WASHINGTON, JUN 11: Several U.S. cities braced for a new round of protests on Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration raids, as parts of Los Angeles spent the night under curfew in an effort to quell five days of unrest.
Officials were also preparing for nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations on Saturday, when tanks and armored vehicles will rumble down the streets of Washington, D.C., in a military parade marking the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary and coinciding with the president’s 79th birthday.
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The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, said he will deploy the National Guard on Wednesday ahead of planned protests. Already this week, demonstrations have broken out in Austin, Texas, New York, Atlanta and Chicago, among other cities.
Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles has sparked a national debate on the use of military on U.S. soil and pitted the Republican president against California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.
Trump has claimed that the deployment prevented the violence from raging out of control, an assertion Newsom and other local officials said was the opposite of the truth.
“This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk. That’s when the downward spiral began,” Newsom said in a video address on Tuesday. “He again chose escalation. He chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. … Democracy is under assault.”
Newsom, who is widely expected to mount a presidential run in 2028, sued Trump and the Defense Department on Monday, seeking to block the deployment of federal troops. Trump in turn has suggested that Newsom should be arrested.
Hundreds of Marines arrived in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday under orders from Trump, who has also called up 4,000 National Guard troops to the city. The Marines and National Guard are assigned to protect government personnel and buildings and do not have arrest authority.
About 700 Marines were in a staging area in the Seal Beach area about 30 miles (50 km) south of Los Angeles on Tuesday, awaiting deployment to specific locations, a U.S. official said.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the deployments were not necessary and that local police could manage the protests, which have been largely peaceful and limited to about five downtown streets.
But the mayor elected to impose a curfew over one square mile of the city’s downtown starting on Tuesday night after several businesses were looted during the unrest. The curfew will last several days.
Police said multiple groups stayed on the streets in some areas despite the curfew and “mass arrests” were initiated.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Reuters that the state was concerned about allowing federal troops to protect personnel, saying that could violate an 1878 law that generally forbids the U.S. military, including the National Guard, from taking part in civilian law enforcement.
“Protecting personnel likely means accompanying ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents into communities and neighborhoods, and protecting functions could mean protecting the ICE function of enforcing the immigration law,” Bonta said.
The agency posted photos on X on Tuesday of National Guard troops accompanying ICE officers on an immigration raid. Trump administration officials have vowed to redouble the immigration raids in response to the street protests.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George H.W. Bush for help responding to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King.
‘LIBERATE LOS ANGELES’
The standoff in Los Angeles has become the most intense flashpoint yet in the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally – and then crack down on opponents who take to the streets in protest.
Trump, who centered much of his campaign last year on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, used a speech honoring soldiers on Tuesday to defend his decision.
“Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness,” he told troops at the army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, adding that his administration would “liberate Los Angeles.”
Demonstrators have waved the flags of Mexico and other countries in solidarity with migrants rounded up in a series of intensifying raids.
Homeland Security said on Monday that its ICE division had arrested 2,000 immigration offenders per day recently, far above the daily average of 311 in fiscal year 2024 under former President Joe Biden.
An immigration raid on Tuesday at a meat production plant in Omaha, Nebraska, was the “largest worksite enforcement operation” in the state during the Trump presidency, the Homeland Security Department said. U.S. Congressman Don Bacon told local media that 75-80 people were detained.
The company, Glenn Valley Foods, said it was surprised by the raid and had followed the rules regarding immigration status.
