The National Guard will be deployed to Los Angeles after “riots” in response to immigration raids extended into a second day.
California Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed that the Trump administration is deploying “2,000 soldiers” to Los Angeles after local police used tear gas, stun guns, and riot shields to push back immigration protesters in Paramount on Saturday.
Demonstrations began outside the Los Angeles Federal Building in the downtown area of LA on Friday after officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out raids in the area.
Mr Newsom warned in a post on X: “The federal government is sowing chaos so they can have an excuse to escalate. That is not the way any civilized country behaves.”
“The guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery [from wildfires]. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust,” he added in a statement.
“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”
President Donald Trump hit back at Mr Newsom in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday.
“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!,” he wrote.
Reports the guard would be deployed to LA came earlier on Saturday, from Donald Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan on Fox News.
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44 arrested in Friday raids
At least 44 people were arrested on suspicion of immigration violations during raids on Friday, with crowds of around “1000 rioters” forming around the building before some “assaulted law enforcement officers, slashed tires, and defaced taxpayer-funded property”, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
On Saturday, protests spread to the city of Paramount, southeast of LA, after demonstrators spotted ICE employees in a Home Depot car park they appeared to be using as a base.
Some waved Mexican flags while others were seen being detained by law enforcement officials.
Roads were pictured strewn with trolleys and rubbish bins set on fire, as gas cannisters and fireworks exploded.
Head of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a post on X on Saturday: “A message to the LA rioters: you will not stop us or slow us down.”
Her warning comes amid Trump’s nationwide crackdown on illegal migration.
As soon as he was re-elected in January he set a target of 3,000 arrests of suspected illegal migrants per day – and promised to lock down the US-Mexico border.
His deputy chief of staff, immigration hardliner Stephen Miller, described the LA demonstrations as a “violent insurrection… against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”.
