US President Donald Trump’s administration has sent thousands more troops to Los Angeles on a fourth day of chaotic protests against immigration raids, as the unrest spread to other US cities.
Some 700 US Marines have been deployed to the LA area and the contingent of National Guard troops mobilised to help quell the disorder has been doubled to 4,000.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the move was fulfilling “the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president”.
The state is suing the president for sending in troops without the governor’s permission. It is highly unusual for the American military to have any domestic law enforcement role.
At least four Mexican nationals detained in LA since Friday have already been deported back to Mexico, the country’s foreign affairs office announced on Monday.
The standoff in LA represents the first time since 1965 that a president has sent National Guard troops to a US city without a governor’s approval.
US Marines were previously deployed domestically for major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The Trump administration has so far not invoked the Insurrection Act, which would allow his deployed troops to directly participate in civilian policing.
On Tuesday morning, the LA County prosecutor reiterated the view of state authorities that the extra deployment was unnecessary. “We have not reached the point where local law enforcement has got beyond its means to deal with the situation,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Hochman said only a “small fraction” of the area’s population were actually protesting, and an even smaller number had broken the law.
But he said there had been multiple instances of crime, “whether it’s burning Waymo vehicles, throwing cinder blocks and bricks at the police, driving a motorcycle into the police, or vandalising – and defacing through graffiti – public and private buildings”.
The 700 members of 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, from Twentynine Palms, California, will help protect federal property and personnel, including immigration agents, said the US military.
On Monday evening, Los Angeles police officers fired stun grenades and gas canisters to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside a federal detention centre in downtown LA where undocumented immigrants have been held.
National Guard forces formed a cordon to keep protesters out of the building in the heart of America’s second largest city.
Some demonstrators had thrown objects at officers, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) also said on Monday.
Late that day, US Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed the identity of a man accused of assault for throwing rocks at federal agents.
Bondi said a search warrant has been conducted on his home, and that the man, Elpidio Reyna, would be added to America’s “Most Wanted” list.
Protests also sprang up in at least nine other US cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Austin and San Francisco.
Demonstrators originally took to the streets of LA on Friday after it emerged Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were raiding Latino areas.
The protests unravelled into looting, self-driving cars being torched, rocks thrown at law enforcement and a major freeway blocked by demonstrators.
The LAPD says it arrested 29 people on Saturday night and 21 more on Sunday.
Suspects face charges ranging from attempted murder with a Molotov cocktail, to assault on a police officer, to looting.
The LAPD also says more than 600 rubber bullets and other less-than-lethal rounds were used over the weekend.
At the White House on Monday, Trump said his decision to send in the National Guard had stopped the city from “burning down”.
“You watch same clips I did: cars burning, people rioting, we stopped it,” the president said. “I feel we had no choice.”
The Republican president said he supported a suggestion that California’s governor should be arrested over possible obstruction of his administration’s immigration enforcement measures.
Newsom, who has engaged in a war of words in recent days with Trump, responded on X that “this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”. He said the troop deployment was “about stroking a dangerous president’s ego”.
Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan later told CNN he had “not at this time” seen anything that he felt would warrant an arrest of the California governor.
Trump also sent a direct warning to protesters who confronted police and federal forces.
He wrote on social media: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”
At a press conference on Monday evening, LA Mayor Karen Bass echoed the views of other local officials by saying the deployment of troops was a “deliberate attempt” by the Trump administration to “create disorder and chaos in our city”.
The city leader also said she was aware of at least “five raids by ICE throughout the region” on Monday, including one near her grandson’s school.
Trump’s deployment of the National Guard faces a legal challenge from Newsom. The lawsuit argues that the president was violating the US Constitution and California’s sovereignty. Newsom has also threatened to take separate legal action over the Marine deployment.
Trump has argued that the administration of his predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden, allowed millions of immigrants to enter the country illegally.
He has pledged to deport record numbers of undocumented migrants, setting a goal of at least 3,000 daily arrests.
By BBC News
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