoing raids and a military presence in the city, Bass said at a press conference on Wednesday.Hilda Solis, an LA county supervisor, said Wednesday evening she was concerned about a “deeply disturbing incident” in the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood involving two unmarked vehicles operated by Ice agents crashing in to a civilian car with two children inside and deploying teargas to apprehend an individual. She said she had also learned of an incident of Ice attempting to detain a member of the press.The nearly 5,000 US military personnel in the city now exceeds the number of US troops in both Iraq and Syria.The increasing raids come as Ice ramps up its efforts to meet a reported quota of 3,000 detentions a day set by Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff. The city has seen days of protest over Trump’s immigration crackdown and the subsequent military deployment.Los Angeles police announced they arrested more than 200 people in the city’s downtown area on Tuesday, after crowds gathered in defiance of the overnight curfew in the neighborhood. The LAPD said it had carried out more than 400 arrests and detentions of protesters since Saturday.The crackdown came after California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, filed an emergency request to block the Trump administration from using military forces to accompany Ice officers on raids throughout LA.Trump has ordered the deployment of 4,000 national guard members and 700 marines to LA after days of protests driven by anger over aggressive Ice raids that have targeted garment workers, day labourers, car wash employees and members of immigrant communities.Across the country, NBC reported that Ice was preparing to deploy tactical units to several more cities run by Democratic leaders, citing two sources familiar with the plans, who named four of the cities as Seattle, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.On Wednesday, dozens of mayors from across the Los Angeles region banded together to demand that the Trump administration stop the stepped-up immigration raids that have spread fear across their cities.“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Mayor Jessica Ancona of El Monte, who said she was hit by rubber bullets during a raid in her city.Speaking alongside the other mayors at a news conference, Bass said the raids spread fear at the behest of the White House.“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers. But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe,” she said. “You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”Newsom and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, have alleged in a pair of lawsuits filed on Monday and Tuesday that Trump’s takeover of the state’s national guard, against the governor’s wishes, was unlawful. On Tuesday, a federal judge declined to immediately rule on California’s request for a restraining order and scheduled a hearing for Thursday.In a speech, Newsom condemned Trump for “indiscriminately targeting hard-working immigrant families” and militarising the streets of LA, recounting how in recent days Ice agents had grabbed people outside a Home Depot, detained a nine-months-pregnant US citizen, sent unmarked cars to schools, and arrested gardeners and seamstresses.“That’s just weakness masquerading as strength,” the governor said. “If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”In past days, thousands of troops have been deployed to LA over the objections of Democratic officials and despite concerns from local law enforcement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS military troops in the city do not have the authority to arrest people, but they are allowed to temporarily detain individuals until law enforcement agents arrest them, Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who is leading the deployment, said on Wednesday. National guard troops on the ground in Los Angeles have already done so, he said.View image in fullscreenThe 700 US marines who will be deployed are receiving training on civil disturbances and will not have live ammunition in their rifles while in the city, Sherman said.The Los Angeles county sheriff, Robert Luna, said on Wednesday, however, that federal troops do not have the power to arrest or detain: “So if they are out in the field, they may be there, but they are working in conjunction with federal authorities. It could be Ice, border patrol, there’s a whole host of acronym federal agencies that they’re working with.” Luna also said he was unaware whether Marines were already on the ground in the city, but that local law enforcement was trying to “improve communication” with the military.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said he expected the military would remain in the city for 60 days at a cost of at least $134m.Trump defended the military deployment on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday morning, writing: “If our troops didn’t go into Los Angeles, it would be burning to the ground right now, just like so much of their housing burned to the ground. The great people of Los Angeles are very lucky that I made the decision to go in and help!!!”The deployment of the national guard and marines is strongly opposed by California Democrats, as well as by every Democratic governor in the US. Alex Padilla, a California senator, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that protests against Ice and the subsequent legal showdown between his state and the government was “absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making”.He said: “There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of national guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation. It’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do.”Padilla said the Los Angeles sheriff’s department had not been advised of the federalisation of the national guard. He said his office had pressed the Pentagon for a justification, and “as far as we’re told, the Department of Defence isn’t sure what the mission is here”.Meanwhile, officials in Los Angeles have sought to reassure the public that the situation in the city remains largely peaceful and calm. At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Hochman, the district attorney of Los Angeles county, pointed out how images of unrest on television and social media have misled many Americans about the nature and scale of the mayhem.“If you only saw the social media and the media reports of what’s going on over the last five days, you would think that Los Angeles is on the brink of war,” Hochman said.“But let me put this in perspective for you. There are 11 million people in this county; 4 million of which live in Los Angeles city. We estimate that there’s probably thousands of people who have engaged in legitimate protest, let’s say 4,000 people,” Hochman said.“That means that 99.9% of people in Los Angeles city or generally Los Angeles county have not engaged in any protest at all,” he continued. “Now, amongst the people who have engaged in protest, we estimate that there are hundreds of people, let’s say maybe up to 400, to use rough percentages, who have engaged in this type of illegal activity.”“So what does that mean?” Hochman asked. “That means that 99.99% of people who live in Los Angeles … have not committed any illegal acts in connection with this protest whatsoever.”Lauren Gambino, Sam Levin, Lois Beckett, Joseph Gedeon and agencies contributed reporting More

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      The Guardian view on Trump and deportation protests: the king of confected emergencies | Editorial

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      Donald Trump will celebrate his birthday with a North Korean-style military parade costing tens of millions of dollars this weekend. He has gratefully accepted the early gift of the demonstrations, which have spread across the country, with more scheduled for Saturday. The president’s immigration crackdown spurred overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Los Angeles. Ordering in troops, over the governor’s head, then inflamed the situation and allowed the agent of chaos to portray himself as its nemesis once more.Mr Trump has diverted attention from his rift with Elon Musk, the stalling of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill, the court-ordered return of the wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego García and the impending impact of tariffs. But underlying the manufactured crisis is a deeper agenda: reigniting fear of undocumented migrants, delegitimising protest, and thus expanding his power. Migrant families, and those who have taken to the streets to support them, are portrayed as “animals” and the perpetrators of “invasion and third-world lawlessness” – requiring Mr Trump to amass more might to protect America.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, rightly described this as an assault on democracy. As he noted, “authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.” Due process has been discarded. American citizens are among those being swept up in raids. Mr Trump has said that Mr Newsom himself should be arrested. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, calls the protesters “insurrectionists” – though his boss, of course, pardoned the actual insurrectionists of the January 6 Capitol attack.Mr Trump’s tactics are familiar in both the broad and narrow sense. In his book On Tyranny, published in 2017, the historian Timothy Snyder urged readers to listen for “dangerous words” such as “emergency” and reminded them that “the sudden disaster” requiring the suspension of freedoms “is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book”.Mr Trump drew a bleak portrait of American carnage in his inaugural speech and described himself as “the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy”. Since his re-election he has declared emergencies to push through tariffs, loosen energy regulations and ramp up deportations. His methods are transparent – and sometimes blocked by courts – yet still effective. For his supporters, each rock thrown, each billow of smoke, is fresh evidence of the menacing “other” encroaching upon their home.Yet if his methods are familiar, they are also going further. He has moved from xenophobia to echoing fascist tropes of migrants “poisoning the blood” and portrays an enemy within,suggesting that Mr Newsom and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, are trying to aid “criminal invaders”. In his first term, Mr Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act (and, reportedly, said that troops should “just shoot” Black Lives Matter protesters). Gen Mark Milley and others are no longer present to hold him back. Alarmingly, he warns that any protests at his parade will face “very heavy force”.All those who stand against Mr Trump’s weaponised bigotry and hunger for untrammelled power must make it clear that they are defending the law and not defying it. Responsibly challenging the abuse and entrenchment of power is not only the right of citizens, but a duty. More