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White House says the US president is deploying 2,000 guardsmen to address ‘lawlessness’ as protests against immigration raids continue.
United States President Donald Trump is deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to the city of Los Angeles in California, where an immigration crackdown has triggered protests and clashes for a second day.
The White House said in a statement on Saturday that Trump was deploying the guardsmen to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester” in the state.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, objected to the move and said in a post on X that the move from the Republican president was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions”.
During Saturday’s protests, federal agents confronted dozens of protesters in the Paramount area in southeast Los Angeles, deploying tear gas on a street strewn with overturned shopping carts, as the crowds called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to leave their city.
Some of the protesters waved the flag of Mexico and had their masks with respiratory masks.
The protests followed reports of continued immigration raids near a home improvement shop in the area.
There had been confrontations in Los Angeles the night before too, when ICE agents raided several locations in the city and arrested at least 44 people on alleged immigration violations.
Following the arrests, protesters gathered in the evening outside a federal detention center, chanting, “Set them free, let them stay!”
Some held signs with anti-ICE slogans, and some scrawled graffiti on the building.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass condemned the raids, said the moves were meant to “sow terror” in the nation’s second-largest city.
Trump in turn chided Newsom and Bass in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“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.
The immigration crackdown is part of Trump’s pledge to deport record numbers of people in the country illegally and lock down the US-Mexico border. The White House has set a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 migrants per day.
But the sweeping immigration crackdown has also caught up people legally residing in the country, including some with permanent residence, and has led to legal challenges.